In a small sense, Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Paan Singh Tomar is the twisted mirror-image of Mani Ratnam’s Guru. Both films pivot around protagonists who come into their own after Independence, young men from a young India, and both are disillusioned by the System, by a social reality that just won’t let them be – but they respond in different ways. Gurukant Desai is smart enough to operate within the boundaries of law. He greases palms and he wiggles through a number of constitutional loopholes, but he never does anything outright illegal (at least the way the film submits his story to us). Paan Singh Tomar, on the other hand, isn’t as clever. When his attempts to do things the right way, the legal way, fail, he picks up a gun and becomes a bandit. The irony is delicious. Gurukant Desai, a bandit in many ways, was hailed as a hero. Paan Singh Tomar, a real national hero, was denounced as a bandit and consigned to the trash heap of history.
Dhulia dusts off this tragic memory and lovingly resurrects Paan Singh Tomar in a flavourful film that, the premise of social iniquity dispatching an all-too-ordinary man to an outlaw existence apart, bears little resemblance to the bandit movies we know from Hindi cinema. It isn’t just the absence of horses and longing duets like Kis kaaran naiyya doli, but the absence of a clean-cut rationale for the question a journalist (Brijendra Kala, whose fleshy mid-section is worked into an amusing running gag) tentatively puts forth to Paan Singh (Irrfan) in 1980: “Aap dacait kaise bane?” Paan Singh deflects this inquiry with a self-aggrandizing snatch of grandiloquence, pointing out that only the parliament has dacaits, and that Bihar has baaghis, rebels. But later in the film (and earlier in the story, which is narrated as a series of flashbacks, beginning in 1950), we realise that he himself has no answer to this question, which is why his furious entreaty to the man, his dadda, who forced him onto this path is simply, “Jawaab do,” answer me.
Paan Singh is a perennially hungry soldier in the army who discovers that there is no rationing of food if he involves himself in sports, and in one of those steeplechase events, when an excited coach spurs him with insults to his mother, he takes offence. He worships his mother (and he compares his country to his mother). Is the reason he transformed into a dacoit, then, the bludgeoning of his frail mother by members of his extended family? Or is the reason genetic, the result of hero-worshipping an uncle who was a dacoit in the Chambal and who taught him to wield Mark 3 rifles? Did Paan Singh, as a dacoit, embrace the chance to finally fight a real and tangible enemy because he wasn’t allowed, on account of his being a sportsperson, to fight for the army, thus reduced to treating his khel ka maidan as a jung ka maidan? Was the persecution at the hands of this story’s villain simply the last straw, the final frustration in life filled with frustrations? Or is it simply destiny that a man doomed to the fringes of the army is now banished to the fringes of society, of life?
Whatever the reason, there is no self-pity, and that is another way Paan Singh Tomar departs from our earlier films about dacoits. Except in the scene where he demands an answer – “jawaab do” – Paan Singh is stoic about his lot in life, and in this, he may have found inspiration in his wife Indra (Mahi Gill, who seems to have become to the multiplex-Bollywood indie-film movement what Parker Posey was to independent Hollywood productions of the 1990s.) She is no pushover. When her husband returns after yet another long stretch away and offers to help her with household chores, she shoves him aside, saying that she’s gotten used to doing things alone. Later, in a moment that’s as funny as it’s pathetic, she confesses that she doesn’t like him running in shorts because other women can glimpse his legs. And when he goes to Tokyo to participate in a championship and returns with a photograph alongside a Japanese woman who – perhaps playfully, perhaps not – claims she loves him, Indra’s annoyance is blisteringly apparent.
And yet, despite this love, despite this possessiveness, she has made her peace with his being only a peripheral presence in her life. Indra places great faith in an astrologer who tells her that Paan Singh is destined to be a wanderer, and so she reconciles herself to a life like the women in Kerala who’ve learnt to live alone because their men are away making money in the Gulf. Those were different times, when men worked outside – not just outside the home but sometimes outside the village – and women stayed inside, and there is a touching allusion to this reality when Paan Singh announces to his army mates, “Hamari wife ko beti hui hai,” that his wife has had a daughter. It doesn’t occur to him to include himself in this momentous event, unlike the modern, metrosexual husband in Meghna Gulzar’s Filhaal, who stood beside his wife and proclaimed proudly, “We’re pregnant.” Along with the insinuations of the astrologer, this natural distance between men and women of the time has taught Indra to accept a less-than-perfect domestic situation, and when Paan Singh becomes a dacoit, he makes a similar peace with a less-than-perfect social situation.
I wish, though, that this transition had been detailed more convincingly. Paan Singh Tomar is split into two too-neat halves – one might say BC and AD, Before Chambal and After Dacoity. The first half details the rise of the sportsperson, with each major race giving us insights into his psyche. We learn that sports, at first, are simply a means to an end: an endless supply of food. But as he discovers how good he is – first at the 5000m (which he gives up, owing to a touchingly personal request from his coach, which speaks of his goodness and consideration for others), then at the steeplechase – he takes his training seriously. He wins great honours for the nation, all the while demonstrating his character quirks – that he won’t stand for his mother being insulted (even if this insult is wrapped in a casual cussword); that he’s a creature of habit who, when told he cannot wear canvas shoes and must compete with these newfangled shoes with spikes, would rather run barefoot; that he’s fiercely driven, and can will himself to win even when competing with much younger athletes.
Paan Singh Tomar works best – in these early portions – as a character study of a character who’s quite difficult to study. Irrfan has always had this bewildered air about him, as if he’d just arrived from an alien planet and was attempting to get used to the manners and mores of a brand new world, and he uses this distanced quality to excellent effect. The character is almost entirely laid out for us through his actions – and yet, his motivations remain muddy. (Perhaps I should say that despite my logical understanding that this is a character who cannot be easily explained, my emotional self kept demanding, “Jawaab do.”) When Paan Singh becomes a much-dreaded bandit and visits his former coach, and the latter asks him why he came, risking arrest, he says simply, “Yaad aa gayi.” You may wonder why he doesn’t do the same with his estranged wife, drop in unannounced and say, “Yaad aa gayi.” Are we to infer that his sporting career mattered more, that his life in the army left behind more lasting memories than his life at home?
Why does he choose to give an interview to the journalist when he knows he’s a wanted man? And what makes a man so apparently laidback exact such terrible vengeance on a village that betrayed him, where he murders nine men in cold blood because, as he explains, “Nihatte they par nirdosh nahin”? (They were unarmed but not innocent.) How does Paan Singh reconcile his ambivalence about the life he’s chosen – “Koi aadmi khushi se baaghi nahin banta,” he says, and later, he warns his recruits, “Baaghi banoge to maroge” – with his need to continue with that life even after he’s avenged himself on the man who wronged him? Did he, for a single second, contemplate giving up this life, escaping with his wife to a distant land, where he could sit back and dig into unending bowls of ice cream? (That’s one of his favourite foods, and it has a deep personal significance, having established his standing as a sportsperson in a superior’s eyes.)
These deliberate gaps in character don’t take away from the central performance, but they do take away from a film that – in any case – suffers in the second half due to its predictability. (The unique first half, on the other hand, is a gold medallist right through.) It’s in the post-interval portions that Irrfan’s life as a dacoit is showcased, and I found it a little difficult to swallow the amiable, principled, slightly naive man from the first half as a dreaded dacoit wanted in three states, who’s not just a kidnapper and a ransom-extracter, but a cold-blooded killer. And yet, this is a true story, and, as the cliché goes, stranger than fiction. Perhaps that’s why the man was so fascinating – because he was an unreadable cipher, filled with all these contradictions. I couldn’t help wondering if we’d be so willing to overlook his opaqueness had we been told that this was pure fiction. Would we, then, demand a more convincing stretch of transition, so that it didn’t look like major life decisions were made during the interval, while we were away?
Knowing that he has a strong story – or at least a story with a strong central hook – Dhulia plays it straight, with a simple narrative of a present-day life punctuated with flashbacks. And he can’t resist a bit of mythologizing (which, in any case, is inevitable; dacoits, after all, were the most lionised of locals). Whenever we cut to the past (in one instance, after a brief shot of a Ganga ki Saugandh poster), people talk about Paan Singh Tomar or read about him in the newspapers, both as a sportsman and a dacoit. (He feels, though, that he is more recognised as the latter than he ever was as the former, which allows Dhulia to tack on, at the end, an entirely warranted plea to remember our sportspeople who do not play cricket or tennis.) And when we first meet Paan Singh, along with the journalist who sets out to interview him, the poor man is practically frozen with fear. He touches Paan Singh’s feet and calls it a darshan, and he seats himself on the ground as Irrfan drapes his languid self on as majestic a chair as the circumstances will allow. (And again, I wondered if the character needed to have been shaped with a little more dread, a little more awe, a little less lifelike and a little more a creature of myth.)
It is only in the last stretch that Dhulia loses his grip on the material, shifting into a slightly different kind of movie than one suggested by the tone of the events so far. Paan Singh’s fleeing from the police is intercut with his participation in various earlier races. We’re meant to think that this is one last chance for glory, one final dash to the finishing line, but the equating of life to a race comes off as both forced and facile. But at least on one level, Dhulia has earned these indulgences. He could have so easily done an Ashutosh Gowariker and dulled us to death with earnestness (yes, Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Se, I’m thinking about you), but he gives us, instead, a film that – even if it doesn’t entirely reveal itself and stays somewhat locked inside its protagonist’s head – throbs with heart and humour and a knowing appreciation of life in the hinterlands. Paan Singh Tomar, at the end, is like Paan Singh Tomar. It may be impossible to fully know him, but it’s impossible not to like him.
Copyright ©2012 Baradwaj Rangan. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
shuchismita
March 20, 2012
Loved the film. Especially the conversation between the journalist and Paan Singh punctuating the flashback scenes.
“and that Bihar has baaghis” – didn’t he say ‘beehad’ not ‘Bihar’?
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NishitD (@nishitd)
March 20, 2012
As far as “Yaad aa gayi” bit is concerned, I think I’ve a justification.
When he goes to meet his coach, he’s for most of the part certain that his coach isn’t being watched. Being a wife, there is a high probability that police will be watching her to keep a check on Paan Singh Tomar.
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brangan
March 20, 2012
shuchismita: Of course, but I wasn’t quoting him, was I? 🙂
NishitD: I realise that, and I wasn’t trying to list these things as “flaws” ( I hate that term, “flawed film”). Just that after the first half, I felt I wanted to know more about the character, which probably shows how involving the narrative is and how much deeper you want to delve into the man’s life.
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Vasisht Das
March 20, 2012
“…an entirely warranted plea to remember our sportspeople who do not play cricket or tennis”
Paan Singh Tomar is, in a way, a more effective, non-glossy protest against the tyranny of cricket in India than, say, Chak De India; i watched a bunch of young athletes react with foul-mouthed anger and tears after watching PST.
Let us, as usual, hang our heads in shame for a minute and move on to the next segment – after this commercial break.
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Ashwin Sundar
March 20, 2012
Before Chambal and After Dacoity. Absolutely Brilliant. Timeless writing.
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vikram
March 20, 2012
‘Bewildered look of Irrfan’- priceless 🙂
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redhotshazi
March 20, 2012
Many pointers in the review. Made me realise how much more I should learn how to watch movies like you do!
The Guru and Paan’s twisted mirror reality, the difference between today’s pregnant men and men of those times, the so many questions you felt needed to be answered!!
Great review!
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rameshram
March 20, 2012
red hot shazi,
to paraphrase A N Whitehead, Brannigan’s philm reviewing philosophy is “all fims are mere footnotes to maniratnam, who himself is mere foot notes to (we are not worthy we are not worthy) kamal.
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redhotshazi
March 20, 2012
@ Rameshram,
:O :O :O
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Anushil Gupta
March 20, 2012
Somehow I did not feel that disconnect. And i think it would have spoiled it for me, had he a little less lifelike and a little more a creature of myth, ‘cos then I wouldn’t really have ‘cared’ for him. As a more ‘human’ figure PST evokes so much inside we ‘humans’. The film has to be the best character study in a long time in mainstream indian cinema. And the inconsistencies as you call it, just make it so much more ‘interesting’. On one level I found it most similar to perhaps the greatest sports based character study, Raging Bull. Deniro’s character is so complex; his inconsistencies in the film intrigue as well as reveal so much, had it not been so I don’t think the film would be as resonating even today. And yet Scorcese did it without mytho-lizing lamotta. jake lamotta was flesh and blood, mysterious but yet evoking the same fears and ‘care’ in us. And too think of it now, Deniro slamming his fists against the walls and breaking down when he is jailed is so similar to PST hunting his ‘dadda’ down and yet in a way breaking down in perhaps the only scene in the whole film.
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Vasisht Das
March 21, 2012
– and all of dr.rangan, us inmates and the rest of this…this…asylum are mere jujubi footnotes to (we are not worthy, we are not worthy of) He Who May Not Be Named.
shut up and keep moving in line now.
; ]
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Manreet S Someshwar (@manreetss)
March 21, 2012
Enjoyed the review. Dhulia created some magic with Sahib, Biwi and Gangster as well though that film too faltered towards the end.
“Beehad” is the Hindi word for Chambal ravine – wonder why you’d confuse it with Bihar?
You mention Irrfan’s bewildered look; his eyes are his strongest asset as they transform him from a yokel to a lone wolf. On a related note, can you think of another actor – not necessarily contemporary – who’d have essayed this role with the same skill as Irrfan? My mind keeps throwing up Balraj Sahni but he was too good looking…
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brangan
March 21, 2012
Vashist Das: “i watched a bunch of young athletes react with foul-mouthed anger and tears after watching PST.” – where was this? And how did you know they were athletes? Just curious about the story, thanks.
Anushil Gupta: A lot of people said the same thing, that they didn’t feel the disconnect. But I’m not saying that these are “inconsistencies” at all. If anything, the film is remarkably “consistent” about the way it keeps this man at an arm’s length. What I’m saying here is (a) this quality made me more curious about PST (which is the director’s success; as he’s pulled me into the story), and (b) the transition of the first-half man to killer-dacoit didn’t work for me (that’s the one part I wish had been better explained in terms of a look inside PST’s head).
Manreet S Someshwar: You’re right. Irrfan has a singular quality, so I really cannot see anyone else playing this part in a similar fashion (except maybe Sunil Dutt or Lee Marvin, though again they were handsome men). I’m glad he got out of those inane comedies he kept doing for a while. (Nothing wrong with making money, of course. Just that it was painful to see him in those.)
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rameshram
March 21, 2012
“He Who May Not Be Named.”
Kay Kay? 😀
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Gaurav
March 21, 2012
“(b) the transition of the first-half man to killer-dacoit didn’t work for me (that’s the one part I wish had been better explained in terms of a look inside PST’s head) ”
Probably easier for someone who has seen the beehad culture from close quarters…there is a “baaghi” in almost everyone there. That is the kind of culture that the chambal area brews.
So in his case, we can see his self esteem being hurt again and again. The taunts from people around became unbearable and eventually he goes for guns.
Lot of people in that area have done that and it seems like the most obvious thing to do. You will not hear about 99 out of 100 such people because they do not survive. Pan Singh survived because he had been in the army and he was a good man with sense of humour (easily accessible for the gang)
That is what makes it such a compelling story.
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Gaurav
March 21, 2012
“Why does he choose to give an interview to the journalist when he knows he’s a wanted man?”
Dacoits used to give interviews to local newspaper to spread the terror and this was not uncommon. Why Paan Singh did that – we will never know.
It was actually after killing 9 gujjars and giving this interview that the Madhya Pradesh CM of that time gave an order to kill him at any cost. It was more to do with caste politics than anything else.
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Nimmi Rangswamy
March 21, 2012
@BR Bravo for pointing to Sunil Dutt [Mujhe Jeene Do comes to mind] I wonder how many remember his really brooding ‘dacaity’ performances than his ‘Sujata’ handsomeness. I include Mother India in the brooding bunch… Irfan makes you squirm while Dutt has naiveté …
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Vasisht Das
March 21, 2012
dr.rangan, it was in dilli.
there were half a dozen young male athletes and they were bitching animatedly about their own coaches etc during the interval and after the movie – they were quieter.
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aandthirtyeights
March 21, 2012
Not Manoj Bajpai? Or does he not have the requisite detachedness?
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venkatesh
March 21, 2012
Tangentially – MR is an “old” movie director… his films from Roja onwards are too directorial /over-directed, there is no joy in them. Everything is very precisely albeit prettily laid out. I am not sure what to call this phenomenon – just old i guess. He is the Meryl Streep of Directing. Sure its very technical , polished and admirable but hey you are directing……
I bet even if he wanted to , he would not be able to make another Pallavi-Anupallavi, Mouna Raagam or Agni Natchathiram.
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KayKay
March 22, 2012
““He Who May Not Be Named.”
Kay Kay?”
I don’t speak parsel tongue 🙂
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rameshram
March 22, 2012
damn you voldermot!
(taking out his wand and casting spells ) asa nisi masa!!!!!!
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Pranit
March 23, 2012
Baradwaj ji. I understand your qualms bout the transition to a dacoit. felt the same and infact I asked the same thing to tigmanshu after a show where he was present.. He ruefully agreed that he had shot a ton loads of material, the film had to be cut the way it was for a multiplex audience..which in hindsight he agreed turned out to be the right thing for the movie…
it might have strayed into the gritty exploitation bit than the rustic, funny slightly uplifting movie it turned out to be… He wasn’t hoping for more than a few 3-4 star reviews and a week and a half long run..the movie is still running strong in its 4th week.. may be if he had shown some more of PST’s struggles like done in Bandit Queen, ppl wud have turned away..
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Bandi Saroj Kumar
March 23, 2012
sir,
i have observed most of the media giving poor [in their own “Geometry box” calculations] review abt this movie… and the movie’s success report shocked them all… and u proved once again the best at reviewing a movie with heart [not just by using a “journalist’s geometry box” ] Hope u will stand as an idol for the coming generation of journalism. thanq
BSK [Dir of PORKKALAM]
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Ramya
March 24, 2012
One sad thing about true life sketches….You cant make them more interesting than they really are… I see this as a not so subtle hint at glorifying the twists a man’s life takes..those that were driven by his own decisions…perhaps a result of his circumstances…. It is impossible not to like this portrayal of the man in this movie… but there is this choice to discount what perhaps was added for the awe value… that done, what are we left with?
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vijay
March 26, 2012
“I couldn’t help wondering if we’d be so willing to overlook his opaqueness had we been told that this was pure fiction. Would we, then, demand a more convincing stretch of transition, so that it didn’t look like major life decisions were made during the interval, while we were away?”
Actually you could write a piece on all those films that benefit from having “based on a true story” appear at the start of the film that helps in lending gravitas straightaway, the easy way. And also movies based/inspired from Mahabharat or Ramayan and such that leans on those epics to pique the audiences(like Raavanan or Dalapathi).
If not for the Ramayan connection, what Karthik does in Raavanan would appear silly in a lot of scenes.
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Di
April 1, 2012
No doubt BR (the reviewer) belongs to the multiplex tribe who can write lines like this in his review,”He worships his mother (and he compares his country to his mother).” HaHa!
If you couldn’t smell the soil of chambal, if you couldn’t understand the character (of PST), if you had to still keep analysing “whys” of becoming a Baaghi (not Bihari), then you are indeed a college-highly-educated-moron good for multiplex movies. It is like asking why did Henry the 8th had to marry 8 times and why did he have-to have executed his 2 wives?! That there was not enough *reasons* to do so and certainly not “well explained” in any of the movies or serials…lol.
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Di
April 1, 2012
“Bihar has baaghis, rebels”
This line is priceless. what a “review” this is!!
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Dee
April 5, 2012
**Long comment alert**
Most of the film, well into the second half, is Paan Singh’s story told in his own words, his life seen through his own eyes or as understood by the reporter who interviews him. As a futile ‘what if’ exercise, I wonder if the film would have better consistency if Paan Singh flitted in and out of focus for the audience after the said interview. I don’t know if the multiple sequences with various people in his life advising him to surrender himself really add value to the narrative. It might have been interesting if, just as we have our lens trained on Paan Singh himself up to this point, the view point had in the latter part shifted to the police officer on a mission to catch the dacoit.
Perhaps, a swift execution of the last part with more focus on the process of tracing the gang and trapping them, would have done greater justice to the tragic end of Paan Singh than the more cinematic last half-hour with him meeting each of his near ones to bid farewell.
Hindi cinema has a long tradition of putting too much effort into humanizing the anti-hero to retain audience sympathy. Paan Singh Tomar for all its earthiness and authenticity, falls for this trope too. A long-drawn death sequence is a staple of this tradition. Though the real-life encounter of Paan Singh Tomar did last 12 hours, Himanshu Dhulia could have easily avoided the heavy dialogue-baazi and emotionalizing in the final sequence.
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Radhika
April 15, 2012
““b) the transition of the first-half man to killer-dacoit didn’t work for me (that’s the one part I wish had been better explained in terms of a look inside PST’s head) ”
I didn’t find the transition difficult to believe. He is depicted as an emotional and impulsive man even in the first half who often reacts with his gut and with a feudal response rather than an intellectual one – his move to the sports division is motivated by (literally) his gut, his acquiesence to his coach’s request was movitated by chivalry in protecting the coach’s daughter, his flinging off his shoes in mid-race an impulsive gesture, his self-loathing at not being able to take part in the war a product of his feudal upbringing – so it was all of a piece when he reacted as he did. What was unusual, and probably a product of his hiatus from the village when he was “civilized” by the army, was his restraint when first provoked and his attempt to sort things out through consitutional means even when his son was bashed up. After his home/fort was invaded and his mother assaulted, the gift of his mother’s bangles – there was no way he could go back. And then, each incident led onto the next – after his dadda was killed, how could he refuse to wreak vengeance on the Gujjars? You could see the regret and guilt on his face as the boat retreats from the massacre and that is why he gives the interview – to justify his actons and explain that he was not a “hatyara”, when of course, he was. Till then he could rationalise his actions as being movitated by his family feud and a thumb-nosing at the system but the Gujjars was pure butchery and that was a shift he had to adjust his own self-image to.
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Siddharth Saxena
May 11, 2012
v interesting analysis. as always waited to see how you’d see this film, and while i may have remembered to read this rather late, i felt there are a few things that could be explained.
a. the transition could seem fractured to someone watching a dacoit film and not a film about someone almost wholly ressurrected through a few newspaper cuttings and local legend. even the sports authority of india has little or no records of the man, so i sense dhulia would have feared fictionalising any internal angst by attempting to go into his head.
b. about the longing for his days in the army ‘AD’, and not so much for his wife, there is a strange sangfroid the people of the chambal possess. for my newspaper story, i met the extended family which gets killed by pst, and one of the sons (of the man killed when on his tractor) actually introduced himself with “My father killed by paan singh” and he was half-grinning! incindentally, he’s the sarpanch at same bhidosa village. obviously then, the womenfolk understanding their place in the scheme of things is par for the course.
c. a cussing north indian coach is commonplace and almost acceptable — just as virat kohli’s on-field swearing in most parts of north india will be — though pst’s objection to the maa ki gaali came across as strange, given than expletives form the dialect in most parts of MP. (rem’ber, the lovable rogue duo in ishqiya were from bhopal)
d. re the newspaper interview. i’ve seen a cutting kept lovingly by pst’s son where the local paper’s actually reproduced contents of a extorting threat made to a local rival. priceless!
finally, at the risk of shamelessly plugging my own story:
http://www.timescrest.com/sports/who-was-this-man-7394
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Siddharth Saxena
May 11, 2012
actually if you could appreciate the transition of amitabh in ganga ki saugandh — from a bumbling simpleton to a cold-blooded killer, then the pst change shouldn’t be so difficult.
and surely lee marvin, much more than sunil dutt.
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v.
May 26, 2012
Yeah. Tomar was offered a job as a sports coach in the army. And his son was also in the army. so why didn’t he just move out of Chambal?
And that feeble attempt at foreshadowing — he wants water before the first race and the coach refuses him — I don’t think I bought that? Why was his coach on the sidelines following him?
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vishal yogi
June 3, 2012
Once again, a very delayed comment 🙂
For a change, I went to see this movie before the article was posted. And I saw it twice, the second time with subtitles at a PVR cinema hall.
Everything has been discussed and dissected in the above article and comments, so I’ll just touch on the two aspects that always set my heart racing.
The first was, when the screen transitions to the relatively-unmolested-by-modern-development-and-progress India in the 1950’s. Ah, it warmed the cockles of the heart to see both Nature (as in lush greenery) as well as rustic culture quite intact.
And the second was the haunting birha ‘O Banwasi’, that never quite occupied centerstage except when personifying the emotions felt by her (when he’s just back fresh as a new recruit, and then the last time before he leaves….for good)
In my heart (yes foolish heart over logical mind), I was whispering fiercely – you idiot, just quit and ride off with her into the sunset.
Yeah, not realistic when the ego driven by societal/cultural forces and norms is at play. And yet, the romantic me, was chanting along – surrender! not for yourself, but for her – who has waited for so long.
And later on google, I got to learn about birhas – though I am too bored of western rhythm and beat, this was alluring – a birha sung with such longing.
Ah well, Bhojpuri is on my learning list after I finish perfecting Hindi/Urdu 🙂
Here is the youtube link to the song,
It has the translated lyrics, but I’ll paste that here for posterity – so that the reader might perhaps be inspired to learn Bhojpuri too 🙂
————–
O my renegade lover
Come back home
Please come back home
The pangs of separation blaze through my heart.
My mind is listless.
Without you, my days and nights burn with desire
Come back home,
the moon of my night sky.
Please come back home.
Every droplet of separation torments my soul.
The bird of my heart cries its melancholic song.
Without you, my home and courtyard bask in eternal solitude.
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gajendra
August 21, 2012
very nice film.
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Saurabh Sharma
January 9, 2017
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mlost
May 3, 2020
The world would never be same again with no Irrfan in it. 😥
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