Episode 2
(or quibbles of faith and togetherness)
Sometime back I finished seeing “Imaigal”, Episode 2 of Modern Love Chennai.
The best films are often about the most ordinary people, to whom life brings intimations of the most extraordinary nature.
Nithya and Devi are students, and they fall in love. It’s when things get serious and he proposes to her, that Devi reveals to Nithya that she’s got degenerative ocular dystrophy, and she will progressively lose her sight - till she would become completely blind. What she leaves with Nithya then, as a question, is both a challenge and a choice.
And the story starts from there.
I have often pondered on the nature of greatness, and what makes a someone stand out - not as a person in a crowd, not as a person with superpowers, but as a person with a soul who quietly makes choices which defy logic. People who willingly choose tribulation, who change the trajectory of their lives for the sake of something they’ve come to believe in. It could be a cause, love, a belief, but is invariably something fraught with messiness, guaranteed to change what one had planned for life.
And I wonder - what is the incentive?
And I realize that the same brave - often reckless - impulse which makes us make mistakes are the ones which make us do something transcendental.
Because embedded in the choice is the strength of decision that says “come what may, we will persevere in doing what is perceived to be drowned in rank illogic, because something inside tells us that it is the only right thing possible. Else we would be short-circuiting everything which makes us proud of who we are.
What flows from this is also the quibble of faith and togetherness. So much of what we are is defined by what we are to the ones we care most about. Is our commitment the kind which gets lost in the chaos and seduction of life? Is it one which once made is a running thread of our lives? Is it a burden after a bit? Is it a responsibility, a problem? Or a privilege.
In the annals of history there are too many unrecorded stories of what people have become to each other, what they have come to mean to each other, because they chose a path they didn’t have to.
In the imbroglio of life, the only thing which often keeps our nose above the water, and helps us find purpose, is the trust that the ones who are closest to us, will never let their faith burn out.
Thus the strongest aspect of our life is also the most fragile. Even the words “I’m leaving you”, said in jest or in anger or in exasperation is a repudiation of the most precious promise possible. Because in that moment, one is made aware how are lives are often at the knifepoint of another’s level of commitment. If there are different kinds of heartbreak, this would be the one with the severest damage.
This film is a gorgeous tribute to a promise, a failure, a redemption.
The protagonists grow more beautiful in front of our eyes, as their life spans out, embracing within its gentle folds the story of an ordinary couple who never loses sight of what makes them beautiful to each other - from the first gauche sight to the last sighting ever.
Read other pieces I have written on films -
on Kohraa, on some favorite thrillers, on The Kominsky Method, on Kapoor & Sons.
You've put it down so sensitively! Hidden heroes....