Rang De Basantiii......

What is it about Rang De Basanti that makes it my best movie ever. What is it about a bunch of five Delhi University kids barely in their early twenties, who take on the system, and don’t even survive to tell the tale, that makes a nation of 100 million people sit up and take notice. What is it about the movie that it somewhere hits your conscience. What is Rang De Basanti???Someone who sees Rang de Basanti and doesn’t even feel a small movement in his conscience, a change of heart, is a dead man. That’s what Rang de Basanti can do to you. A tale based on the recent MIG 21 disasters, the not so recent corrupt politicians, the age old corrupt system and the perennially sleeping youth conscience , Rang de Basanti has just one point to prove….. that there is no point. There is no point in fighting with the system, where rot has gone to its root, where rot is root and you cannot tell which is which. There is no point in living for what you believe in, in dying for what you believe in, in believing in something at all. There is no point in seeking justice from a system where the very symbol of law is a blindfold lady, holding a set of scales, almost always heavier on one side, bent somewhat by the number of people seeking justice, by the number of cases and to a far greater degree….by the weight of its own guilty conscience, and who is raped almost regularly….almost as a part of the procedures of the system. If at all Rang de Basanti is something, it is modern age patriotism……No patriotic songs (well the title song is a bit….but call it patriotic pop…), no references to India’s so- called father-of-the-nation’s non violent struggle which led us to so-called-freedom, and most importantly-no references to Pakistan…..call it SMS patriotism if you want, but I liked Madhavan’s salute to the India Gate better than any other salute in any other movie I have seen till now. What is it in the movie that makes it so hard hitting, with just a subtle reference to the freedom struggle in the form of the Jallianwala Baug episode….but that ended there….just one subtle reference? For me , it was the characters, their lives. I could actually identify with him when he says “ Campus deewar ke is paar DJ ki koi aukaad hai, yahaan DJ ko koi pehchaanta hai, DJ ka naam hai. Us paar ki duniya ki bheed mein na jaane kitne DJ pis gaye. I know many of those reading this will identify with the same thing….and almost all of them would be ashamed to admit it. It sums up the insecurity that youth today have to to face. At every step , you have ten hands wanting to push you back to where you came from , or even further back. At every step in life you have to prove yourself, have to become something, not necessarily someone, but something. Life today is a mad struggle to get somewhere…..most often , the race ends where it started from….but who cares.Then there is Aslam…Mr Kunal Kapoor….” Yaar hame bachpan se adjust karma sikhaya jaata hai….Char logon ki seat par aath baithenge….nauva aakar kahega..yaar adjust kar le” Nothing much remains to be said here. If you lived anywhere within the boundaries of India you would know this, would have experienced it, would have hated it but could do nothing about it. Luxury is dead. Period.There are always two ways to do something. The right way, or the easy way.“There are two ways to live life too. You can either live life it as it comes to you, letting each day pass, slowly suffering, bearing the brunt of someone else’s wrong doings. Or you can take the hard way out, the right way. You can take the responsibility of whatever is happening around you and start changing It”. Thus goes the British major’s diary. No. Rang de Basanti does not tell you to take the right way. Nor does it preach that shortcuts pay. It leaves you thinking. ‘The DU kids took the right way out. And none of them lived to see another day’. It leaves you at that.But the entire essence of the movie, the I – care-a-damn attitude of todays youth, who believe in working hard and partying harder, who want to reach up for the skys, but don’t lose sight of the ground below, who are like me, you, DJ, Aslam, Sukhi, Karan, Sonia, Sue… is captured in one line……… when Sue says to the ex-producer of her documentary “ Teri Maa Ki AAnkh….” You fall in love with Rang de Basanti once again. Way to go Rakesh. RANG DE BASANTI…..