Gulaal -e- Kashyap!!

Jalte jalte rakh hui hai saaari
Khak jaisi be wajah ji umar saaari
Kahan Chali gai hai Saali Khushi
Kahan Chali gai hai Saali Khushi.
(Excerpts from a 'Saali Khushi'-DevD)

I watched DevD twice about a month back at the time of its release.This is probably the only movie which I watched twice in theatre.My Scrooge mind somehow allow me to do this without any hesitation. Since the inception of this blog I wanted to write a tribute on the clinical masterpiece called DevD. But then I thought what more I could write on that, wasn’t enough has already been written on it? If you follow PFC, then you will find Dev D was the flavour of the month and I do believe in every sense of the word that it deserves every accolades that is coming its way. Anurag Kashyap is undoubtedly one of the best filmmakers we have in Bollywood.

Yesterday I watched another Anurag kashyap’s masterpiece, Gulaal, which I have been eagerly waiting since DevD. Set in Rajpur, ostensibly in Rajasthan,Gulaal tells a story of a timid, gullible and subdued man, who comes to university for doing post graduation in law but , got caught in quagmire of Ragging, Politics and Rajputana Mutiny.I really don’t want to be a plot-spoiler here and would not be jotting the plot of the movie.At one level I guess,I would not be able to do justice to its dark ,complex and captivating storyline.


















I believe what set apart Gulaal were its real, engrossing and mystirical characters and performances. Perhaps these were the things that make movie Satya what it is today. Piyush Mishra, who played the role of Prithvi Bana, played one of most compelling role I remember in recent past. Prithvi has stayed in London in the 1970s and has been educated in Cambridge University. He is a great admirer of John Lennon ,that to such an extent that he wore Lennon’s locket around his neck. Educated in London, he sees how progressive the world is. But since he is so liberal, he is under house arrest. So at home, he gets involved in theatre, composing and writing songs. He becomes insane towards the end. An unexplained half painted clown normally accompanies him and the clown has the same mystrical impact on the movie which perhaps those three dancers (twilight Players) have in DevD.Piyush Mishra also crafted the spectacular soundtrack of the movie.”O ri Duniya” is a brilliant contemporary version of Sahir Ludhianvi’s song from Pyasa.


There were others who also had very powerful performances. Key Key mennon did every bit of justice to the role of Dukey Bana,Senapati of Rajputana revolution. Abhimanyu Singh (Ransa) set the screen scrorching with his charismatic and impulsive short role. Ayesha Mohan who plays the role of Kiran,is guitar strumming power hungry perky girl who can go length to erase her illegimate past and be included in Rajput community.I was though a bit disappointed with Raja Choudhury(Dilip Singh), the protagonist whose role it seems was not clearly defined and whose exasperation in last few scenes was not easily understandable.


Overall I do agree with Anurag when he said that this is his most angry movie. The indigation of its characters were easily visible and seems surprising quite pratical in democratic backdrop. DevD had a different genre of its own and Gulaal created its own genre with its impressive pragmatism. With the kind of movies Anurag is making, he is creating a different class of his own in Bollywood.In a way I do believe he is fighting a similar battle ,fought by Howard Roark in Ayan Rand ‘s Magnus Opus Fountainhead ,against streamlined Hindi cinema and I would be more then happy to say “Who the hell is complaining?”.

I would like to end this post with few indellible lines from song “Duniya” from Gulaal.

"Wo kehte hai…aalim yeh kehta wahan ishwar hai,
Faazil yeh kehta wahan allah hai,
Kabur yeh kehta wahan issa hai,
Manzil yeh kehti tab insaan se ki,
Tumhari hai tum hi sambhalo yeh duniya,
Yeh ujde hue chand baasi charago,
Tumhare yeh kale iraado ki duniya,
Ohh ri duniya, oh ri duniya…
Hoo ri duniya…"