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Friday, September 12, 2008

Music

"If music be food for the soul...... Play on...."
As someone famously said. Or words to that effect. Makes complete sense to me.

When the mind need to rest, play on...To soothe and to calm, "Play on"....

What comes to mind, is an unforgettable vignette, a scene from Shashi Kapoor's movie, 'Kalyug'.
Loosely based on the 'Mahabharata', the movie was one of its kind and brilliantly directed by Shyam Benegal.

There's this particular moment when Shashi Kapoors character 'Karan' discovers that he's the illegitimate son of the Matriarch of the family that he's vowed to destroy.To do that, he's set an un-stoppable and irreversible chain of events in motion. And then the moment when his mother reveals the truth to him. And his reaction..

Coming home, he shuts all doors and windows, puts on a particular piece of intrumental music-violin (?), curls up into a foetal position on his bed, where he stays...as the camera zooms in, closer, and then pulls back, to give us an aerial shot. Simply heart-wrenching, and incomparable.

Something similar appealed to me in 'Junoon', also produced by Shashi Kapoor and directed by Shyam Benegal. The very last scene, when the main protagonist, gallops like a madman, just to have a glimpse of the woman that he's passionately loved, a Britisher, played by Nafisa Ali and is now losing...to events of the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857.

That particular moment, their great unspoken, mutual love and then his turning away-
Forever....
Accompanied by music that tears at one's heartstrings ...

Music, really does say it all....

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