I am 25 ebbing on the heavier side of it, and I tried watching Umrao Jaan. I could not keep up with the note-taking-and-watching-the-movie-act for more than 45 minutes. But simultaneously I am able to sit through re-runs of Mughal-e-Azam, Ganga Aor Jamuna, Aan and Mother India without even knowing that am seeing them for the umpteenth number of time.
Similarly, there are movies I watched as a rebel pixie in love five years back, and I can’t stand them now – (Pyaar Ka Punchnama, Love & Other Drugs). Then there is the unimitable Manorama Six Feet Under, there's Haasil and there is Firaaq – I borrowed them several times, I downloaded them on other occasions, and I sat with roommates to see them on other occasions. But I just couldn’t.
I pride myself for being my father’s daughter and for watching Mother India with him and crying therapeutically, clutching onto my mother’s wrist. I pride myself for being the 90s movie megalomaniac who would sit and just watch TV with the elder brother on weekdays and run to switch it off as soon as we heard the parents’ vehicle at the fag end of the bend of the road that led up to the house.
I pride myself for having parents who went on movie dates to see Fire, Ardh Satya, Ankur, Mandi and Water. But there are somethings are stuck at the back of my mind. Just yesterday I saw Le Passe (The Past) and I thought how brutally it mirrors the lives I am surrounded by (since eons now), and I thought what happens if my mother sees this movie? Where would things have lead up to if my mother and father had gone for the screening of A Separation in Lucknow?
Why do I run away from Umrao Jaan, there’s a story behind that and of course some latent burning fear – and perhaps I am just not ready to have those conversations with myself as of now. But yes, the fact that my mother has been the Amelie for several people she knows and that she believes in trying and hoping (if not dreaming) that gives me strength and hope enough to gather the dew drops early in the mornings and do what I do. To conclude this here, I would repeat myself – all of this does not make sense, but neither does life. So be it.
26 December
15:14