Walking down to the parking lot on Friday evening, I met one of my colleagues who asked me, ‘Any plans for the weekend ?’ I started replying by saying, ‘Now that my son has left for grad school we are truly empty nesters…’ Before I could finish my sentence she said, ‘So what do you do now that it is just the two of you ? Frolic around naked the whole day ?’
My dear colleague has some illusions about sensuosness thirty five years into a marriage. For most of the weekend, Lakshmi is upstairs working her way through some tax journal, as the North American tax season approaches, and, I am doing YouTube searches for carnatic music on my computer in the study. This morning I cooked and before I did so bharya priyaa reminded me that there were only the two of us around, and, I should adjust portions accordingly. The rest of the day is taken up with her asking me to do something or the other which I heartily resist.
Of course, thanks to MSN and Yahoo we spend quite a bit of time video chatting with my son, who has some interesting theories about girls at his grad school. Given the supply-demand ratio, heavily weighted in favour of the girls, he feels that they are ‘over priced.’ Two hours spent in the company of girls in Canada would fetch better returns than with those at grad school, he says. My wife is happy at this economic model her son has developed…
Anyway, dear colleague, just wanted you to know that empty nesters do not spend the whole day frolicking around naked…by the time you reach empty nester stage, you have no desire to see any family member naked…
So, us empty nesters decided to watch a Hindi movie, ‘Halla Bol’ yesterday. The Indian lady at the Indian store where we buy our groceries and pick up movies had strongly recommended this movie as one that ‘your missus’ will like. My normal attention span for any movie, Hollywood, Bollywood or Kollywood is about 15 minutes before the snores take over…I sat through this movie, full three hours, and that is one indicator of how it impacted me…
Then, as I slept last night, fears buried deep in the sub conscious surfaced in my dreams. I remembered driving through Mumbai’s Eastern Express Highway some twenty five years ago, at 3am in the morning to be in the office before a bandh started, and, the fear that one would be stopped by marauding bandh protagonists and beaten up…the deep fear that memory churned up in the pit of the stomach is still there…similarly the deep fear that almost resulted in voiding one's self (aka shitting in the pants) as one walked through twenty deep picket lines of factory workers on strike, shouting and jeering at you, 'Management', not knowing whether a bulb of acid would hit me in the face...even today I check my pants when the memory surfaces...
Halla Bol as the name and its sound signify is all about protest and violence of this stomach churning, bowel loosening variety…the story captures the traumatic struggle of Sameer Khan, nee Ashfaque Khan, first as he struggles to reach the top rungs of success in the film world, then his alienation from the human world around him, and, then his trauma as he fights to reconcile his success with his human world…
There are several current Indian real life incidents of today’s news stories that find their reflection in the story…however, the violence that is captured is not restricted to India…that is the same violence that recently took the life of an innocent bystander as he walked down Yonge Street in Toronto last week…in the wrong place at the wrong time…and the same violence that I saw as I ducked one night sitting at New York’s Penn Station when suddenly shots rang out…could have been me in the wrong place at the wrong time...and the fear that grips me every time I get into the tube in London on a Saturday afternoon and see a bunch of soccer fans making their way into the same compartment...
Pankaj Kapoor in the role of Sidhu, the reformed dacoit performs best. There is a real life tinge to his reformation, as in the scene where he wields the sword once again, and, then takes his victims to the hospital…
Ajay Devgun is good…he is able to bring realism to his anger…and the scene that stays in my mind…full of anger and violence of the most potent kind…when he urinates on the Persian rug of a big time political bigwig’s house as the bigwig goes to fetch him Scotch…’yeh desi daar hai, Ganpatrao’ he says. Difficult to translate that statement into English except that to say that it is a play on Scotch and potent country liquor. However it fills one with disgust and that is what the filmmaker wants to accomplish…
The film makes us conscious of the violence we live in, such an integral part of our lives…not just in India…but, essentially everywhere in the world…something we cannot wish away with all the piousness…no mantra will help you control your bowels as you walk through picket lines for your bread...and as I became aware of it, the deeply buried fears of my own from days gone by surfaced…watch the movie and see what surfaces for you…
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2 comments:
The first half of this post about "empty-nesters" was hilarious.
In this politically super-correct age, my first reaction was "your coworker said what???" - but it had me in splits for a while.
Now I know what life is truly like after the kids have flown the coop.
:-)
- Ram
Yes. That question did concern me, Ram. Of course, you will notice that it was a woman co-worker who asked me. Things would have been different if I had asked the question...
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