Syntantical.Memory.

We can say our goodbyes in haste.

We need not wet our conscience with tears

That bind the collective histories of jazzy airports and sleepy platforms,

Into a neat string of rosemary beads ,

Or a box full of old sepia-hued polaroid pictures.

The only kind that we don’t share on Instagram.

The ones for ourselves.

For sultry afternoons. For long nights.

 

We can let our fears of a trivial loss ,

diffuse gradually over a few calm years of mellow sunshine.

We can shake hands and depart quickly.

Or we can hug like lovers, as long as we are determined to not let

The raw smell of familiar skin,

Stroke the stranger in our head.

 

We can choose to forget, one day at a time, or all at once.

We can choose to create a syntactical memory.

Of a single moment of looking back,

At the clear glass of the Departure Terminal.

(slender hands in a tub of popcorn – icecream stains on a beige couch-

prickly grass – summer dresses- paperclips- empty cigarette packs on the floor

– scratches and burns- silence – domes – the uncanny sound of a lie-

the familiar sound of bones breaking – bleeding gums-bleeding hearts)

 

We can then, choose to turn back and walk away quickly.

We can say our goodbyes in haste.

 

Tu kisi rail si guzarti hai: A review of Masaan

“Tu kisi rail ki tarah guzarti hai. Main kisi pul sa thartharata hun.”

Would you say that while cruising on the Ganga after watching your beloved burn to ashes on a pyre? Would you return to a normal life with a daughter caught having sex in a shady Allahabad hotel with her boyfriend? If not, its time you watched Masaan.

Masaan is one of those movies that make you research the director immediately after you are done watching the film. It’s like you need to figure out the context for such perspectives. He could be a small-town Benaras guy. He could be a seasoned movie school pass-out. He could be living his life with the movie, or could be faking it. Either way, he is bloody brilliant.

To be very fair, Masaan is a movie of rare treatment. It does not tell stories that have never been told before. It just tells them with a significantly unique perspective, fortunately one that’s neither too optimistic nor too pessimistic. Over and above that, it adds context to those stories, something we almost always overdo/underdo in Bollywood – simply by putting out the daily lives in the aftermath of both trauma and euphoria, in the lives of the protagonist as well as the supporting characters. What I like best is that the movie has barely five minutes worth of crying/weeping/howling screen time in the middle of two hours of knee-deep tragedy. Now that is refreshing.

The story is based around the burning ghaats of Benaras, where Deepak, son of a professional corpse burner (dom), is the only one in the family to have attended university, and is naturally the family’s only hope of escaping a life of breaking skulls of burnt bodies by the Ganga. Somewhere in the vicinity, young Devi , played by Richa Chaddha, decides to take the big leap by meeting her boyfriend in a shady hotel in Allahabad, and gets caught in a police raid. While she is brought back home to her old father at the cost of a huge blackmail sum to be paid in the next few months, Deepak falls in love with upper caste Shalu, determined to land a nice job and marry her, escaping the menial life his family has been enduring for decades. Director Neeraj Ghaywan delicately weaves both the gradual return of normalcy in Devi’s family and the homely warmth of a familiar small-town Indian romance, leaving you comfortable for a while. This comfort soon goes for a toss when Deepak wakes up one night to find the dead body of his beloved in the burning ghaat, and loses more than his sanity. At this point, cinematographer Avinash Arun’s sheer brilliance comes into play. He plays with Deepak’s pain and Devi’s quiet courage like a genius, aided by songs that have unforgettable lyrics. Say ‘Mann kasturi re. Jag dasturi re.Baat hui na poori re’

To sum it up, Masaan won two awards at Cannes (FIPRESCI International Jury of Film Critics Prize and Promising Future in the Un Certain Regard Section) for a reason. In fact, I would say too many reasons. There is barely anything amiss in the film. It is tough to pack romance and death and stigma and satire in one box, and ensure that they are neither compartmentalized nor superimposed. Masaan is a particularly vehement recommendation. If you haven’t, go watch it today.