Siddhartha

I remember that it was when I was about fourteen and doing my 9 th class that the Hindi dubbed version of a film purported to be on sex education ran to full mad house in Thpuram. The film was titled “Gupt Gyan”. I was quite scared and even afraid to slip into the theater to see the film as the subject was taboo and anathema. There were many afternoons on the way back from school when I loitered with my heart wrenching, around the Cinema where it was being exhibited. The movie I was told by the lucky and brave ones, (I then realised during from those days that, ‘luck favours the brave”) who managed to sneak in and see the film, that it graphically had many scenes that were revelation , but continued to be only mystery for me.
  But I may have encountered difficulty at the theater gates as the movie was strictly for Adults and one must, the bare minimum have whiskers that tell one is an adult. I did not then have even stray hair on my cheeks that would tell my adulthood.

 “Siddhartha” based on Herman Hesse’s novel was a daring film with brave scenes ( those days) ,with Simi Grewal and Sasi Kapoor.  But the version which I managed to see in the cinema was mauled by the censors.

Those days as folks would know

, no internet, no Google to surf into pornographic sites or Wikipedia manuals on female physiology and anatomy. And those films that were released allegedly with a big Adult content were all flattering to deceive. Sex and anything to do with the subject was fit enough to invite abomination. The only salvaging saviour that provided any insight into the area and life which was still elusive, a shadow and hence inquisitive, were those proscribed magazines that were sold at shady dark street corners. And it was then one day that “The Venus in India” landed in my lap. I may not have devoured another book as I did that novel. But again it was like the film sound track in the All India Radio when you compare to a visual treat of internet and television.But some time ago,when I tried to read the novel again ,I closed the book unable to go beyond a few pages. That is not to decry the novel.

In contrast, I wonder at the burst of deluge that can capably drown an adolescent that prevail now in the form of information of all kind. The question that sometimes I asked myself until a few years ago, when Aravind & Radhika surfed the NET, are they being bludgeoned by materials and information that they cannot fathom and comprehend? Or have their brains evolved with the evolutionary  cycle to absorb  information that come to them which is  at least a decade before  used to entice me when I was their age.

Now, in the times we live, the individual must be getting information about matters that were damned once upon a time. But has the society in the macro sense of the word and the individual, changed to accept white as white and black as white and black?
 No, is the answer. There are still  misplaced moralistic discourses replete with hypocrisy that it stinks like the untended pit of excreta.

I was quite astonished after watching host of Hollywood and English films in the past six months. The extent of explicit portrayal of physical intimacy between man and woman is powerfully brave. Even for a liberal free for all society that exists in much of West. The reality, be it violation or intimacy sinks into the viewer. Thespians that enact the roles,male and female are all renowned and highly acclaimed names. When the plot demands they act, and moralistic barriers hauled up by society is ignored. Justice is done to the story and picturisation does not deceive. Look what Anna Hathaway did for the film “Love and other Drugs”, Noami Watts in “21 Grams”, Kate Winslet in “Revolutionary Road” and many other acclaimed actors. And the lead men actors in these films are no less insipid when it comes to a demanding sequence. In contrast, early last year, I was privy to a few days of shooting of the new avatar of a Malayalam film that in its earlier incarnation more than thirty five years ago kicked up hullabaloo, controversy and raised eyebrows. Though artistic,I see that was an average creation.

I could also have lunch on the sets with the lead actress, who is singled out for powerful and controversial roles that needs bravery and gumption. She is from a respectable family and well educated almost winning the Miss India a few years ago. Speaking to her gave me the feel that this is no chicken hearted actor, but someone who is not afraid to portray the role as justifiably as it should be. And she maintained that professional commitment and dedication what as actor she must, she would and to hell with the squeaking, weak kneed moralistic hypocrites. The film had scenes that required much explicit content and peevishly the director and the producer back tracked. And the movie lost much aesthetic charm it ought to have had.

The very same society and people, who turn tongue in cheek observations, watch these films with perverted fascination and miserably failing to grasp the depth of the work.. It is like the psyche that maligns and disparages female medical nurses while forgetting the respectable, service they render relentlessly.