Sparsh

saw sparsh. after long time.
yes. sparsh speaks.
Sparsh speaks more eloquently than words.
i know sai paranjapey as colleague board member at NID.
she would be delighted to know that a new age youth is sensitive to the subtleties of her old forgotten sparsh.
Not everybody likes sparsh. I do.
Last night I was watching ‘nottinghill’ and interestingly, I find lot of similarities to ‘sparsh’at a very deeper level. only the contexts differ. The stories are different but the concerns are the same.

Ironical it may seem, but to me, sparsh is not about the physical touch.
It is not about widow..
it is not about blindness either.
I think, sparsh is about fear.
the fear of entering into a relationship.
the fear of love.
The fear of belonging.
the fear of loosing ones individuality in life. And most importantly,
the fear of loosing ones self- dignity, which is more than life.

the best thing about the film is the way that fear is shown.

i feel that the film has an overall delicacy which only a woman can make me feel. a woman director only can make such film.
look at the way the development of feeling for each other (shabana and shah) is shown: over amjad ali khan's wonderful sarod notes,(the right sound for love);
and the quiet way she expresses her love to him.
remember the scene where shah accidentally touches her dead husbands photo and realises her marital situation. it is depicted so sightlessly, so soundlessly and so briefly, all in a fraction of a second.
that is really cinematic brilliance.

another scene which is worth remembering is this. when shah bursts with anger, shabana does not ask him to cool down. she gently and soothingly comments that how much pain he must be holding inside him. When some one close to me gets angry, that is what exactly I feel.
the film is about love. but the love is shown through not only the main characters but also through the other minor characters too.
the children of the school love shabana too and one of the boys offers his thumb to her. its a very touching moment personally to me because it really happened with a student of mine (except that she is a girl of 26). receiving love is an art and unfortunately most of us are incapable of it.
the little boy paplu almost died because shabana did not bother for his love towards her. her insensitivity hurt him so badly.
there is no greater pain than rejected love. i know people who have died because of such insensitivity.
the duel fight between the two boys to win shabanas love is no way lesser than the classic duels where two suiters fight a duel till death. the most meaningful touch is paplu fighting with closed eyes because his opponent is blind.that is fairness. that is the law in classic duel. and he does it without being told by any one.what heroism in such a little kid!it puts the grown-ups to shame.

the best thing about sparsh is that though it is dealing with such an emotional subject as love, yet it does not make it soapy, sentimental chewing gum. there is maturity in the love shown in the film.
“sacrifice, seva, ‘mein kuch bhi karunga thumhare liye’ “ is all childish rubbish. there should be individuality and equal respect to each other. a true relationship is really ‘give and take’, and not the slave and master relationship. how many people understand this ? for the most Indian men, it is undigestable.

in one scene when shah heatedly proclaims that he can do anything entirely by himself and does not need anybody, shabana jokingly tells him " no, you cannot tie your neck tie" the scene is shown in a light vain but it has serious implications. to me it conveys that ‘ you may be capable of doing many things but its always a form of great security and pleasure that somebody else does it for you, without necessarily making you dependent on her/him.

The last scene tells it all, with the dialogue-“tum sach muuch andhey ho..” true. most of us are blind about others love. It is our incapacity, our disability, our terrible fear to reach and touch the other. The man needed that verbal slap to come to his senses. In ‘nottinghill’ it happens another way.
the film is most emphatic about one thing " kisi ko kami ko bar bar yad math dilao". pitying itself is bad, it pains like a wound. Mocking,which we sometimes do insensitively, is pouring chilli powder and salt on it.

i wish more people will see sparsh and get what it says in their head as well as in their heart.