We needed alcohol. Due to the lack of time and poor planning we had not picked up any before we started traveling. So we hit the streets of sleepy Trier in search of a shop that sold alcohol. But try as we might we could not find one. We drove through deserted neighborhoods and leafy suburbs but there no sign of alcohol on the horizon. We crossed the Mösel many times in our quest. It was as if we were living in a time of prohibition. All our impromptu plans of playing poker with a cold beer in hand at the camping ground were at risk of going waste. So we wandered some more. There were comparisons between the ease of finding alcohol after midnight in India and in the beer capital of the world, Germany. I found it strange that it was taking us so much time to find an open kiosk. Back in Cologne I only had to walk a few hundred yards from my house to find two. It seemed as if the people of Trier had no craving for alcohol after midnight. And so we found ourselves across the Mösel yet again. Cars passed us and their inhabitants seemed strangely content. Had they been more successful than us? Would we ever find what we were searching for? Or would we have to return empty handed and crawl into a tent without the cool balm of alcohol in our stomachs to ease the cold passage of night?

After crossing the Mösel another time we took a random turn to the left and found ourselves at an intersection. And standing right there to the right of the intersection like a lighthouse for floundering ships was an open döner shop. My friend ventured out full of desperate hope. I joined him. But our hopes did not last long. The shop did not sell any alcohol. Perhaps he saw our faces droop or felt our hopes slipping away, whatever the reason, as we were leaving the shop owner threw us a bone in the form of a suggestion. He pointed to a bar opposite his shop, tucked away on the corner and suggested to us to try our luck there. Hopes renewed we thanked him, crossed the road and approached the bar. From the outside it was unremarkable. I forgot its name as soon as I saw it. We passed through the open doors and strangely it felt like as if I had crossed some kind of special portal into another world. We walked into a land not often encountered.

The bar was a large room interspersed with wooden benches and tables. Along the walls at regular intervals were garishly bright game machines with blinking lights. At the far end, opposite the door was the bar counter. On the right side of the room were two doors. One presumably led to the toilets while the other opened into a room filled with a pale yellow light. I could not see clearly what the room contained or ascertain its function. It seemed rather odd and out of place as if it was added as an afterthought by a bored builder.

There was an air of impending decay about the place. The bar was not in disrepair but perhaps due to the sickly yellow light or the garish lights of the game machines the bar had an air of approaching apocalypse.

There were six people in the bar. Two young men were sitting in an alcove right next to the door. They were talking among themselves in the harsh guttural German that is characteristic of first generation Turkish immigrants. I was struck by their presence in that bar. It did not seem like a place for young people. What were they doing there? Had they also set out on a similar quest as us, wandered into that place and could not go back across the portal into the normal world outside? What was the strange attraction that the place held for them? I suddenly realized that sometimes when you spend too much time amidst mediocrity and routine and encounter anything out of the ordinary it exerts a force on you that is not easy to shake off. I could almost believe that the young men there were caught in the same force.

The remaining people in the place consisted of two women and a man with a white beard sitting at the bar and drinking. The fourth person was the bartender. He seemed ancient and had the same air of slow decay about him as the bar. His cheeks were sunken in gloom and he spoke in deep ponderous tones with long pauses between his words. It was as if he was measuring the passage of time in the spaces between his words. In this he reminded me strongly of Vajpayee, the former prime minister of India, whose speeches were also filled with such thoughtful pauses between words.

(I never post opinion pieces on this blog but I think this needs to be told here too. Cross posted here.)

It is as if India is losing her humanity part by part. Coming close on the heels of the recent spate of reports on women molested in various parts of India is this horrific and tragic report from Surat about a brave man named Keshav Vishwakarma who tried to prevent a woman from being heckled. For being a good Samaritan, four hours later, he was doused with kerosene and put on fire. Incredibly, with 75% burn injuries he walked two kilometers to a police station to report the incident. Unfortunately, he later succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.

It is nothing new that women in India have a torrid time in public spaces. Even as a child I could not help but notice how careful my mother would be when she had to go out alone or with me as a child to any public space, be it to the market or to the cinema or to drop me off at school. She would carefully wrap her pallu around herself completely so that no bare skin was visible anywhere between her face and feet. In the bus she always made sure that she sat as much in the front as possible, away from the men’s seats and on the road she would ask me to walk on the outer side so that I’d be shielding her from passing traffic (meaning the sundry Indian male who would not think twice about grabbing or groping a woman in public).

Later, when I was older I’d listen in horror as my female friends recounted incident after incident about how disgusting and desperate the average Indian male is in public. I was ashamed and embarassed that the freedom I took for granted came with so many reservations for them. To think that every time they were out in public they had to deal with innumerable snide comments which would range from ‘kya potti hai re’ to men in cars slowing down to ask ‘ati kya?’ showed me how different a world it is for an Indian woman compared to her male counterpart. They had to be on constant guard to not let men get too close in public spaces. For if men got too close more often than not their body parts would be groped, grabbed or pawed in the most obscene way. My friends often would not take it laying down if they were in a group and always tried to fight back. But they also knew that it was safer to keep quiet especially if they were alone. They knew from practical experience how unsafe it is for an Indian woman to walk on the street alone even in a big city like Hyderabad. And these were the so called elite upper middle class women who were confident, educated and unapologetic about what they wore or how they behaved and who therefore, according to some, are asking for such abuse by dressing or behaving unlike a ‘traditional Indian woman’. One friend of mine, upon listening to such incidents from my friends above, even had the gall to say that if they stopped wearing dresses befitting a whore they would be given more respect! Unfortunately, the truth is not so simple. Even women who wear ‘traditional’ Indian dresses are not spared such abuse. I recall a nonsensical dress code directive by Anna University along the very lines of such an argument about which I had blogged here.

So why do we Indian men behave like this? Many men would object perhaps saying that men are the same everywhere in the world. To a certain extent that is true. But I’ve observed how big a difference there is between the average European male and his Indian counterpart when it comes to women. Men defer to women here in public spaces. Although men do eye good looking women here it is limited to just that. There are no snide or obscene comments passed and in my four years here I’ve never ever seen a man behave obscenely towards a woman in public. Yes, there are occasionally teenagers who seem to tease women but they are more the exception than the rule.

How much of history do we remember? As a philosopher once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. But we keep forgetting and thereby keep repeating the same mistakes. Our collective history is littered with examples of the vilest of deeds that have repeated themselves through the ages. From Germany to Gujarat and from Rwanda to Cambodia millions have been murdered and massacred just because they were the ‘other’. A group of ‘others’ who could conveniently be blamed for whatever imaginary wrongs those in power could propagate about them. And people would believe them for it is easier to blame someone else rather than confront a problem.

Therefore, it is important to create symbols and to build special places where memories of the past are kept alive and remembered. For it is necessary to remember even if memories seem futile. For in remembering we make a promise even if we do not always keep it. A promise to do whatever it takes to prevent what we are seeing of the past from repeating itself in the present or in the future.

One such place is the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Among the museums I’ve seen it alone makes brilliant use of light and space to evoke a feeling of great loss and sadness. Each facet of the architecture and arrangement is meant to mean something and that meaning is conveyed using the simplest of means: stark unadorned walls, huge empty rooms, select photos and belongings, uneven ground, all meant to reproduce at least in part the unbelievable horrors experienced by the victims of the holocaust.

I.

Steve McCurry’s photographs were a like a balm to my tired and bored eyes. The intense and saturated portraits of mainly South Asian faces formed a wonderful contrast to the grey and gloomy Parisian streets outside the gallery. He has this amazing ability to capture the wondrous beauty of the eyes of the people in his portraits. Bright blue eyes big enough to fit the world, intense green eyes that arrest you in mid stride and deep dark eyes that you can disappear into on a journey into their souls. There were perhaps twenty portraits there but ah what a pleasure it was to stare at each one of them to my heart’s content! From the very famous ‘Afghan Girl’ to the lesser known but equally captivating photo of a flower seller on the way to the market in a boat on the weed covered waters of Dal Lake, I stared transfixed at slices of human emotion hung up in front of my eyes.

I was therefore grateful that I saw the price list before I embarrassed myself by going ahead with my original intention to enquire about buying one of the prints. The ‘cheapest’ price for a print on sale was 4000 Euros! With a sigh and a last wistful glance around I wandered back out into the now raining streets of the art gallery neighborhood of Paris.

II.

I was lost among graves of people unknown to me. The cemetery was divided into divisions but without a map I was hopelessly lost. I could have asked someone. But even those with maps seemed lost. More than that though, I wanted to find his grave on my own. Call it my own little musical pilgrimage if you are being generous or a foolishly romantic notion if you are just being charitable. So I walked on past grand graves over which angels in stone kept watch, past graves neglected and now conquered by kingdoms of moss, past newer graves that were adorned with small photographs of the dead, past graves that were enclosed within small Gothic chambers that seemed to be designed to keep the dead away from the reach of the living.

Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up

I.

It was Smack My Bitch Up that was playing as I read a particular section towards the beginning of Bank’s Excession where a drone, if I remember correctly, has to escape from a spaceship that is being taken over. And in one of those inexplicable coincidences the music and the action in the book fit each other perfectly. I could imagine a scene of the same on film with the music on the background and the drone running to escape out of the ship. There was a thrill of adrenaline as the music pumped the page into a 6 minute scene of pulse pounding action. And when the song entered the slow meditative section in the middle the action also entered a seemingly slow motion stage on the page where the drone glides through the air. Spielberg couldn’t have done it better on film. Incredible!

II.

Greece was sunny and bright, the very opposite of Auster’s grey and moody New York in City of Glass. As I ran from one end of Greece to another I seemed to mirror Quinn’s random wanderings through the dark side of New York. It was a wonderful contrast to look out of the window of the ferry and lose myself in the endless blue of the Aegean and a moment later lose myself in a world of a different sort between those pages, a world where wrong numbers led to postmodern detective adventures. And on the plane back as Quinn descended into a spiral of pointless obsession I felt the darkness outside the thick window reach in and for a second grip my heart.

III.

The wild rain and wind made me stay indoors in a bunk bed in a hostel near the Princess Street Gardens in the heart of old Edinburgh. There, Safran-Foer held my interest with his young protagonist dealing with post 9/11 trauma and his mute grandfather, witness to the Dresden firebombing. Reliving the firebombing lying on a hostel bed does not seem, at first glance, the most profound or sensitive thing to do. But what did surroundings matter when body and soul you are beside the narrator experiencing the endless horror. The shriek of the wind outside the window became the cries of people burnt and mutilated. As he ran through the smoking ruins of a glorious city, crazed and horrified, the rain outside seemed to fall in tandem to his running footsteps. The strength and precocity of the young boy instilled hope in a dark world taken over by low grey clouds and muted light.

I.

It was hot and humid. The sun beat down upon me like a bully intent on inflicting bodily harm. The heat was different from the dry heat of Hyderabadi summers I knew so well. In Nice, the heat had a burning quality. As I stood by the unfinished bus shelter waiting for the correct bus to take me near my hostel, after having gotten on the wrong bus, with my camera bag pushing down on one shoulder and the backpack weighing down my back, I could feel every inch of exposed skin burn. But it was a change. It was a change from the cold, wet, grey and miserable ‘summer’ which was on offer in Cologne. So even though I felt like complaining I did not. I just cursed my stupidity in not having taken the correct bus, continuously wiped the sweat off my brow and rejoiced silently when a refreshingly cool breeze off the sea blew across my face.

II.

The waves sounded different. They did not have the majestic power of the waves on the Bay of Bengal nor did they have the soothing synchronicity of the waves of the Arabian Sea. They seemed dispirited and mild. It was as if the Mediterranean herself was tired from the sun. But she made up for the lack of drama with the brilliant blue of her waters, an endless deep azure that seemed to hold infinite beauty in her jeweled tiara. The beach itself was stony, soft and rounded pebbles that could hurt and soothe at the same time depending on the way you walked, sat or slept on them. But they hardly troubled me. On the contrary, they soothed my tired feet by applying pressure on seemingly the correct points. I lay down and amid the cries of children playing in the water and the waves breaking; I read a book set in Ottoman Istanbul and dozed off by the white fence in the shade offered by the shrubs.

III.

She was slightly different from the way I had imagined her from her photos. She was as slim as she was in the photos but not as tall. The spectacles she wore were like a wall, distracting one’s gaze from her pretty face and hiding her big beautiful eyes. Her lips were as lovely as they were in the photos. I had not been wrong.

Alone in Kyoto - Air

The first view of anything below was when the clouds cleared briefly to reveal the grey and choppy waters of the North Sea far below. Small waves crowned by foam marked the surface of the huge stretch of water. I remember feeling a curious mixture of awe and fear. Awe at seeing so much water all the way to the horizon, unmarked by mankind. Fear for the sudden silly scenarios that invaded my mind. What if the engines of the plane failed and we plunged into the water below? What were the chances of survival? You get the picture.

The first thing I noticed about Edinburgh was the smell. The city had an all pervasive metallic smell of urine. Was something wrong with my nose? Was it because of the incessant rain washing the streets? Who knows? And yeah, the rain. It was a rainy, grey and blustery Edinburgh, with winds reaching perhaps 30-50 kmph, that I walked into. Yes, the famous Scottish weather was welcoming me in all its irritating splendor. My umbrella was broken by the wind within the first 30 minutes. I was battered and assaulted by the shrieking wind and the pin pricks of a million rain drops. Welcome to Scotland indeed!

Life as a doctoral student sucks. It doesn’t suck in the ordinary nobody loves me suckiness (does that word even exist?) level. No, it takes sucking (pardon my vulgar language) to a different level, a level where you are the lowest form of life in the world. I mean even bacteria have more fun. They are practically immortal. They have sex almost every 20 minutes. They can live on almost anything. And they have the coolest of names. Chlamydia. Nocardia. Vibrio. Contrast that with an average doctoral student. He is a mouse (although even a mouse would be offended to be compared to such a lowly being) like creature, most often with spectacles and irritating habits like trailing off in the middle of a sentence into vague silences. Their only sex appeal lies in their detailed knowledge about how two proteins fold exactly around each other. You get the picture.

What do such specimens of the human species do when a beautiful woman goes up to them and talks? To digress a little, such events do not happen in the real world. The probability of such an event happening, according to knowledgeable sources in the Mathematics department across the road, is 0.00. In fact, apparently, this is the only known event in the world that has such a perfect probability of not happening! So let me add the rider, in a hypothetical world, to the above scenario.

Continuing with the hypothetical situation, the said graduate student will first start perspiring. His pulse will be racing because hormones are being dumped into his blood, leading to rapid changes in his metabolic profile. He starts blushing. When he opens his mouth, either no sound comes out or else mumbled and garbled words pour out, which of course do not make any sense. If that beautiful woman still has any sense she would leave. However, if she is one of those rare beings, who for some insane reason either enjoy tormenting such innocent geeks, feel pity for such lowly life forms or genuinely like disheveled and bespectacled nerds, she will stay and talk further.

Say you have got time on your hands, what do you do? Do you go to the museum you have been meaning to properly visit for the past three years and take in Dali’s genius one more time? Or do you sling a couple of cameras over your shoulder and go shooting people shoveling ice cream down their throats, yellow leaves drifting here and there according to the whims of metallic monsters and woods echoing to the incoming silence of winter? Or do you sit, or rather lie down, on your ass and try to hear the subsonic swoosh that the slow passage of a day makes? I have become a master at attempting the last one.

There is so much to do but then again there is a certain beauty in doing nothing. Post-processing old photos, watching those favorite films yet again, checking mail and rss feeds a billion times per day, going over your (unchanging) site stats with a fine comb, reading e newspapers and missing lazy Sundays back home when everything smelt different. Back then, a Sunday had this special smell. The smell of laziness. The smell of newsprint and fresh coffee. The smell of delicious breakfast being prepared in the kitchen. Where have those times gone?

The passage through immigration feels like as if I’ve crawled through dirt. The tone of the questions asked, the officer putting you under pressure so that you might either lose your temper or make a mistake. It takes away the fun from traveling, this trial of words. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth and your skin begins to feel dirty. You feel as if you have done some wrong by coming to this country. The chance of birth determines the ease of arrival in the developed world.

In the dim neon light everyone seems sulky. Grim looks as people hurry with little molehills of suitcases; black, brown, red and green. A limo turns up suddenly. It feels as out of place as an elephant would on the streets of New York. White coaches turn into the bays and people scurry like disturbed ants. The wind carries with it the smell of rain, a cold and unhappy rain.

The bus arrives. It’s arrival is greeted by a bugle of horns from the other vehicles hunkered down in their respective bays. I wonder at all the journeys these buses might have undertaken. How many stories can they tell for every kilometer they have traveled? What horrible accidents have they witnessed? How many roads have their tires tasted? Does the petrol they drink ever leave behind a memory? A memory of ignition and constant burn?

The world is dark around me with only a small light overhead to guide my fingers. The road stretches on to the blind horizon like a coiled snake waiting to strike at those who threaten it.

I like riding through cities after midnight. There is a certain beauty to urban places when the roads are all but empty and the world rests in the shadows. The quiet wash of endless neon lights fighting the all encroaching darkness. The sensual swoosh of an occasional car passing by. The melancholic moodiness of roads stretching to the horizon. The wind surfing through my hair. The sudden rush of adrenalin racing through my veins in tune with the acceleration of the metal beast underneath.

Billboards, shining like beacons, scream overhead their neat middle-class dreams. The soft underbelly of the city is alive and kicking. The radium jackets of the night sweepers flashing here and there. A police car on the horizon on a routine patrol. And the utter stillness. It is this stillness of the night that makes me roam the roads. The stillness of a night at peace with itself. The stillness of sudden inactivity, a lull awaiting new chaos on the morn. The time between 12 am and 5 am trickles away like a light shower on a summer evening.

I slip in and out of unfamiliar streets, hit the big roads and then disappear into forgotten side-streets. I overtake the occasional vehicle on the road with supreme ease. As I pass a vehicle the guy in/on it nods at me. A polite acknowledgement of another person seeking the same moonshine. I look up. Ah, there he is! The guardian of the night in all his pockmarked handsomeness. His delicate light hiding more than it reveals.

But I saved the best for the last. The addas, the places only special locals know. The joints where lonely poets go to roost and welcome dawn with a hot cup of sweet chai.

A tropical sun, but without the burning heat, has come calling. I’m taken back in time to hot afternoons; of sweat drenched foreheads, of delicious mangoes, of the sudden stillness after regular electricity cuts, and the beautiful feeling of cool air on hot skin. I breathe in the thick memories of summers bygone, intoxicating in their all-enveloping glory.

Ah, I remember that strand; a sultry Sunday when I roamed through the book market in Abids and found, to my utter delight, that my doors of perception had been cleansed. Here is another memory, of sitting for an entrance exam on a ferocious afternoon in May, half suffering from sunstroke, the questions looming up from the paper and forming surreal shapes. Streaking through my senses, a cool summer morning, the way she felt in my arms among the rocks, the dream like union of hesitant lips, the heavenly vision of half-naked flesh below me and then walking back hand in hand, hesitating to open my mouth and shatter the unbelievable dream. Here is another fragment; a day spent tramping through the hot roads of Pune but with the welcome relief of frequent Neera drinking stops. Suddenly, I taste that chilled beer again traveling down my throat, cold and exciting in a sleepy Delhi fast food joint. And how can I forget the gentle lapping of the waves as I sat on the beach and consumed a book on a lazy Goan afternoon.

I remember escaping in to the icy relief of air-conditioned libraries, of the air hanging still like a guillotine at 1 pm, of mid day roads swept clean of people, of juicy watermelons melting in my mouth, of sweaty bed sheets and howling Westerly winds. An endless succession of summers unfolding behind my eyes.

And there are words as well, from half-forgotten conversations, unwaveringly similar, time after time.

“Hey, who is getting the snacks?”

“Don’t you dare forget the green peas, fucker!”

“Oh boy this is life! Chilled beer hitting the spot, tasty snacks and the whole evening stretching away before you like an empty runway.”

“…Julio and Romiet…shit…damn…I mean Romeo and Juliet of course…cut it out you dickheads, I’m not drunk!”

A strange feeling of disconnect
From me and you and everyone
The blinking cursor
Waiting for words
To fill up the empty whiteness

Fingers curved with expectancy
Eyes straining to take a different look
At feelings unfamiliar
And thoughts unknown

The above middling lines are the result of watching a quirky and low key film, ‘Me and You and Everyone We Know’, a film about intimacy and disconnect in the digital age. Other than the fact that I’m smitten by the director and lead actress of the film, Miranda July (such beautiful eyes she has), the film has left behind strange feelings in my heart. I don’t know if you will understand but I feel like hugging someone I love and feel the warmth flowing between our two hearts. It is as if there is something unsaid in me that needs to be said. The lines at the beginning succeed only a little in encapsulating that feeling. Is it because the film has affected me on more levels than I know? Is it because parts of it reflect my views about intimacy? Or is it solely because Miranda July reminds me so much of a special person from my past?

In this age of virtual bonding and fleeting love I wonder how far apart we are moving from each other. Humans are social animals, we need to touch, feel, hug and kiss to stay connected with our feelings. Otherwise we start to fold into ourselves like touch-me-nots. They say technology connects but I wonder…I think it connects but only with increasing superficiality. The telephone was the first step in that separation…now we do not even have time to call…the warmth of the human voice has been replaced by the utter (un)feeling of chatting.

Where are the conversations we used to have in the moonlight, waiting for dawn? Where are the feelings that fell like dew between two human beings? Where are the unspoken words that took birth as we watched the gentle glow of dawn, holding hands after staying awake the whole night, talking about you and me and everything? Where are the sleepy smiles of midnight?

Fragments of time pass before my eyes. Their facets reflecting memories of a quarter century. Times of laughter, times of experience, times of deep friendship and times of loss.

Scene I

That hopelessly innocent time. Copying in math exams. Excursion to Vizag. Standing in awe in the Borra caves. Frolicking on the beach. Sitting in the last bench day-dreaming through boring classes. Fantasizing beautiful teachers. Going on stage in front of the whole school to receive quizzing prizes. Representing city in Calcutta. The big disappointment there. Afternoon breaks. Smell of freshly starched uniform. The opposite sex. Last day in school.

Scene II
Reality shock. Breakdown. Medical cows and engineering sheep. New look. Changed outlook. Forgotten sanity. Coming up for air. Brilliant decision.

Scene III

Wild days. Nizam’s. High hopes. Whiling away time under the shed. Endless discussions. Quizzing. Bunking classes. Classic Rock. Basketball. Mind-bending. Psychedelia. Setting records on the rock. Parties at parent-less homes. New friends. Discos. Getting pissed 20 times a month. Abandonded farmhouses and the police. Mood indigo and rock concerts. Romance and traveling. Drowning in music. Forgotten academics. World Cinema. Camping and trekking. Frying papads over campfires. French classes at the Alliance. Culture vulturing. Down and out in Coorg.

Scene IV

Bitter-sweet times. HCU. Alien classmates. Brief affair. Broadening horizons. Caste politics. Chinky love. Beautiful campus. Mushroom rocks and Peacock lakes. Asian Social Forum. Globalisation. No Logo. Academic pressure. Loneliness. Career doubts. DJ nights.

Scene V
A flight to a new world. Great expectations. Spectacular disillusionment. Solitary traveller. International junkie. Virtual love. Science and Art. The word. The image. A bitter relationship. Solitude. Superficiality. Selective conscience. Material desire. Money and pleasure. Fears and tears. Make or break. The big Doubt. The great Decision. The big Hope.

…and the scenes just go on. Nostalgia colors equally bitter and sweet memories in sepia tones.

Can you talk in images? Can you paint the colors of my land in three dimensions? Can you evoke the smells of forgotten memories? Can you differentiate the manifold tastes of an entire ethos? Swades, the film, did and does that for me. Arguably, the best film to come out of the Indian mainstream cinema in recent times.

From the beginning to the end, it is filled with profound dialogues, scintillating and soulful music, brilliant performances and vibrant cinematography. It brings to life the true India; the many inconsistencies, the innumerable inequities, the uncountable hurdles, the heartbreaking poverty, the heady feelings, the wonderful warmth, the sensual colors, and the sense of being and belonging.

Each time I see it, it is as if I’m seeing it for the first time. Each time I share the joy, sadness, love and laughter of real people in a real film. Each time I miss the many things I’ve left behind. Each time I yearn for a land that is far away yet makes my heart shed a thousand tears. Each time I remember what I gave up in search for material want and worldly knowledge.

Almost every frame is a study in perfection. The film is full of iconic images, the boy selling water at the train station, the lead character traveling in a boat, the language of love spoken solely through the eyes of the actor and actress, the electric bulb lighting up the face of a half-blind woman, the nostalgia for one’s own country told through one heart wrenchingly beautiful and powerful song, and how can one forget the sheer beauty of the music lending an extra dimension to all the scenes mentioned and more.

Every Indian should, no, must see this film. And not just an Indian, anyone wanting to experience what it is to be an Indian and what she is at the core needs to see it. Don’t give in to the clichés of cows, beggars and poverty. India is justly more than the sum of these parts. India is indeed the crucible of all civilization as someone rightly said.

This film is worthy of a hundred awards. I bow to the courage of the director to make such a film, a film which did not appeal to an audience deadened into accepting overacted melodramas, disconnected dramas and unrealistic love stories. I salute the near genius of the music director and I congratulate the visual poetry of the cinematographer and production designer. I hope this will bring in a revolution in mainstream films and mark the beginning of an alternate approach to film making. A style of film making that revels in telling a story and yet does not shirk from pointing out the truth, disguising hard reality or including a message.

We need more people like Mohan Bhargava. We need more dreamers like him who have the courage to fashion a new India, an India worthy of admiration, an India leading the world again, taking her rightful space at civilization’s forefront. To paraphrase Rabindranath Tagore, let her become a teardrop on the cheek of eternity.