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Tobey Maguire, Akshay Kumar and Mani Ratnam


If someone could write a code to find the frequently used word by me in the past few months, a word that would feature itself in top five would be Dahej. The place I look for reasons to get out of even if it means travelling forty kilometers to watch a film. In an overly crowded, fitting people in corners keeping the doors open travelling away from the ‘Mein aur Meri Tanhaayi’, that is the isolated experience of Dahej. Plugging in, listening to some Ed Sheeran- looking around and wondering, what am I doing here? As I try to adjust into my seat. The loud tracks of Badshah in the vans do distract me, the spits of pan do distract me but in this chaos of our lives, where I can’t even hear my voice- distraction is a routine, is a form of concentration. Then we arrive, to a land where Uber is only an app on your phone and not a reality. The weekend kicks off- Boss Baby. Easiest getaway from the world possible- The parallels it draws about being an adult from a baby’s perspective and about being a baby from an adult, the way it’s able to strike a thought in your head in the most subtle way possible. The imaginative scales it tries to explore in a mere one and half hours is just a spectacle, you cannot miss. When it ended like the way it did in an Imtiaz Ali film, I was totally wooed. The way he runs around, creating a ‘Tamasha’ in the corporate world, looks like that’s how I’ll get out of Dahej too. Then we walk out just to get another ticket of Naam Shabana. A spy film. Action Film. Good Film.South Indian Film. Surprised by Pruthviraj. Akshay Kumar, shows up. Not my kind of film. But a Good Film. And then the film, I actually had planned to see.

Kaatru Veliyidai, by Mani Ratnam- He creates art on screen, it’s like magic the way he takes you to Srinagar into the lives of the characters, he’s written. Their flaws, their habits, their stories that’s made them who they’re and the way it has led to the situations they’re in. The way the conversations flow, the way the barrier between them breaks even if it’s portrayed just using a door of a cupboard, the way they fly over the Himalayas and whisper to each other, in the dreading cold, in the heart of Ladakh- it’s all various strokes of colours that you witness in a celebration of all the emotions accompanied by the scores and melodies of AR Rahman. Exploring their journeys in the midst of war, the survival to see the one reason to live and love- whatever I’ve watched of Mani Ratnam’s filmography, I’ve been able to find a reason to love them all. Pallavi Anupallavi to Nayakan to Iruvar to O Kadhal Kanmani to the one I was just talking about. The reason for the love of the word Kadhal. It’s all about the journey. And then the journey back to Dahej in the darkness, pondering again in the bus back to where it all began.Tobey
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