There is something sweet about Barfi

 

I am not really a movie buff. I haven’t watched a lot of Bollywood movies, and never really keep a track of what’s going on in world of Indian cinema.

Last week I went to see Barfi- a latest Bollywood blockbuster. I was excited to watch the movie. It's filmed in Darjeeling, a majestic hill station on the foot hills of Himalayas. I went to an Anglo- Indian boarding school there, and when I saw the trailer on the TV, the memories of the place came rolling back.   

Barfi is a celebration of love and life. The characters and the story blend with the idyllic beauty, innocence and the simple life of the people in the hills. It shows silence can be golden, and happiness is nothing but a state of mind. Humour is the essence of the movie though there is an undercurrent of something nastier in the plot.  Like the Big Ben in Virginia Wolf’s Mrs Dalloway, the chugging toy train meanders through the time reminding that whilst something in life remain constant and static, life itself has to go through some sharp curves and turns in its journey.  Life can be cruel at times but it our positive spirit that helps us to be triumphant at the end.

The movie has a message. The two central characters are physically challenged. The protagonist can’t hear or speak and the girl he eventually marries is autistic.  In a very romantic but in a subtle way the movie touches on the rights of disabled people in India. The fact that they have the right to live with dignity and they are just one of us is brilliantly illustrated in the movie.

India has 96 million people who are disabled and a vast number of them particularly in Northern India face severe discrimination and abuse. India also doesn’t really have the infrastructure that is disabled –friendly. Whilst steps are been taken to change this, Amir Khan, one of Bollywood’s super star who recently did a popular television  show aimed at making people aware of some of the serious  social problems in India says : “there are two kinds of reaction to the disabled people in India: one, that they must have done something wrong in their previous birth and therefore deserve what they got; two, let us use them as a ticket to heaven — make a donation to an organisation working for the disabled, or give money to a disabled person asking for alms, and score some brownie points with God.”

Mr Khan insisted that education is the only way out to prepare people with disabilities to be productive, look after themselves, and their families.  For this to happen people in India must change their attitudes and the mainstream educational institutes should make provisions to educate people with disabilities.

Coming back to Barfi, it is admirable that it deals with a social issue is a very creative manner. It reveals class tensions, but above all what it shows is that status, money and power cannot buy love and happiness. Simplicity has a priceless appeal and we don’t have to look far to experience the small pleasures of life. The actors convey this without any speech. Sounds unrealistic, but not when you leave the cinema with a hearty glee - this is possibly the sweetest thing about Barfi.


* Barfi is a name of an Indian sweet