BLACK

After a long time I went to a theatre to watch a movie. And it was worth all the money. BLACK is one of the best movies that I have watched in recent times. It is certainly a movie, far different from the usual ones that we see being produced in Bollywood. In fact, it was so touching that I sat there shedding buckets of tears. Many have criticised the movie for various reasons, but as far as I am concerned, none of them, even if they are valid, should deter someone from going to the cinema to watch it.

For those who have no idea what the movie is about: it is based on the life of Helen Keller. The central plot of the movie is the relationship between a student and the teacher. The early stages of the movie show how difficult it is for a student to accept a teacher, even if the teacher has only the student's interest in mind. It shows how, for a teacher to do his job, there needs to be co-operation from every quarter. It shows how much a teacher cares for the student, and the fact that the love of the teacher is unconditional. Most importantly, it shows that without a Guru it impossible to see light, and we are doomed to be in eternal darkness. The various aspects of a Guru-Shishya relation is so well depicted that unless one watches the movie, one cannot understand them.

Being what I am, I could not help relating this to our own condition in life. After all, we are all blind even if we have eyes. We are blind to so many things. We are ignorant. We continue to live like this, in a state of ignorance, all our lives and die without freeing ourselves from the darkness. The movie in a subtle way shows that without a Guru who can show us the light by being with us at each ste of our life, we have no way out. As Michelle says in the movie, "Knowledge is my teacher", which according to me summarises the entire idea.