A toiling journey...
It's an example of how a 9 minute film can leave you thinking for the next 90 minutes and more. Urgent, a short film which won the Best Short Film Award at the recentlyheld Digital Short Film Festival organised by International Cultural Exchange, Pune, tells the story of a man desperately looking for a toilet to empty his bowels, but is faced with many deterring difficulties before he reaches his destination. But Mithunchandra Chaudhari, the director, turns this hilarious premise into a darkly comic tale of the undistinguished, common man struggling to satisfy a need as basic as this, while the world around him goes about, rejoicing in it's power games, depriving him of one of the most fundamental facilities.
The protagonist has ordinariness stamped all over his being – from the unremarkable clothes he wears, his wide-eyed lost look, his diffident body language, down to his common-place name Raju. Perhaps, he's new to the city, we think. We find him at a multiplex in the city, visibly intimidated by the glamour around him. What adds to his misery is that he needs to go the loo. The men's loo is occupied and there begins his predicament.
His journey to the toilet, becomes an ordinary man's fight for survival. It is peppered with obstacles. Finally, just when the situation is bursting out of control, he lands in his society's common toilet. But his plight is far from over. The taps runs dry and there's someone thumping urgently at the toilet door.
What makes this seemingly simple, humorous story thought-provoking is the many socio-political references Chaudhuri has packed in as Raju travels from the high-end multiplex to his lower-middle class locality. He is pushed around by men, who think he's come in their way; he has to steal a rupee from the temple to afford the public loo (the non-living religious idol is richer than the common man); he is insulted and thrown out by an irritated toilet guard, who has had a fight with the much-hated outsider “Bihari”; he is humiliated by the beggar, because he doesn't have any money to spare, he has to stand waiting for a drive home right in front of a shop selling designer toilets and he's held back by the student's union to join their celebrations of a candidate's victory. The backdrop of the film is it's subtext. The city is getting on, too busy (or too immune?) to care about the inequalities, imbalances and disparities that somehow realign themselves into a seeming equilibrium amongst the chaos.
Meanwhile, the man who offers him a lift on his scooter has to take a detour as riots have erupted over the demolition of a mosque by anti-encroachment authorities. He comments, “They should bring down all mosques and temples and build toilets instead. The govt should campaign for “shitting-ground free cities” like it's doing in the villages”. This irony (Raju sits behind him holding his bowels) not only makes for much laughter, it's also a very piercing statement on the disparity between politics and the citizens' demands.
Some scenes are as funny as they are touching. The way Raju (a brilliant Vikas Patil) dreams of exchanging places with a poor boy shitting on the roadside, right in front of a wall announcing “ Don't use this place as a toilet” or the way his face smiles, while his eyes turn moist when he finally gets to use the toilet, makes us laugh as well as root for this underdog. The last frame is another cracker. “To whomsoever it may concern” says an insertion. It's a fitting conclusion to the tongue-in-cheek commentary on the general apathy of our socio-political system and its indifferent people.
The protagonist has ordinariness stamped all over his being – from the unremarkable clothes he wears, his wide-eyed lost look, his diffident body language, down to his common-place name Raju. Perhaps, he's new to the city, we think. We find him at a multiplex in the city, visibly intimidated by the glamour around him. What adds to his misery is that he needs to go the loo. The men's loo is occupied and there begins his predicament.
His journey to the toilet, becomes an ordinary man's fight for survival. It is peppered with obstacles. Finally, just when the situation is bursting out of control, he lands in his society's common toilet. But his plight is far from over. The taps runs dry and there's someone thumping urgently at the toilet door.
What makes this seemingly simple, humorous story thought-provoking is the many socio-political references Chaudhuri has packed in as Raju travels from the high-end multiplex to his lower-middle class locality. He is pushed around by men, who think he's come in their way; he has to steal a rupee from the temple to afford the public loo (the non-living religious idol is richer than the common man); he is insulted and thrown out by an irritated toilet guard, who has had a fight with the much-hated outsider “Bihari”; he is humiliated by the beggar, because he doesn't have any money to spare, he has to stand waiting for a drive home right in front of a shop selling designer toilets and he's held back by the student's union to join their celebrations of a candidate's victory. The backdrop of the film is it's subtext. The city is getting on, too busy (or too immune?) to care about the inequalities, imbalances and disparities that somehow realign themselves into a seeming equilibrium amongst the chaos.
Meanwhile, the man who offers him a lift on his scooter has to take a detour as riots have erupted over the demolition of a mosque by anti-encroachment authorities. He comments, “They should bring down all mosques and temples and build toilets instead. The govt should campaign for “shitting-ground free cities” like it's doing in the villages”. This irony (Raju sits behind him holding his bowels) not only makes for much laughter, it's also a very piercing statement on the disparity between politics and the citizens' demands.
Some scenes are as funny as they are touching. The way Raju (a brilliant Vikas Patil) dreams of exchanging places with a poor boy shitting on the roadside, right in front of a wall announcing “ Don't use this place as a toilet” or the way his face smiles, while his eyes turn moist when he finally gets to use the toilet, makes us laugh as well as root for this underdog. The last frame is another cracker. “To whomsoever it may concern” says an insertion. It's a fitting conclusion to the tongue-in-cheek commentary on the general apathy of our socio-political system and its indifferent people.
posted by renu at 2:55 AM
2 Comments:
vivid and evocative post. Nice. I expect no less from a great writer like you.
While you chase one butterfly,u jump into several more, and now you know not which to chase...To me, your blogs are like these butterflies... you come with the intention of reading one, and u are lured into reading the rest..and therein lies your success...ur writings are authentic and lucid..keep writing!!
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