suraj ka saatvan ghoda, and why we love inordinately

​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.