A LETTERED SOUL, BOOK 2- MUSINGS ON ART AND CULTURE

TIES ARE FRAGILE. LIFE ISN'T ALWAYS FAIR

PARZANIA(2005)

Ties are fragile. Life isn't always fair to honest, hardworking folks who only strive for dignity, a roof on the head and a secure future.

But what is life really if not a sport devised by reckless mobs?

Till this date, the carnage that ensued in Gujarat in early 2000s has been made to stick in the underground even though the establishment's complicity in this man-made hellscape has resounded for a greater part of two decades. Parzania, referring to a young boy's dreamland that he only shares with his beloved sister, is one such tale among thousands, of a family that has never come to terms with a member's disappearance. History has failed them because it has been written by the state and its venal stakeholders.

This film will always remain timely precisely because it's a stirring human document of state-sponsored sectarian violence. Innocent lives will always be erased. Human trauma and grief will always be compartmentalised. Children will always grow up to lose their joy. Courtrooms and committees will deliver hollow judgements.

As the right-wing wreaks havoc and a traumatised woman's tormentors are set free on singularly devious grounds propelled by faith-based prejudice, in the very same state and nation which bore witness to the Godhra epoch, Parzania becomes hauntingly relevant.

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MAINE GANDHI KO NAHI MAARA(2005)

This is another cinematic feature where dynamics of the family go through the emotional wringer.

Societal apathy and the fear of being the 'other' when age and mental faculties begin hoodwinking us are universal concerns. Who are the ones to stand by us then? Who are the ones to let us be vulnerable and weak when our resolves fail? Who can weather the storms after halcyon days ?

A father-daughter bond is of primacy here but so are the scars of childhood that wrestle in the inner chambers of our minds. Memories can be our blind spots.

The state of the world, fueled and funnelled by familial ties, becomes poignant and socially conscious here. The struggles of old age and caring for our guardians in a world that prefers to let them go is addressed in a manner we can relate with, on a deeply personal level. This is why cinema endures when it finds a pure, soulful home in screenplays mirroring lived experiences.

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CLOSE(2022)

Watching Lukas Dhont mine his own childhood for this deeply personal account of an adolescent friendship gone sour, I recalled my own 'best buddy'; how ten long years of togetherness through junior, middle and first two years of high school faded away for him as soon as my academic performance hit a nadir and my emotional state made me withdraw to my own shell. His betrayal was cruel, unapologetic and never cared for reconciliation. He flung me to the other side of the city and out of his life as if I was a dry twig, a social pariah who was not be a part of his hierarchy of overachievers.

The unraveling of a beautiful friendship between two boys here is affecting because it gives us a deep dive into how social hierarchies define us from the moment we step into childhood; they keep conditioning us. Till an implosion occurs. Till a life is lost.

Friends become our families until society creeps in to dictate terms. The sum and residue of those strands become soulfully realistic here in CLOSE.

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TRIAL BY FIRE(2023)

Like Parzania, Trial By Fire deals with the human cost of lives lost and familial dignity distorted in an immeasurably corrupt society. It's a cost that the state, carriages of law and societal apathy keep incurring but are never held accountable for.

The Uphaar cinema inferno in Delhi was a man-made disaster, like all mortal conflagrations literal and figurative; but while a child's unsolved disappearance can be a soul-gobbling strain, death and its finality numbs the mind. Both scenarios find the survivors and aggrieved lost. Forgotten.

The fight put up by the Krishnamoorthys, who lost both their teenaged children in the tragic event addressed here, was ripe for discovery. This limited series spotlights their lifetime dedicated to finding closure, justice and delivering rehabilitation to all the families affected by that fated day in the late 1990s. The void is gaping, the sustained struggle for common folks reiterating a script that makes the personal universal and political.

The imagined last moments and days for few of the unfortunate souls who went for a movie screening, only to never come back home, is rendered with empathetic strokes. Life is transient. Most of the times, it's our own unwillingness to effect change. Many a times, human apathy designs doom.

Trial by Fire also hits hard because its perspectives are multiple, the fact that the accused are scot-free dampening our resolve for those who see no new dawn for justice. As a building just five minutes away from my own apartment fell down like a pack of cards back in January, 2023, with the loss of lives becoming centre of attention and just as easily dying down with the embers of yesterday's news, this series hit hard. The fact that both buildings, the Uphaar Cinema and the apartment in my own locality, stood in posh areas, in provenances of supposed comfort and privilege in the heart of big cities, is another dimension to this never-ending saga. Imagine how convenient it is then to turn the other way when a haphazard structure in the older parts of a city or in a low-income area suffers the same fate. It cannot happen to us, we think, until it does. Real-estate boom and under the table negotiations are doggedly pursued despite the warnings and prior histories.

That's why these storytelling feats matter. They are delivered with the dignity and truth we deserve to be privy to.

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