Only when you are gone.

Pyaasa (Hindi, Thirst; 1957)

Director, Actor: Guru Dutt

Legend tells of a certain wanderer who kept looking for the meaning of life in all the places. He meditated for hours, walked into the wilderness, exposing himself to the element of Nature and trying to seek answers in cemeteries and crematoriums. He would rub ash from funeral pyres to humiliate himself and consume the human flesh of the dead to crush his ego.

We can just imagine the treatment he would have received as a living being. Shunned by the public for his shabby appearance and bizarre behaviour, the general public would be mocking him and shrugging their heads in disproval.

This guy, Siva, must have found wisdom in his endeavour and started voicing his finds far and wide everywhere he went. Only after his death, people began appreciating his prophetic pearls of wisdom bit by bit. Before we knew it, the whole narrative started to make sense, and the rest, they say, is history.

Fast forward to the present, he is positioned amongst the highest of the pantheon of our existence. He is revered as God for his keen interest in seeking the truth. That is the problem with people. We never appreciate people in their lifetime. In fact, we vilify them and accuse them of many things because they dare to question the status quo. They dare to rock the boat.

In a sense, this 1957 movie takes a swap at society at large. It is post-Independent India. Times were hard, and the profit-hungry world had no time for writers and poets. Doing a 'proper' paying job is what everyone is seeking. In their books, writing poems is not a real job. Against this background, the hero, a natural poet, is admonished for being jobless. He is homeless and finds solace in the company of a prostitute. He meets his ex-college sweetheart, who is now married to a publisher. They had departed ways earlier in not the most pleasant circumstances.

Guru Dutt and Mala Sinha

The publisher husband befriends the poet and employs him as his assistant. He promises to publish his work. Even though the publisher enjoys the poems in the company of a writer's group, it never gets published. The prostitute, in the meanwhile, falls for the poet. And his ex-girlfriend, too, tries to rekindle their old flame.


In a bizarre twist of events and mistaken identity, the poet is mistakenly thought dead. The forlorn prostitute gets the poems published to rave reviews. The poet, who re-appear after a stint in a mental hospital, comes to claim authorship of the poems. The general public refuses to believe that a madman could have penned all that poetic lines. The poet and the prostitute leave to start a new life.

Only when the ex-flame leaves for a more affluent man and after spending time in a loveless marriage does she realise the poet's worth. Similarly, the general public vehemently refuses the poet's ability when he appears in flesh and blood.

Labelled as one of the 100s best Hindi films of all time, this movie is rife with many symbolism or 'easter eggs' as they call it. In one epic scene, the protagonist appears at an auditorium door with outstretched hands against a light beam. Ultimately, it seems like a silhouette of Jesus Christ on a crucifix. In his subtle way, the filmmaker hints that the poet had 'resurrected' from his death.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

People will keep saying something!

Sanju (Hindi; 2018)

That is the problem with modern living. With the plethora of information at their disposal, people think they have everything they need to know at their fingertips. With this knowledge, they believe they are in the best place to make a balanced decision. True, in most situations, the various angles of looking at an issue are laid bare for scrutiny. In other cases, however, the news is generated to keep the writer relevant, so that the publications stay forever in the limelight.

A case in hand is the use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in the management of patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 infections. Keyboard warriors who before this did not know the difference between a bacteria and virus can now rattle out the pros and cons of each modality of treatment. Equipped with the little knowledge gained from anecdotal studies, they are quick to bring down institutions that have been handing down management guidelines for decades.

They immerse in meaningless banters over social media trying to prove a well-organised world conspiracy to dupe the human race. No matter how much counter-arguments are raised against their assertions, they stand steadfast defending their conviction as if that is their last mission on Earth. As if their ranting is going to change the way how doctors are going to manage their patients. Doctors and nurses have to follow specific clinical practice guidelines when they attend to their patients.  They cannot just modify their approach based on what they had read on WhatsApp.

This movie is a biopic of famous Bollywood actor, Sanjay Dutt, son of Bollywood's thespians, Sunil Dutt and Nargis. Growing up under the spotlight of prowling reporters and parental expectations must have been hard for a young Sanjay Dutt. All the affluence, wrong friends, and partying could not have helped either. Early in his life, he was already trapped in the world various addictive intoxicants - he ticks all the boxes in a questionnaire in a rehab clinic! And the number of girls in his life - some with tragic ends. I was surprised that the often his tabloid-gossiped affairs with Madhuri Dixit was not mentioned in the film.

The show focuses primarily on his substance abuse, his relationship with his parents, and his protracted brush with the law. It was around the time of widespread riots surrounding the destruction of the Babri mosque in 1993. Sanjay Dutt was charged under the  Terror and Destructive Prevention Act for possessing firearms which were linked to the underworld networks and the Bombay bombing. Ranbir Kapoor gives a sterling performance of Dutt, complete with gait, mannerisms and tics.

The presentation may be viewed as a public relation attempt to paint Dutt's  (?whitewashed) version of the turn of events surrounding his arrest. He blames the fiasco solely on the press. He accused the media of accusing in a subtle way and insinuating in the most creative way to influence public opinions. Every day, to keep the gap between paid advertisements relevant, the media moguls employ cocksure self-proclaimed super experts on the most mundane field of expertise to rant repeatedly their undisputable error-free decrees on cable channels in an undisguised stage called trial-by-media. Before the respective lawyers register their cases with the courts, the public opinion is already made. They are the judge and jury. When they become the executioners, that is when all hell will break loose.

The take-home message here is that people will always keep saying something. It is just noise. We should not take it personally. They are just feeding the public's appetite. It is their rice bowl. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.