Chrysalis

It was a Friday night, I was pretty confused about how to spend the time after dinner. Whether to study or to watch a movie. I chose to do the latter, and this time I  watched a French movie- Monsieur Lazhar. This is the first movie, I saw without seeing any reviews or having any expectations from IMDb. To my surprise, the movie turned out to be a brilliant and beautiful. The movie went beyond just being a film, it touches upon the concept of exposure of adult world and its issues to the naïve child’s world.

The premise of the movie is a school teacher commits suicide in a classroom, and subsequent spread of the shocking news among children, and the effect of the news on the perception of a children. Moreover, a new teacher who has fled his native country Algeria fills up the empty spot created in school. The new teacher Bashir Lazhar concerts different ways to defuse the tension created by the horrendous events, is how the film plays out itself. The pacing of the film is quite good, no scene is extended unnecessarily to showcase the tension, but the director chooses indirect ways to show the tension in school. Moreover as the movie ended, it left a lasting impact on me, and it made me tear-eyed. Bashir Tazhar is a beautiful yet tragic character facing his own demons and a troubling past. His wife and daughter are supposedly killed in an accident/murder when their apartment burns down, and so as to ensure safe passage, Lazhar flees Algeria for France. The overall theme of the film is interesting, and deals with how a child perceives the problems of the adult world, and also of whether it is healthy to expose the child to a different adult world.

This film indeed has beautiful quotes!

Suicide and Death are in turn a complex issues, and it is extremely difficult concepts for a child to understand. Children are usually raised in a peaceful and friendly environments, where violence is completely absent, good always wins over evil, there are closures to each tale they listen to and there is an absolute scale of right and wrong. This is rarely the case, adult world is filled with violence, no absolute scale of right and wrong, but rather a grayish notion of what things are right and wrong, and most importantly with NO PROPER CLOSURES and meaning to events that happen in real time. Lazhar tries to discuss the suicide openly with children, so that answers could be given to child’s innocent questions about the complexity of the problem, but he is heckled and brushed off by the school administration. He too faces racial discrimination as he is from a different place. A scene where a little girl Alice reads out an essay, which she has written about her deceased teacher is chilling and it rather highlights an important point. Children have the ability to correctly judge the adult world, but the question of whether they could handle pressure of the complex adult world is also important. That’s exactly what the film deals with. Moreover, answering difficult questions asked by children about the intricacy of the adult world is also necessary, and well there are no easy answers, yet there are right and wrong answers. The feelings of grief and guilt are also foreign for the naïve children, and these concepts are dealt with in specific scenes. The poetic metaphor of the last scene is heart wrenching and beautiful. Monsieur Lazhar narrates a fable he has written. A Chrysalis is hanging from a trees’ branch, and the tree takes necessary precautions so that no harm would come to it. But a fire ravages the forest and burns the tree, the tree survives the fire, but it couldn’t save the chrysalis from death. The tree questions its own actions and feels guilty of overprotecting and pampering the chrysalis, and thinks that it would have being better if he had freed it and let the butterfly explore her way through all the dangers the jungle posed.

It completely depends upon us how we want a child growing up!

It is completely up to us, whether we want to continuously protect the young and naïve chrysalis to a point of handicap, or to let it go, and make it competent enough by answering the difficult questions it poses.

The Grey Photograph

We take photographs to capture memories. It helps us capture past times, times that will never return. We all feel that sense of accomplishment and excitement when we take a good photograph. But I want to ask you this one question, what is a good photograph? A photograph that truly captures the moment? Once in a while, we take such a photograph, and when we look back at it, we fell accomplished and happy. There are some photos, which not only capture the moment, but they capture the sharpness and brutality of reality. I took one such photo, when I was cycling back home. As I was cycling back home, I saw this scene, and thought to myself, “This would be an awesome scene to click”, so I stopped, parked my cycle, took out my cell phone and clicked away. What I didn’t realize at that instance was that this would be one photo that I would remember for a long time.

As you can see, there is a small house in a depression of ground, this ground is not dry, but it is partly covered by water. This made me think of the life we live. How our surroundings are a manifestation of our thoughts and perspective that we hold dear. That depression on the ground is the spectrum (range of our mind), and that lone house signifies us. If you imagine the house to be a living being, like a tree which cannot move, it doesn’t really know what is beyond the border edge. It doesn’t really realize how beautiful and wonderful this life is, it only sees what the mind reflects. The moral this photograph taught me was to never narrow down our sight rather our vision, always keep an open point of view. You can’t be like that house, you have to more than that, you have be like the trees that surround the house, ever growing, and having a broad perspective of the overall world. Ironical to what I captured, we are unfortunately like that house in depression, which is happy to see things that are directly in front of it, but completely ignorance of how vast the world is beyond the boundaries. We should always remember one thing in our life, we SHOULD not be closed minded individuals, with a rigid set of ideals, but rather we should be open for inspiration, we should have the capability to see beyond the walls that surround us. Remember, there are thousands of things to envision beyond the ordinary things right in front of you.

 

Neutralistic approach

As I was going through my Facebook newsfeed, i came across this video- My Choice- which stars Deepika Padukone, and 99 other women. People from India, who are active on social media, or at least watch the news know about how viral this video has become, for those of you who haven’t seen it, here the link.

This video as its title goes talks about women’s freedom to choose whatever she wants; it talks about women empowerment and primarily talks about gender equality. The direction of the video is amazing, mind-blowing and powerful, but the main ambiguous aspect of this video is its content. I want you to watch the video, and have an opinion about it, but in this piece I would like to express my opinion on it.

In the recent light of events taking place in India- India’s Daughter documentary, etc. this video was clearly made against moral pollicising in India, which lies on the far end of male chauvinism. Some statements made in this video are a bit confusing (To have sex outside marriage- My Choice) and the nature of this video borders on the line that separates Feminism and Femi-nazism. The message of the video is simple- let women be free to make their choices and have freedom, but unfortunately it puts its finger on all the wrong places. It questions the fundamental aspect of a relationship rather it questions the very ideals- Trust, Respect ,etc. personally I don’t believe in the movement of male chauvinism, neither do I believe in the movement of Feminism, I believe in some simple ideals which my parent have taught me- respect for the other person regardless of the gender, equality for each and every person and also in opportunity, trust, sincerity towards a person and last but not the least- honesty towards a fellow human being. Each of these above mentioned movements are highly unbalanced they consider the opposite to be unfair, and convey a justification for their ill treatment. This is NOT right, the main aspect we are forgetting in all this is the virtues and ideals our parent give us- Trust, Honesty, Sincerity, Equality and respect- all these aspects are gender neutral and I believe these ideals. I call myself Neutralist, until and unless we start believing in these small but crucial ideals, we CANNOT solve the problem of gender inequality and exploitation. As this video by Deepika Padukone was making its rounds on social media, someone directed a male version of My Choice, which was made in response to her video. Unless we stop lashing at each other, we can’t solve the real problem.

The only way out of this, is to be neutralist- a person who believes in ideals and virtues than any of the movements- which does nothing but enrages the opposite sex.