Piku, the movie – a review and some rumination

Just happened to watch 'Piku'. What an amazing movie! Splendid acting by Amitabh in his own inimitable style. Though I have not been watching many Hindi movies lately, I never knew that Deepika Padugone was capable of such a fine acting. Just one or two, I had seen had sadly showcased her as an attractive personality for her look, figure and fitness. Irfan in his own casual style is another superb actor. I laughed and laughed throughout the movie. A simple theme woven marvelously into a hilarious two-hour movie.

In the end, I wondered myself, "Am I not behaving somewhat similar, now that I am 65+?"

Old age is something unique to me. For that matter, every stage in life is unique in its own way with its own charm and chagrins. One needs to experience them. Most of us don’t remember our young childhood days, for most part. We have only vague memories about them. But those memories and the impressions of those memories – many of which illogical - deeply ingrained in our subconscious had been ruling our entire life, without our cognizance. As growing young adults, we are obsessed with our dreams and pangs of life and its associated responsibilities. During middle age, we are overwhelmed with our responsibilities at home, at work and in the circle of our society, besides the need to be competitive – staying ahead in the race for what we don’t really comprehend.

Only when we grow old, we start maturing; I don’t say we mature – the process of maturing starts. The memories of our life come back. We chew them, evaluate them, understand them, grasp their implications, brood over them, judge ourselves and others based on our revised evaluations and so on. Some of us suddenly become panicky - feeling insecure, insignificant, redundant, and not wanted. And, some of us can’t digest our having become less significant and we want to reinforce our importance, we begin behaving tough, demanding, cynic, questioning, suspecting, dominating, and so on.

Our ancient sages have advocated a beautiful path for everyone, to make life easy, simple and less stressful: Artha, Kama, Dharma and Moksha margs. Though, in some traditions they have changed the paradigm to Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha.

Old age is that span of our life where, having fulfilled our earthly responsibilities to ourselves, our kith and kin, our society, having passed the stages of artha, kama and dharma, we attempt detachment. The detachment may never get completed in our lifetime, but yet, we all try in our own way. Old age is the only time when we can truly enjoy the freedom – freedom from all attachments. Freedom comes only when we have no choices, my guru had said once – not the reverse, as most of us mistakenly believe. One has to deeply think about this to understand its significance. Freedom is only when we truly realize that our life is nothing but happiness and there are no choices to it.

After watching the movie, Piku, I suddenly went ruminating – comparing myself with the characters in the movie. The cool headed, straight and blunt character of Irfan is really very impressive.

Thanks to the producers and the entire team that made PIKU.