In the last few days I watched some new Indian films by young directors. They all have a nice trend; fresh in ideas, practical, strong and unpretentious. I liked the fact that they strung the right chord and give a huge leap in the true direction. I have quite a big list but some I want to mention are ‘Bhejafry’, ‘Wake Up Sid’, ‘Luck by Chance’ and especially in the context ‘Mixed Doubles’, ‘Dev D’ and ‘Love Sex & Dhoka’. I think the last three movies are phenomenon in Indian cinema just for the naked portrayal of truth, which Hollywood has for reasonably long period now. Just for information Hollywood is considered quite novice in handling truth compared to European movies. I liked the movies just for the way they are presented, considered quiet bold in Indian perspective.
I have been wondering since my adulthood (which surprisingly came very late at the age of 23) few characteristics about Indians. We are extremely hypocritical about some of our most obvious feelings and feel great about it. We believe that love making is crime and even thinking about it is extremely bad. If there is a foreign movie which shows the natural instincts we avoid watching with other adult family members. It was tough to match it with my own feelings and scientific discoveries. As per several studies 90% of man’s brain is occupied by sex and for women it is about 50%, considering the occasional 0% periods.
This is also considered a sin even accepting the fact that this is natural to be physically attracted to people other than ones current partner in life. In fact this should be a subject of research how can two people stay together for 30-40 years and never get attracted by anybody.
By this I didn’t mean to say that we should start showing interest in any ABC we meet and break our marriage just like West. I intentionally said this, as a big chunk of my Indian friends will make conclusions like this after reading so far of my writing. First of all in the west 90% of the marriages break because they don’t want to compromise anything which is less than 100%. This is because they are raised in such a way that they start solving their own problems from a very young age and so grew up to be extremely independent. In fact I don’t like this mentality but I understand the fact, that being independent give the natural confidence to not to compromise at all. Secondly, marriage or being in a relationship means that we have some obligations which prohibit us from making decisions which affect two or more people. We do trade-offs with our life and marriage is no exception. If the happiness received being in the marriage is more than being single we stay in the marriage/relationship and that should be the only reason for staying in ANY relationship. So, if the marriage/relationship is strong it is difficult to break and those difficult situations make the bond even stronger.
In India we want to stop things to happen in life by not experiencing it. I don’t think we judge us truly by suppressing our feelings. It comes out in one form or other. The most common outcome in India is public harassing of women which is unimaginable in any developed country. The unfulfilled sex life also causes lots of frictions inside the marriage between the partners, which come out in other forms due to lack of understanding between the partners. I like one theory regarding this by a Bengali writer – Budhadev Guha- according to him, his father’s excessive fondness for food comes from that fact that he lacked the proper external expression of his other desires, which considered sin. If we accept this as a natural instinct (which IT IS) and allow us the maturity to accept that, life would be so much easier.
The hypocrisy is also extended to drinking alcohol. Even after so many studies relating drinking red wine and good health, in India drinking is still considered as an evil. Personally I feel drinking allows us to stop our brain for some time and take away all our inhibitions and give a nice happy feeling. Definitely addiction and too much of anything is bad, like too much rice and lack of exercise makes one diabetic.
I am really thankful to these young directors who have the courage and the spirit to cause the revolution in Indian especially in Hindi movie.
