August 9, 2023
The laughter falls in fits; the occupancy of Ranveer Singh’s charm is a simulacrum of a ‘desi rich boy’ sartorially dressed in the movie ‘Rocky aur Rani ki Prem Kahani’. His bare chest flamboyantly pressed against the half open shirt, voluntarily eavesdropped by ‘Alia Bhatt’ dressed in the perfect layered sari possibly hints at a phantasmagoria. Their prem kahanias ‘Rocky’ and ‘Rani’ is full of piquant ‘gup-shup’ ‘somewhat puerile yet persistent. Rocky walks in anywhere unchecked and unfettered, and his silver-tongued Punjabi tempo plays on impeccably. Rani is sassy albeit a wayward to commit herself to marriage; an eloquent Bengali living with a mother who cracks the ‘similes and metaphors’ like an unshaken tossing of the omelet on the pan.
The priggish idiosyncratic family of ‘Rocky’ includes the big bull Grandmother who feels the ‘Ladoo Business’ is a favorable consanguinity that has made them the ‘Punjabis’ to reckon with. Fondly grasped from the cultural percipients of ‘Punjabi’ vs. ‘Bengali’, the movie is not just a love story but a tale of conscious that fiddles now and then to accept the virtue of one’s survival.
Conscious—is it a matter of fact? I think it’s the gnawing disability—we have made it, though—to only come to resonance with life’s equities when survival is invaded by perilous bludgeons. But, where does survival fit in here?
Is it all about leading life?
Or
Is it creating beliefs to accomplish what you believe in?
We usually consider ‘survival’ as negative but it is a ray of positivity that’s helps to contemplate life in the molecule of resistance and upheavals. You all must be wondering if the movie acts as a metaphor for survival. Yes, it does in many ways. And, why only the movie; our lives, each one of us are troubled by the sanctimony of moral aptitudes that belabor the ‘ultimate truth’ of existence. Thus, starts the inchoate blow pipe of survival.
A male Kathak Dancer flowers in circles and then maneuvers his hands effeminately in curves and bends to touch the crust of his lips. He fondly arches the eyes to siphon emotions that we only expect women to titillate us with. People who have watched the movie will relate to the elated spirit of Rani’s father who for his ineluctable choice of ‘cultural paradox’ is subject to sardonic smiles and flocked by insouciant satirize. Living life of being someone else would have been melodramatic but his conscious appraisal to defy the schismatic to be a ‘Kathak Dancer’ bets a sidereal scheme of emotions for survival.
If a woman can be a classical dancer, why men need to stop their urge to be one?
Why live a life of fondness of a polished generosity if all it gives you is a scherzo of false aggrandizement?
You will be often pick-pocketed of your raison d’etre by the sanctimonious bullies – a soi-disant self-proclaimed loyalist but filtering the conscious will free you off the sauerkraut of a fallow plough. Don’t be a sandbank of accumulated betrayals. Considering the above isn’t a woman in the house like a ‘false alarm’ switched off in contempt? Most of the house wives would agree. Shattered dreams, imperceptible nods and the not so savoir faire label howls like a crow crawing warning the inlet of the enemies. So who are these tyrants anyway?
They are the lofty, clumsy, paranoid ‘men folk’ of the house who find a loose cannon solecism a privilege they must enjoy over the women they glare and grind. Just like in the movie, Rocky’s mother and sister are wedded to the obnoxity of ‘cultural foliage’. At night, when the lions of the house have slept away to glory, these feeble sheep flock like the ‘brave lioness’ exhibiting a pleonasm of ‘Hindi Songs’ prosody. They both are still finding their ‘survival mode’; the conscious sadly buried in the sacred customs of the mendelevium squawks. They finally do! The mother makes an immaculate entry to a ‘singing competition’ on TV and the sister overcomes the nosy similitude of the ‘bride to be’ carrying a salver of tea to impress the ‘giant in-laws’ pressed effortlessly on the sofa.
These quirks of self-sustenance are a ‘prem kahani’ of one’s brimming conscious and our survival instincts. It is not about picking each character from the movie to dissect their eccentricities but a clarion call to the hidden character in each one of us, taking movie as the metaphor, to actually act before survival becomes a cul-de-sac.
Isn’t doing shopping for sanitary pads and lingerie be a shameless task for men? If women can wash their dirty linen, what makes men detest the simplicities of necessities?
Making a cup of tea in the morning is an ordeal a woman must go through no matter how vulnerability dances unapologetically on the crown of her head. When will we realize that pieces of cup are not sexist or judgmental?
The talk is not between feminism and patriarchy; it’s about how we can survive without prejudices and presumptions. Culture is a ‘valid truth’ but ‘cultural salvo’ arising from impenitent ordinance defies our survival. Why there should be a big chasm between a ‘Bengali woman’ and a ‘Punjabi woman’ when the verisimilitude of their existence is same? Why one appears to be a soignee and the other a maudlin doll? They too can share same human privileges.
The breadth of a male dancer or chef holds the same heart rhythm as of a woman in the same role. Why sabotage an inclination to suit cultural dictums and sanctimonious piffle-paffle?
Let’s not make the conscious enter into warfare where survival becomes a battlefield of refutations. This could be a predicament for the onlookers but a plausible ‘love story’ for the ‘forgotten’.