Rang de basanti

for those, who are as yet uninitiated into rang de basanti, here is a quick epilogue...
rang de basanti is a film about the youth of india...it follows a group of 5 middle-class friends who, inspired by the stories of the bravery and sacrifice of Bhagat Singh and Co., and jolted by the death of a close friend, choose to kill the defence minister indirectly responsible for the friend's death, and also stand by their decision to kill this person...
presenting a few views on rang de basanti, penned just after watching the film...

Before watching Rang De Basanti, I heard many issues being picked up with the film…”is Aamir Khan too old to play the role of a college student?” “They shouldn’t have killed them all at the end, should they?”…and so on…at a national level, the Indian Air Force requested for a special screening to make sure that the film didn’t have anything derogatory about themselves, and the killing of the Defence Minister opened its own can of worms…

But these are merely people who are finding such issues with Rang De..., only because they are cowards…too cowardly to even ask themselves the question asked by the film: Can you repeat the deeds of Bhagat Singh (Microsoft is just too much…they have the audacity to tell me that I have misspelled Bhagat, and that its probably Hagar, of Hagar the Horrible fame, or, even worse, Braggart…oh my god, is all I have to say) and Co. and kill yourself for your country?

Rang De... made me ponder over only one thing: can my generation be inspired enough to stand up and say, “no more tyranny of George “Dubious” Bush,” and shoot him down? Can my generation be awakened to say, “we’ve had enough of your petty politics, and we’re taking over”, to (more or less) all the politicians in this country, and do just that? Can we be motivated so strongly by just a simple idea, that giving up your life seems like a small price to pay for the realization of that dream?

Can I, the chap who’s been told that he has leadership abilities, the chap who holds his own in a gathering of people, who is a connoisseur of the arts, and can effortlessly hold forth on them, and a number of things besides…can yours truly pick up a gun and shoot down a minister for a crime for which he cannot, or will not, be brought to book?

To be an armchair critic is very simple…first, loose all your balls (forgive me for being so politically incorrect)…then, get hold of a faultfinding tongue, and for a finale, get whole of a sufficiently cynical tongue, to pass judgement on all things around you, without discrimination, or reason…is this how we wanna live our lives?

Or was this just a fantasy? A wild imagination linking up an episode in India’s coloured history and a group of college students, to form entertainment, Bollywood, ishtyle, complete with songs, dance, jokes, tears, and for the icing on the cake, a hot firang babe? Scope for Aamir Khan to experiment with his hairstyle, and nothing else? Chance for unknown director with ambiguous ‘y’ floating around in his name to make a laudable (debut??) film, and nothing else? A film which had no intention of waking up the armchair critics?

No, I don’t think so…

Rang De... was not just a film…it is a film blessed with some perfect casting, great acting, lovely songs, interesting cinematography, tight editing, and all that…but most important of all, a message. A message to the youth of India, to my generation, to me…telling us to not take things lying down, but to fight…

Rang De... deserves applause for an extremely good storytelling device, which oscillates back and forth in time. It shows the young men and women portrayed in the film grow from giving two hoots about their country, its rich history, and completely prepared to skip the country once their education is complete, into being modern day Bhagat Singhs, Rajgurus, and all the rest of them. Their slow, but sure transformation, into a mirror of the freedom fighters who lived some eighty odd years ago, and echo their words, the effect of which had taken the country, and the world, by storm. The back-and-forth story telling is proof of the famous adage, “History repeats itself”.

Before signing off, I’ll just say one more thing: Rang De… isn’t just your watch-once-and-promptly-forget-about-it film…it has more things to ponder over than the ending, Aamir Khan’s hairstyle…it deserves time to be pondered over, to ruminate (in the words of a friend of my dad)… it deserves another dekko, for those to whom the message wasn’t clear enough the first time…

Yours truly