Color Me Saffron

Life is so pleasantly strange, it surprises you every moment, it makes u fall in love with it by giving the boring life so many twists and tangles that untangling yourself is fun and mystery enough.I dont know whats wrong with me that i get so much affected by movies and make me reflect and interospect on these. But I think am any director's dream audiance, who sees the movie once in a theater and then thousand times in his head and then picks up either the pen or the computer to type in what he thinks. Today was another of this rare days and to give a understatement, am affected by what I saw in "Rang de Basanti", a tale of ubiquitos confused youth finally responding to the call of their heart.

The movie made me reflect, how close we are to the characters so ably potrayed, like DJ we dread to face the world and go along following the crowd just living our mundane existance.How much we are like karan, always trying to escape the difficulties, cribbing about everything but not taking any actions to fix it right.How similar are we to aslam, questioning the various ties that are binding us, ties like religion, caste and language.How similar are we to the character atul kulkarni plays, going along with the system, but with ideals and the zeal to make the country a better place. May be we are not simply similar to them may be we are just a amalgation of all these characters.Maybe we are all of them togather, a man with five faces, a man with five people hidden within him, may be it is not Sue who is in search of her revolutionaries, it is us who are searching for ourself. Maybe the movie is all about one persons search for his existance, one person trying to find out what he stands for, maybe it is about one person discovering himself again and again and again.

I cannot point at a portion of the movie which i can identify as things I like. Maybe I liked the movie because I could identify with the cahracters of the movie. I remember the thousand midnight discussions we had in the hostel about what we can do for the country, why we cannot chane the system to make the India that we all can be proud of, why cannot we make a India that our founders had dreamt of, why cannot we make a India that people like azad, Bhagat singh, bismil, ahfaquallah khan and rajguru died for. The thought of a corrupt India make me cringe with shame, it seems sometimes that we are bathing with the tears of these individuals who shed their blood dreaming of eden, an oasis of life but what got created a dark deasert with lizards and venomous snakes with cactii all round which oozed blood when cut upon.

Now i come to a point where I keep on asking, will our life course take the path of the movie too. Will we too come out of our slumber when we are raised from our stupor by something drastic may be a death which needs us to sit back and then try to fix things right. The movie is so correct, we may keep on talking about a revlution but unless we stand up, the words will never be on the canvas. I think it is high time we stand up, take on the establisment and the first step would be to stop being corrupt ourself. Maybe the first thing an individual can do is take a pledge to be honest and not corrupt, maybe a single honest person can turn up the world a better place to live in. Big words, but again I am an Indian, and as vivekananda had once said we Indians as a race belive in talking and not in doing.

The movie is real in some sense when u see instances of your life played on the screen. I was surprised when I saw tears in aamir khan's eyes with the question, Why Ajay?, he never did a bad thing in life, he did everything that a dutiful son, a good friend and a loyal patriot would do, then why him, why did it have to happen to sonia, I have seen this happen, I have had tears in my eyes with similar questions on my lips and i have heard the wilderness whisper, It is to serve a purpose. May be the sole purpose of the flight commanders life was to awaken the five youths. As Sue pointed out, Dj may be physically sleeping but he had just awaken.

Personally, I am still asleep waiting to wake up with a jolt from my deep stupor. There is no escaping the fact, I will have to wake up, or is it that I am already awake but am closing my eyes, feigning sleep to avoid the world and escape the world, but like I said before, u never know when life surprises you.But after I wake up, and figting my battle go back to sleep, I just wish to meet my end, not screaming, not in silence but with smile on my lips, hope in my heart and laughter all around . Amen