Interpreter of Maladies
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
about SWADES and my self-realizationsI watched SWADES around a week back. Both of us, as mere audience in a jam packed hall, were quiet throughout the movie. I tried to hum with the songs but the impact of the motion picture was stupendous enough to mum my musical meanderings.
As a person, I always run from responsibilities. I am the kind of frog which would love to stay in its well, knowing there's a bad bad world outside, but who cares !!! But this was different. I could recognize the same helplessness that I feel when I look at a child selling water for 25 paise a glass on railway stations. I could also sense the humiliation when I see a malnutritioned child, his impoverished family. I can stand on my high pedestal and proclaim the nuances of physics, maths and chemistry to an elite crowd but has my science been able to help those, that need it the most ?
SWADES does not make you acknowledge those realities but it helps you re-recognize the facts that you have shied away from. I could understand Shahrukh's falling in love with the simplicity of the village. After all who hates the picturesque and scenic beauty of India? The filmmakers love it, so do the NRIs. But India isn't only this. This is only a small fraction of India. The beauty of Kasauli, the backwaters of Kerela, the waterbanks of Rishikesh...no this isn't what India is. It is time people rise up to see that India is also uneducated, underemployed and impoverished to the core. As Shahrukh's character says in the movie 'I dont believe we are a great country'. Yes, we are great because we have a rich culture, a proud heritage, a diverse geography and a unique sould. But we are the unluckiest people on the globe, because we have never utilized our own greatness. We have never repsected our own heritage, except to flaunt it in front of foreign tourists. We have never tapped into the problems and have only harked about greatness, greatness, even more greatness.
Saying this, I also realize, I have been an equal contributor to this mirth. How have I, an educated, well paid, Indian citizen, helped the masses. Forget the villages, have I ever done anything for the street urchins in my own city. The answer is an obvious no. There are many people who belong to the same sect as mine. Who know everything, have resources to help but they dont because, they have more pressing matters to cater to.
I made a start only a little time back. I started doing my own bit to educate the underprivileged kids. Telling them what matters in life; to count money; to understand road signs; to sign their name; to open a bank account. My engineering doesn't come straight into the picture but yes, I feel a strange fulfillment by doing this. I have somehow discovered my soul in the process, unearthed the reasons for my own existence. But I know this is not enough. A certain me can't change the world. It has to be a bigger contribution, more meaningful, more emphatic.
SWADES is not a remarkable movie. But it is a movie which would mean a lot for sleeping beauties like me-people who have deliberately lulled their own conscience to sleep because they have more pressing matters on hand. It is a wake up call and it is high time that people like us pay heed to it.
