Jul 24, 2015 11:38 PM
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One is totally taken unawares by the pitch and roll of emotions one experiences from the moment the hall lights dim. It is like being tossed around in a tiny boat without life vests - in a black, raging storm with crackling thunder and hammering deluge.
The music doesn’t ring; it vibrates, like a cosmic howl, churning up grief and ache; one can smell the stench of burning corpses, and feel the heat of their dying embers cooking the eyeballs inside the skull. It is, as if, one were himself struck a crumbling blow of the Dom’s staff, dispatching the soul on its next journey to another mortal abode.
On the smoldering Ghats of the Ganges, the low caste, untouchable Doms try best to eke out pelf from the funeral pyres of bodies brought in by the grievers. Doms, the unsung undertakers, the keepers of the sacred flame, which is kept perennially burning at the hearth of Dom Raja, fiercely guard the threshold of Moksha; deliverance from the endless cycle of birth and death. For Hindus believe that cremation at the famous Ghats of Varanasi will grant Moksha.
There are two Ghats at Varanasi: the Raja Harish Chandra Ghat, and the more exalted Manikarnika Ghat, which is controlled by the Doms. Legend has it, that the oath-keeping Raja Harish Chandra sold himself to Kalu Dom, who bonded him as his unpaid apprentice. It is at the hearth of Kalu Dom generations of Doms have kept the sacred fire burning. No matchsticks may be used on the Ghats; the first five logs to burn the corpse are provided by the Doms, and the rest by the relatives; the Dom gives away the straw, lighted from the flame at Kalu Dom’s hearth to the relatives to light the pyre – ironically the same straw is used to light the cooking hearth at the Dom homes.
The movie provides a glimpse into the oldest city in the world, Varanasi, which is a kaleidoscope of rich Hindu tradition, where sacred peacefully coexists with sacrilege.
At the Ghats three set of lives intertwine, which find redemption in the end only by escape from the insanity which comes from living from daybreak to nightfall among burning corpses and feral curs: a girl who must live in an unforgiving, narrow-minded society with the guilt of giving in to her curiosity of carnal pleasures, a Dom boy in tragic, impossible love with a high caste girl, and a retired Sanskrit scholar who discovers his love for an orphan apprentice when his greed for making him dive for coins nearly kills the poor child.
They say the Doms are a rich lot; they charge exorbitantly and unfairly, and at whim, but they also have the sense to grasp the bleakness and revulsion of their sorry lives, and goad their young to leave and find themselves a better future, and it is on this positive note, to Fly Away Solo, that this depressing but realistic tale ends.
The movie incidentally is a joint Indo-French co-production, which was screened at the Cannes- 2015, and won two awards: the Fipresci Prize and the Prix de L’avenir(Promising Future) for a debut movie.
The stark, unflinching colors of reality betray the honing of the skills of Director Neeraj Ghaywan under Anurag Kashyap, whom he assisted in Gangs of Wassypur.
Richa Chadha, as the poignant, suffering girl who must carry the burden of her guilt as if it were a fatherless child, is incredible.
I love rare, miraculous, heartrending art form like this. Be touched!
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