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A movie about a decrepit ‘haweli’ and its destitute landlords & tenants. Mirza(Amitabh Bachchan) and Fatima begum(Farooq Zafar)constitute the first group whereas Baankey(Ayushman Khurana) & Co. fill up the latter. Bolstering the interest quotient are a sarkari babu(Vijay Raza) and a lawyer(Brijendra Kala).
We have here stellar performances, astute direction, a nuanced script, caressing cinematography, and an enchanting background score. Yet somehow, the finished whole falls well short of the sum of its parts. So short in fact that were it not for the last five minutes I would’ve rated the movie as less than middling.
Yes, it’s the ending that took me by absolute surprise. Not the O’Henry kind of surprise (which is engineered by a turn of events) but the Maupassant variety (which relies more on the juggling of emotions.)
Mirza and Baankey are sitting at the banks of what looks to be the Gomti river. Bankey asks Mirza what he saw in Fatima begum(a woman 15 years his senior)that he agreed to marry her. ‘Haweli,’ replies Mirza very matter of factly (the haweli belongs to Fatima). After a pause, Bankey comes up with the natural follow-up question, ‘और बेगम ने क्या देख लिया तुम में?’ Mirza looks askance at Bankey, as if such a query could even be conceivable. ‘हमारी जवानी,’ he eventually replies.
The movie ends and a song starts to play in the background.
दो दिन का ये मेला है
खेला फिर उठ जाना है
माटी का बर्तन है प्यारे
माटी में मिल जाना है
It’s here that the fleeting nature of it all - not just life and youth but damned near everything - hits you from an unexpected quarter. Real and reel lose their distinction. For it’s not only the hunchbacked Mirza who was once young; so too was Amitabh Bachchan. I’m involuntarily reminded of that irresistible hunk from Silsila.
Interesting indeed is fleetingness! But what’s even more interesting is our total disregard of that phenomenon. We plan as if we are to live endlessly. Mirza - who’s nearly eighty years of age - is prepared to go to any length to own a haveli he’s already living in. Not surprisingly, Mirza isn’t the sole fictional character of advanced years who’s obsessed with a personal objective. Others that come to mind are Santiago in Old Man And The Sea
and Micheal Keaton in Birdman.
That our age isn’t a barrier in our ability to dream may perhaps be the most significant of our gifts. And yet, when we see a man of advanced years enthused with an objective, a faint tint of gloom shrouds our endorsement of his efforts. It’s noteworthy that the proportion of ‘gloom’ and ‘endorsement’ vary from case to case. Santiago’s nobility, Birdman’s vanity, and Mirza’s petty greed; each elicit different measures of gloom and endorsement.
Now endorsement is understandable. The question is why should there be any gloom at all. What’s it that is quite not right about an aged man pursuing his dreams? The answer, I think, lies in the purpose of such pursuit. Though every man has every right to chase dreams at every age, it’s only the young who’re afforded the liberty of chasing dreams for the purpose of validating their self-worth. When an old man needs to chase dreams for such a purpose, it reveals a certain deep-rooted deprivation. And that of course is not a pleasant sight.

​हम बुतों को जो प्यार करते हैं,
नक़ल-ए-परवरदिगार करते हैं,
क्या मोहब्बत भी कोई पेशा है,
लोग क्यूँ इतना प्यार करते हैं।
-नुसरत फ़तह अली खान
Yes, we can always explain why we love certain things and certain people. The point is, we can never explain it adequately enough. E.g., I adore Shyam Benegal’s ‘सूरज का सातवाँ घोड़ा’. But though I’m able to pinpoint the reasons why I love that movie, the sum total of those reasons never adds up to the magnitude of my love. Some credit entries seem missing. The ledger ends up unbalanced. I guess the whole phenomenon is somewhat akin to the concept of ‘dark energy’ and ‘dark matter’. Though neither of those have been directly observed, their conjectured presence is necessary to explain an acceleratingly expanding universe and the gravitational play of galaxies.
We could, then, embark upon a search for ‘dark matter’, or we could simply label our love ‘ineffable’ and drop it at that. Afterall, philosophy is full of spiels to that effect; spiels that don’t solve a problem but ‘diffuse’ it. For example,
‘We desire things not because they’re pleasurable; they’re pleasurable because we desire them’
‘And why do we desire them?’
‘ऐवई’
बोले तो, पता नहीं। Dark matter.
Lucky then that I should stumble upon some dark matter the other day. Serendipitously, it struck me that a large part of my unexplained love for Shyam babu’s movie can be attributed to its milieu. Its ambience. By ambience, I don’t allude to that canvas and palette which is obvious to immediate perception (like Yash Chopra’s ‘affluent’, or Terrence Malick’s ‘dusky, non-sequitur’.) By ambience, I imply something more muted, something that lurks in the personal subconscious.
Whereas this muted entity may find expression in the unlikeliest of ways, in ‘सूरज का सातवाँ घोड़ा’ it manifests itself as a room. The room I mention is the one where a major part of the story transpires; where a bunch of friends sit chatting and an assortment of flashbacks and narratives are doled out. It’s a terrace room, at once cozy and aired out. Further, though it’s in the middle of a bazaar, it yet manages to keep it’s privacy unruptured. And perhaps most important of all, it’s a room redolent with the smell of chai. No, not the smell that proceeds from brewing that concoction, but the smell that emanates from mere talk of hopping over to a nearby stall for a cup. Needless to say, it’s a room reminiscent of some fine days spent in the company of some fine friends.
So there! Though only to a little extent, that’s explaining away the inordinateness of our love for ‘things’. Now if only we could get around to doing that for people.

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Leon and Anna, who secretly harbour feelings for each other, are meeting after a long time. Leon tries to kiss Anna and she halfheartedly pushes him away. ‘तुम नहीं जानते कि मैं तुम्हारी कितनी इज़्ज़त करती हूँ,’ she explains. ‘पर क्यूँ?’ asks Leon. His tone is that of surprise; and I can’t resist a little laugh.
It’s a telling scene.
Every successful long-term relationship has one essential ingredient: mutual respect among the parties involved. Paradoxically, respect is often the first casualty when a relationship begins to mature.

Tim Burton’s ‘Big Fish’. It’s a movie about a man who loves to tell exaggerated stories about his own life. But because he appears to truly believe in those stories - and also because those stories somehow don’t reek of narcissism – our protagonist is a much loved raconteur. Everybody around him seems to adore him. Everybody, except his own son. The tall tales are for his son a source of constant embarrassment. And more than embarrassment they’re a source of confusion. Since they so seamlessly blend fact and fiction, these stories obfuscate the true identity of his father from him. The son’s bitterness deepens with passing time and eventually there are two disgruntled parties instead of one. Father and son stop talking to each other.
Then comes a twist.
The old man falls ill and is told that he hasn’t much time left. The son, as soon as he hears of this, rushes to his father’s bedside. Accompanying him is his very affable French wife (the enchanting Marion Cotillard) who instantly forms a warm bond with the dying man. More storytelling follows. This time, however, corroborative facts serendipitously come to light and the son gradually realises that he could have been mistaken about his father. There’s a poignant scene where he’s sitting by his unconscious dad’s hospital bed and the elderly doctor (a friend of his father’s) brings up the story of his birth. This is one of his father’s favourite stories; one that he has told dozens of times at dozens of occasions. It’s a story about how the son went sliding through the hospital corridors the day he was born. Also, that same day, his father forced the biggest fish in the river to cough-up his mislaid wedding ring. Of course, none of this is true. The doctor informs the son that his birth was as ordinary as any other.
And that brings us to something about Big Fish that’s not in the least ordinary – the dialogue. It ranges from the merely good (‘It was that night I discovered that most things you consider evil and wicked are simply lonely, and lacking in social niceties’) to the outright brilliant (‘Now, it’s common knowledge that most towns of a certain size have a witch, if only to eat misbehaving children and the occasional puppy that might stray into her yard.’)
Big Fish, then, is not just a story about the obliterated lines between reality and fantasy. It’s also a story about some extremely pertinent symbolism. I say pertinent because that which we call ‘Truth’ is rarely a mere concoction of pure facts. In order for it to be fundamentally understood, truth invariably needs to be supplemented with the fantastic.
And who can understand this better than a people whose ancestors deliberately - and inextricably - mingled their history with mythology?
Then, is the current festive season really about the return of an exiled prince? Is it indeed about his victory over a ten-headed adversary who’d abducted his wife using a flying machine? Or, was reality more prosaic? Well, as the good doctor said to our dying protagonist’s son ‘… and that’s how you were really born. However, if you ask me, I much prefer the story your father told. But then, that’s just me.’

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It began with having more empathy for Pran than for Amitabh Bachchan in ‘Sharabi’. Then Shreeram Lagoo from ‘Mukaddar ka Sikandar’ started to seem a justified man. After all, you can’t really blame a dad who objects to his daughter’s fraternising with a hooligan.
I eventually went a notch up when I began to commiserate with Gabbar Singh. But honestly, are we to point fingers at all people who’re into wealth redistribution and who run MGNREGA type schemes for the Kalias and Sambas of this world? Besides, Gabbar wasn’t even extorting to the point that he could live in luxury. ‘Do bori anaaj’ was all he expected from the gaon-walas. Yes, ‘Gabbar Singh was a reasonable man,’ I say to myself.
The question is, would I be overdoing it if I employed that same phrase for Thanos?
Allow me to plead my case. So okay, in Thanos we have a man who has slightly divergent ideas on how the universe should be organised. But what does he do with his infinite power once he has achieved his aim? He gives it all up and retires to live in a little cottage. So spartan is his lifestyle that he subsists on self-farmed vegetables that look suspiciously like a cross between a karela and a lauki.
Also - and this may be the clincher in favour of Thanos - it’s no small compliment when your daughter can say for you, “My father may be a lot of things, but a liar isn’t one of them.”

​नजर का वार था दिल की तड़प ने छोल दी।
चली थी बरछि किसी पर किसी को आन लगी।।
नजरिया की मारी, मरी मोरी गुइयाँ.....
(छोल:scar, बरछि:spear,गुइयाँ:सखी/female friend)
This is Thumri at its near best. Its context is the play of intimacy between Radha & Krishna and - understandably - the predominant flavour is that of Shringar Ras, i.e., love and joy.
It’s said that in a Thumri it is the lyrics that are of prime importance. But there could perhaps be a diametrically opposite way of looking at this. For if you really lose yourself in a Thumri you realise that since the same set of lyrics are repeated again and again, these lyrics tend to eventually melt away. What remains is pure music.
Why then, you may ask, were lyrics required in the first place? In answer, the closest metaphor I can think of is that of a good whiskey and the barrel it’s aged in. The lyrics - like the barrel - hold the music together and impart it with a distinctive flavour. And yet, one can’t be said to have ‘mixed’ with the other.