the aakrosh...

i saw govind nihalani's aakrosh again 2 weeks back. and well, i was disturbed. disturbed by what the movie says, the social, the political and the human issues the movie deals with. the spectrum of personalities that populate the script...

lahanya's father (nana palshikar) who has lived an oppressed life and is unconsciously but completely reconciled to the state of society and the inevitability of the oppression of the weak.
nagi (smita patil) who in her naivete refuses to read between the lines. assumes gestures and actions of people are what they are and for who it doesn't seem to occur at all that there could be invisible motives and some of them could be bad.
lahanya (om puri) the angry, the frustrated, who can not but see the oppression, the injustice, the power people wield and the helplessness that his community feels but he doesn't want to succumb to himself. neither does he have the deviousness or strength to fight the injustice, nor can he reconcile to it. alcohol and silent frustrated rage seem to be the only recourse...and in the midst of all this negativity, you see the overwhelming love he has for nagi. the pure human.
lahanya's sister, bewildered by the goings on and not knowing where she stands or what she is expected or supposed to do, or if at all it is possible to 'do' anything. probably understands what lahanya is trying to say, possibly believes he is right, but too scared and confused to proffer an opinion. she doesn't speak a word through the movie.
bhaskar (naseer) the idealist lawyer, fighting his first case with practically nothing to help him defend lahanya. but you see him going through various phases of realization of the reality of oppression, injustice, inhumanity and not just callousness but utter disregard for the adivasis, the lesser human beings. and decides to fight it from within the system.
dadhiyal, presumably the intellectual naxal who sees the injustice, believes it can't be fought from within the system, and so works in his own way to deal it, or so he thinks...allowing for the possibility of bhaskar's idealism prevailing.

dushane vakil (amrish puri) the veteran, an adivasi who has made it in life. a succesful, prosecution lawyer who refuses to be caught in moral dilemmas. he is someone who has seen and even experienced injustice but is in a situation now when he can chose to take an elevated stance of an objective puveyor of law, who only sees the visible truth. who refuses to allow himself to be swayed by reality. the truth made available to him is good enough for him to continue with life.
doctor patil, who is a pawn to himself. in a position of power but not knowing it, allowing himself to play the role situations demand of him, his priority is to mask his mediocrity, in a position of comfort that allows him to demonstrate an ethical and important role in society.

and you have the villains...the SP, the MLA, the contractor who are at the top of all this. the deviants, the powerful, almost megalomaniac who possibly don't even see anything wrong in the way things are, for they are the purveyors of injustice. if they see, they won't function.

i couldn't help but remember how deeply affected i was by the movie the first time i saw it. how disturbed i felt, how angry, scared, frustrated. angry enough to swear i would not let myself be quiet in the face of injustice, scared not knowing what would give me the strength to fight it, frustrated by insulation of our existence and the invisibility of injustice.

that was long long ago...life moved on...unknown to myself i was ascending the ladder of insulation, unfortunately i was not seeing it. insulation creeps up slowly and engulfs you, until you became part of a milieu that is a cross between the dushane vakils and doctor patils...considering how complex this globalized world is, you don't even know if you are a victim or a perpetrator or otherwise...feel like i have drawn a full circle and just come back to where i was 17 years back.

i remember part of govind nihalani's 'Dev' made around 17 years after aakrosh. and he deals with the same thought. he is still reminding us in his own way, in his own language! such a frigging waste!

gulzar's

ik baar waqt se, lamha gira kahin
wahan dastan mili, lamha kahin nahi
dekha tho yahin hai, dhoonda tho nahi hai,
pal ye bhi jaane wala hai...
- Golmaal (Kishoreda)

ek hi khwab kain baar dekha hai maine,
tune saadi mein, uras lee hai, meri chaabiyan, gharki!
...
taash ke patton pe, ladti hai kabhi kabhi khel mein, mujhse.
aur kabhi ladti bhi hai, aise ke bas, khel rahi hai...mujhse!
- Kinara (Bhupinder, Hema Malini)