Remembering Pather Panchali

I love Trains.

 Given the fact that in my 4 years of my college life, I have covered more that 16,000 Km on wheels, even today every moment on railroad is so speacial and awaited for me.  

For some reason each time I’m on a train passing through vast fields in the Indian hinterland I’m reminded of the unforgettable train scene from Satyajit Ray’s classic Pather Panchali when Apu and his sister Durga ‘discover’ a train in a field of Kaash flowers.

Born into an accomplished Brahmin family himself, second to none in their achievements in the Arts, Ray’s Pather Panchali(Song of the Road) is a story of a poor Brahmin family from rural Bengal in the early twentieth century and charts the story of Harihar Ray’s impoverished family struggling to make ends meet. In a backdrop as grim as this the film belies the seeming futility of their existence with its portrayal of Harihar Ray’s children, Durga and Apu, as alive to possibilities of life, and ever ready to imbue meaning into the simplest of things that simply being alive had to offer.

Riding on their unaffected childhood innocence that manifests in their discovery of the world beyond their immediate circle of life the film unravels time to the pace of Durga and Apu’s life, and nowhere more so when Durga and Apu find themselves in a field of Kaash flowers, possibly drawn to the humming of high tension electricity wires, only to hear an unfamiliar sound carried their way on the breeze. Never having heard a train before Durga stills herself, her eyes having averted to a non existent visual frame before her, only the occasional jerk of her face in the direction of the sound indicating she was seized of the unfamiliar, and Apu having gone quiet, looking for cues in Durga’s absent gaze presses his face to the high tension electric metal pole even as the Kaash flowers sway gently to the breeze now bringing the mystery to the fore.

Seconds turn to minutes and as Durga breaks into a run to meet the mystery, Appu follows her. There among the head high flowers they pause unsure of the direction the sound was coming from, their heads still, the sound grows louder, and in the split passage of a moment on the threshold of unfolding the unknown, realization dawns, and their heads jerk to their right just in time to catch sight of thick black smoke in the distance gusting back above the heads of Kaash flowers, the engine and coaches hidden from view. Pushed back by the force of air yielding to the train’s momentum as it hurtles across the plains, the swirling black smoke might as well have been a demon snorting rage. Appu breaks into a run to meet his defining moment as he comes face to face with a steam locomotive for the first time in his life.

In that one moment of sprinting innocence I understood the Indian hinterland from a different perspective and my travels by Indian Railways were never to be the same again.

And yes, when back to my world and hunting for this artistic iconic movie of Indian Cinematography on google, I came across a postage stamp dedicated to this film. It might seem purely out context but I cannot avoid myself from posting it. Here it goes……

Why Being Simple is Complicated

And so I spent another day wasting a lot of time online, supposedly working, but actually doing a lot else. I have turned a little bit of a net junkie, though I will not, will not admit it! Following one link after another, I came across some articles on the Amish people in theUS. I often tend to read up a lot on some topic that catches my fancy (there is a word for that sort of reading, I just can’t remember what it is now) and while doing so I ended up watching a documentary on them. It was specifically about the practice of ‘rum-springa’ (loosely translated to mean ‘running around’) that allows teenagers to live like the rest of the world for about a year or more. After that they have to choose to either be baptized or leave the community if they prefer not to follow the customs of the Amish.

Now for those of you who haven’t heard of them, the Amish are an ultra conservative community that is mainly known for simplistic living and for shunning all modern technologies, including electricity, cars and communication devices. Children study only up to class 8 after which they are baptized and work in the fields from dawn to dusk. The patriarchal system of society emphasizes on family, the church and the community and discourages much contact with theHigh People or The Englishers as the non-Amish people are called. Predictably, there are several cases of crimes of hate against these people who continue to drive around in horse driven buggies and wear 17thcentury clothes.

Watching the videos and reading up on them, I got thinking (what else could you expect, eh?). I remember vaguely an old Readers’ Digest article on them, talking about how they churn fresh butter every morning. The pictures were taken at dawn, a cow and some Amish people around a table. Addicted that we are to modern amenities, I wondered how easy (or not) it would be to go to a simpler life. No, I don’t mean the Amish way, which would be rather regressive in these times. But then, hear me out here, will you, do we really need all that we burden ourselves with?

There was a time when I was mighty interested in the idea of kibbutz and even contemplated visiting one. I would be the last person to be comfortable living without my personal space but these experiments in alternative living (I believe ‘conscious living’ is the fancier word these days) have long fascinated me. A kibbutz is where you work for the community, where the kids live in separate quarters and there is no concept of individual space. I wonder then what role individualism plays in the creative process of a life. If all things are for and by the collective, would creativity still thrive? Or in the other case of places like Auroville, where nothing belongs to the individual, would it be an ideal field for a creative process to take root in? I have often wondered.

In that light, I sometimes wish (call me regressive, or perhaps idealistic) for ignorance. Ignorance of how big the world is. Ignorance of how many ideas there are. A simple life comes with simpler concerns at least. But when you have seen the other side from over the window, it is just too complicated to let go. To let go of complications in life. To choose the simple over the so-not-simple. To find my way out of another tangle that I have landed myself in with these paragraphs here!

Within the blink of an eye, we go from what is simple to what is twisted, drawn like the proverbial moth to the fire, singeing its wings on the burning blue edges, yet unable to turn away. When simple has been the way things were for longer than they were complicated, why should it be so tough to revert? But it is. Or maybe I am just peeking in from the outside through the coloured panes of the window.