Remember the smile when he first whispered “I love you” while he held you close? Remember the first time you heard your animated teachers singing twinkle twinkle little star? Remember the times you spent hours downloading your favourite songs just to shut your lights and listen while you lay in bed? Remember how you fought with mamma to wear that green dress that daddy gave you on a birthday? Remember the cappuccino you merrily sipped while you heard the raindrops trickle down the glass door of your nearest barista? Do you also remember that these little things of life that we’ve experienced and probably seldom appreciated are some moments some one else can never ‘feel’ as you and me do?
Well!!! I always thought (or should I say I liked to believe?) that life was all about smiles, giggles, sniggers, frowns, rebukes but hardly ever about tears, pain or incompleteness. I distinctly recollect how reluctant I’d been when my parents had booked tickets for the movie BLACK at the nearest PVR. I made all my efforts to derail them and tell them that I’d love a SRK dance on the train, or see Govinda the parakeet hopping around in pink velvet coats (phew! He and his vibrating paunch!) but not a movie that talked about the life of a dumb and deaf girl! I had to give in because they had already booked the tickets, so I went only when I was told that a dinner would follow and again there is a tub full of yummy popcorns and crunchy nachos with the spicy salsa at the interval!
So I see all uncles and aunties with their teenage kids trailing behind. I couldn’t help but think that all of them had been lured so that they could be given lessons on ‘sensitivity’ (like our moral science books weren’t enough!). I knew perfectly well what was in the offing (or at least I liked to believe it!). It was a dark movie, both literally and metaphorically. But trust me, once the movie started; it totally took me in its fray. Considering I’m not someone who cried during even the most intense movies even when the whole theatre was busy emptying the tissue packets from the food counters, you have to give this secret piece of information due respect- there were times when I felt tears roll down my eyes and I slimily tried to wipe them hoping no one around was looking at me. When deaf and dumb Michelle (played by Rani Mukherjee) is first introduced- spoilt and violent to the time she takes upon herself the responsibility of educating her teacher (played by Amitabh Bacchan) when he has lost his memory, the story comes full circle. Narrated as a flash back it delves on the life of this dumb and deaf girl- her joys, sorrows, failures, victories, talents and incapacities. The movie is poignant and touching to say the least. It touches and strums at something deeper than what we’d call commonplace emotions. The beauty of the movie lies in the fact that the girl has absolutely no connection to any of us (all of us who are blessed ones! Who came because we were practically dragged there?) and yet she makes us see and ‘feel’ her story through her eyes.
We hate the teacher when he hauls her and dumps her in the water pond, slaps her or denies her food. We feel dejected when her sister confesses that she’d often woke her up in the middle of the night to offer her water and then turned and slept off while Michelle sat waiting for the glass of water. We are overwhelmed when she finally shines in the black robe with her graduate degree and holds it up high. Alongside tears of solitude and dejection are tears of joy when smiling lips and moist eyes go one.
An intense, tragic and thought provoking movie that grips you, disturbs you, wrangles you and leaves you thinking each time you go to bed. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s movies are known for their grim and bleak endings but this one is par excellence. It is brutally honest and at the same time subtle and underplayed. I generally walk out of the theatre rating the movie with my parents but this movie left me bewildered, upset and silent.
No words were exchanged, no stars were awarded, me mum and pa just exchanged glances and chose silence to speak for itself.
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