Sameer Agarwal

I watched Swades yesterday. Quite liked it, but for the fact that it’s a good 3.5 hrs long (or so it seemed).

Sharukh Khan in my opinion has done a great job with Mohan Bhargava, the protagonist of the movie. No, I do not want to write a review here — there’s a better one available at http://www.rediff.com/movies/2004/dec/17swades1.htm. My point of writing this down is to make a note of things I liked about this movie:

1. Good piece of art — almost everybody has acted well and the direction is amazing

2. Good social message. Oh boy, how I hate this word ‘social’ (will talk about it in some other post); so let me rephrase… Actually let’s just take off the ‘social’ bit. The message — no it is not about ‘Mera Bharat Mahan‘ or anything to me — is about being proactive (my bullfighter would not take that word!) .

   It is about taking (self) action rather than crib over things that wont work. It’s about doing it yourself against lip service.

   Alright I am not Mohan Bhargava from NASA and cannot produce electricity for the poor and starving of Charanpur. But I can at least do something about myself. My family. My friends. My colleagues.

   I cannot be Gita. A well-educated lady competent enough to enjoy the ‘cushy’ life of the cities. She who chooses to stay in a remote village that’s still crippled with hunger, poverty and casteism. Trying to help the ‘society’ in her own way.

   But. I can be Sameer. I can do more. What?

3. I liked the way Mohan Bhargava disagrees with this nonsense all of us Indians love. We take a lot of pride in our heritage — sanskaras and the works(!), and think that’s good enough reason to feel we’re superior than everyone else.

   Alright guys, move on. Talk about today. A Claudia Schiffer (okay I am getting old, how about Lindsay Lohan) looks sexy when topless — women in Bastar (a small tribal village in Madhya Pradesh) who do not even have enough cloth to cover themselves definitely do not.

Well. That’s that.

Or is it? That’s how it all ends? All of us talk about it in the air conditioned comfort of our drawing rooms. And when it’s time for something more important — like our dinner of course — we so conveniently forget it till the time someone like Ashutosh Gowariker reminds us.