We all know matters of the heart are sensitively etched and when the clash between head and heart occurs, there is no sweet flag of victory that is waved at full mast after the clouds have cleared. It's quite a dichotomy then that our emotions are often in control at the most unimaginably turbulent times and our ships sail ahead. We are raised and nurtured to be patient, diplomatic and sensible at all times even when conflicts preen and prance all around us. To speak of myself, I know the decorum and disciplined adherence to maintain decency and well-informed dignity has made me repress my curdled anger at too many personal junctures; but in the end conflict resolution settles for a quiet resolve and all that bitter infighting and desire to answer back with full to the brim verbal vindictiveness goes.
For the zealous idea to be aggressive and cold is a heightened shield to guard ourselves against the world and falls in a minority trap. The essence of our struggles lies in the grace we invest in our life even when we fall down. That way, the quest of the faraway voyager is a bittersweet one; reminiscences and mental wonders are as many splendoured as ripples on water and the anticipation of coming to shore composes songs of the spirit that find words to be vessels of unwavering strength.
Anupama, the movie, and its protagonist evinces one such personage. Her silences break through walls in her song of the spirit and the heart pulsates with many unrequited strains of fate. This stretch of emotions is never-ending and through life we carry the belated designation of travellers on the seven seas of life's pleasures and pains. The safe harbour still eludes us and the journey is our anchor. So how does the verdant heart, that is never truly separated from nature's omnipresent easel of creation and recreation, find colours of joy in a canvas where distance has been recited as a milestone? The past has flooded our shores and made our ships capsize. That is the dilemma of the soul attempting to ward off cold tempers of the world and the point of profound depth at the heart of the song I will talk about here in this essay. Again the meticulous magic of songwriting and musical properties occupy first position.
While the previous essay dealt with the distance and personal units of individuals through the theme of circumstantial migration, here it is deep-rooted more openly in nature than the cloistered panoramas of spaces in Gaman. However, the personal becomes universal and private moorings have an enduring personal appeal here. The trajectory of isolation is more fully expressed.
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KUCH DIL NE KAHA( the heart said something) is a classic composition of timeless beauty from the 1966 Indian film Anupama( incomparable). The movie and its musical expertise have quite handsomely lived up to its title. This all time great is composed by Hemant Kumar, with the lyrics penned by a stellar wordsmith of Kaifi Azmi's calibre. Owing to its place in the pantheon of cinema's Golden Age, the central refrain designs a confessional where the heart holds sway over the conscience (and it's something the present era has lost in a haze of materialistic self-congratulatory stands). There's a serenity in the measured artistic touch and aromatic brew of simplicity from yesteryears that never ceases to impress us. This work of art joins its company.
As a cinematic piece, Anupama is a richly complex examination of bonds within a family and needs to be understood in order to fully assess the song's juxtaposition in the screenplay where lead protagonist Uma( legend Sharmila Tagore) articulates her self in isolation, in the presence of nature. It's about a garden that has been left untended by its keeper for years on end. Personal lapses and mental blocks, that irrationally equates tragedy and loss with a particular person, has made the gardener look at the pruned rose in his nursery as an image adjunct with its thorns, both literally and symbolically. The rose, though in youthful bloom, as reflected in the character's name Uma( dawn) has withered on the inside and only makes its surface appearance to the world as manifested in the song's lucid lyrical palette. The dawn of reality informs her worldview, with a tacit point I could read about patrilineal dynamics and a woman's gagged voice. In Anupama, a sensitive though embittered man( Tarun Bose) hands down neglect and rueful distance to his only child, the daughter named Uma as his beloved wife's death from childbirth has altered his outlook. In his tragic prism, his child bears the onus of responsibility by separating him from his equal. As a forty year old man who had opened himself to profundity of an endearing relationship, his wife's physical and now omnipresent aura looms large as an ideal of interpersonal unity, to the extent that her untimely death has made him sever ties with her ( and their)surviving gift. Its complex interplay of innate love expressed to her in a haze of alcoholic influence and hatred in legible states paints a disorderly, poignant portrait of loneliness creeping up on them individually and collectively while winding up as a constant in strained blood relations. The space of the mind that censures reason and makes its own little clearing in the bush is conveyed well here.
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A LETTERED SOUL: REFLECTIONS ON LITERATURE, CINEMA AND CULTURE .
Literatura FaktuI have often wondered about the very curdled natures of our opinions so much so that the perch of imagination simply becomes a bystanding abstraction and real thoughts of genuine merit slip between the fingers. That is a human tendency, to beat arou...
