Suraj Ka Satva Ghoda

This was the time when I was in 5^th or 6^th standard. We just wrapped up our cricket game at 4/4:30pm and rushed to watch the movie on Doordarshan.

DD was the only option we had that time. Saturday a regional movie and Sunday, by default a Hindi one.

DD used to show a small trailer of which movie will be featured on upcoming Sunday.

Knowing that Amarish Puri is in the movie and showing a white horse, we kids thought, there will be a good fight in the movie. Other cast, was not that famous among us that  time.

We returned to home, freshen up and sat to watch the movie.

Within 10-15 minutes of watching it, we felt bore and a feel of ‘getting cheated’ came to us.

It was not a proper “Amrish Puri in a villain role” type movie. We thought the Sunday got wasted.

Cut back to the news of passing of Shyam Benegal ji. In last 2 days read so much about him in the newspaper and social media, especially on Twitter, people from media fraternity giving the few experiences during their interactions with him.

Many of those gave a list of movies, of which “Suraj Ka Satva Ghoda” is the one which took me to that memory of lost Sunday.

I have seen many of his movies, Ankur, Manthan, Mandi etc. I started loving character movies or so called parallel movies long back.

The reality, the facts and the way they put it as it is, makes me like those movies.

So, I watched “Suraj Ka Satva Ghoda” on Youtube yesterday night.

I think this particular movie is a bit different from many of his movies I watched.

There is just one story, but filmed as a collage of multiple stories and the shooting done is shown in bits and pieces adjusting to the story based on the narrator keeps narrating to his friends.

It’s a different movie and really shown in a different way.

The beauty of such so called parallel movies is, rarely they show the things like “they lived happily there after”. There is no stretched end which intentionally made the film end on the good and happy terms like in all commercial films.

The facts are put, which we as a common man see around in most blunt way.

Whenever I watch such movies, for few days, the mind doesn’t come out of that shock because of the story or the end of that movie.

Lt. Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Lt. Amrish Puri, Lt. Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Neena Gupta are few big names in the acting industry. They all feel privileged to work under him.

There are no words to put his work in these small words, but thought to put it here anyway as a tribute to Sir.

RIP Benegal sir!