Punjab 1984

Eons and eons have been written and more shall be written till may be history and Man lays rest to one the most horrific incidents of recent times in India. I don’t knowhow to term it but yesterday watching a film directed by Anurag Singh made me rethink the time when I as a ten year old was asked to suddenly move to Chandigarh, as it was relatively safe. We were asked overnight to wear salwar suits as it made us blend in and not be conspicuous and to a ten year old girl it all seemed alien; except that school was shut and a whole lot of summer time was available.

However, the subject of the movie is 1984, Punjab and how an uprising made some martyrs, some fortunes and how misfortune descended on mothers, fathers, families were destroyed just because they were Sikhs and even Hindus were not spared.

The real villain of the piece is always the politician who kills, murders, inspires, instigates innocent mind to mayhem, chaos, kill, to kill innocent bystanders who are just numbers – his vote. The mother of the protagonist played by Kirron Kher is par excellence, her nuances of a broken mother who lives for her son is mesmerizing. One cries with her, smiles at her motherly instincts, laughs at her scolding’s, why because that’s what mothers are made of … I identify with her anguish, her spirit to search every day for her lost son, to hear just once that he is all right, to look at him once with her failing eyes, her spirit that remains strong , unbroken .

Diljit Dosanjh , is wonderful  , a brilliant portrayal of a youth whose life goes wrong not because of the  so called ‘ cause of Inquilaab but due to family feud over land; the curse of us Punjabis.

I was apprehensive before the release thinking that it would leave an impression , would again rekindle Khalistan and those dark days; and I was so wrong. It was again a self preservation instinct kicking in to save my children from being influenced not realizing that we need them to know , to  grow stronger, dig deeper roots and to learn from the lessons of the past . why be so fickle and weak to think a work of art would make us jump into the cauldron of revolution again ?The times of Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev are gone when people lived for others, were selfless, where blood was red and not divided by caste, religion , creed . Punjab, needs to reclaim it self from the shackles of drug, caste war and to reclaim its glory .  And, no one from outside is going to save us , not on face book, or on virtual media, or on television , or on those senseless debates , what we need is a collective on the ground change, together .