The Geography of Swades
The Geography of Swades
Ok I am a sucker for Shahrukh from his Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman days! (Nana Patekar stole a piece of my heart too in that film). Anyways, getting back to Swades, I coaxed husband dear to come and watch a Hindi movie. And thankfully for the no-nonsense script, we actually discussed a movie in like ages! The last one that drove us through a discussion was The Terminal.
India is a difficult idea to script. One can never start at the very beginning as there is no beginning (anaadi) and impossible to end (anantha). Ashutosh Gowarikar has done a creditable job of using strong symbols to represent a country that has a jaggarnaut of a tradition and a great resource- its people within its geo-political fold or spread across the globe as part of its diaspora. He throws in Kaveriamma fought over by two people (or two states?!). Of course it would have been more credible had the movie been set in the areas of Dharwad (north Karnataka/ Maharashtra border). I dont know if the Konkan railway has changed the accessibility of that area. But when we toured Goa in the early 90's we had to shuffle from broadgauge to meter and see some really "rural" sites. The southern areas of Goa, like Mangeshi and such villages truly retain much of their rural flavour. Getting back to the credibility of the film- as a piece of theatre, it is unparelleled, but on celluloid, mis-en-scene is very important. To make the cellphone/ wireless not function properly, UP and 200 km away from Delhi is a bad choice. The Gangetic plains have some of the best tracts of connectivity in India. Get into a train from Delhi to Kolkota and u can see people chatting in their mobiles from the beginning to the end of their journey! Go to the Deccan Plateau or the Chambal valley for poor connectivity. Tamil Nadu (Dharmapuri/ Salem district)as an option is out as no brahmin worth his salt would ever dare to give a lecture or even involve himself in the village panchayat- he will be arrested under souped up charges (if not killed by the PMK first) and both the DMK and AIDMK will do enough brahmin bashing to finish off the entire film crew. Mohan Bhargava, you lucked out being a brahmin from UP.
Geethli, the village school teacher, symbolises the post Aishwarya India- manicured nails and all in the middle of the village- hey we watch cable too, yeh dil mange more would be the reply. I remember watching this ad the last time I was in India, for some cola where this guy goes in search of drinking water and gets off his vehicle walking towards a village belle with a pot. She opens the lid and he cups his hands and lo and behold gets a soda bottle! Kewl u say, sick i say! Well, MNC's have for sure put their "chaap" on the rural belt even if it has not been appropriately documented in Swades. Even in the "poor, undeveloped" interiors of Orissa, kids know what Pepsi and Coke are (from my visit there in 2002). They would rather spend their ill earned or hard earned moolah on that bottle of poison than drink coconut water.
Unless of course Ashutosh wrote this script before Manmohan ji brought about economic liberalisation. And the irony is that he couldnt produce this script until after economic liberalisation and Lagaan's success! LOL!
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