Swades – Capturing (N)ew (R)ealistic (I)ndians

December 2004 it was, and during the supposedly winter night I along with my brother and couple of other friends of ours wanted to get warm so we decided to go to a movie and fortunately we got to see the best picture of the year, we wanted to warmth and we got it in an “A/C” theatre.

The creator had a vision, which unfortunately hasn’t gone well with the audience. The perception about the “NRI’s”was spoken about in a different tone. I for one always believed that the so-called “NRI’s” are not what they are portrayed to be in the films. It’s different. The Director certainly has lived and breathed this film for a couple of years atleast. Hats off Mr.Gowariker for giving us such a wonderful lesson.

Here I would like to remind couple of scenes where the director has come up with real and true situations to emphasis that the “NRI’s” are not just Money centred.

(A) School scene where Gayathri actually ridicules Shah rukh Khan for not knowing the names of the Rivers and not knowing the newly formed states in our country. Here Shah Rukh comes up with the right answers and stuns Gayathri.
(B) Secondly the scene where Shah Rukh is asked by his aunt to get the money from a farmer. Here the director has managed to come up with an unbelievably great scene. The sympathy shown by Shah Rukh on the farmer and eventually giving him money instead of getting it from him just about sums up the good characters that an NRI has.

But the scene-stealer of them all is the scene where Shah Rukh is coaxed to buy a pot of water from a small station vendor. Even the beast would have cried in this scène, am just a human. We are rated as one of the top countries in the world as far as the economic status is concerned, but we still buy a sachet of water for 1Rupee to quench our thirst and the worst part is we pay 1 Rupee to use the Urinal to let out the water that we had in the first place.

The song “Yeh jo des hai ” rips my heart out every time I hear. I am sure many of the “NRI’s” would be feeling the same way as I do. It’s unfortunate that the song of the year has fallen on the deaf ears. For once the Hindi film industry is able to come up with this masterpiece and yet very ordinary films like “Veer Zaara” and “Main Hoon na” run to packed houses. The coincidence is all these films feature Shah Rukh Khan. Mr. Gowariker continue making Great Indian Films.

So lets all stop criticising the “NRI’s” for they are Indians too, as a matter of fact I feel sorry for them that they have to carry a proof of their identity 24*7 and show it to prove that they are a normal civilian just as the others.
Finally, the one thing that blows my fuse away is the fact that the so-called “Resident Indians” and majority of them don’t know in what order our “Tri colour “ should be. We should be ashamed for that. Pity the “NRI’s“ are being cornered for that as well.

Please protect our Pride.

Right I need to take a break, I’ll have some water. Oops I don’t have a one Rupee Coin !!.