Aligarh

Ahead of a dying and of a getting back of  the lecturer's job, Prof. Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, talks of settling down in America, after retirement, as that country accepts differences. Many may not like it. Many may argue America being as blind a place as India. For me India 2016 is Dhritharashtra. The going to America does not happen. He is found dead. Prof. Siras teaches Marathi in Aligarh Muslim University and perhaps, the only Maharashtrian in town, which he is used to, loves and talks Hindi and English with a Marathi accent. He is different, he is gay and none likes that...like today, differences are not accepted, discussed. Low on most counts, Indian society prefers a straight line narrative without dashes, dots, curves even as the Earth has no objections. Prof. Siras unwinds to a Malayali journalist Deepu Sebastian. He protests. There is a shot of the two travelling in a boat, of Deepu asking whether Prof. Siras is gay....and the shot sticks like the early shots of Prof. Siras sitting and nodding to a Lata song with a chappalled foot arcing the air... The two hour film is tight, the film has no paunch, little sound, it is as if you are not watching a film, but being with Prof. Siras in the lanes of Aligarh...the hurt in being denied is ever under lock and key ....Prof. Siras always firmly locks the rooms from which he is ever driven out; me thinks a few, if any, can do better than Manoj Bajpai as poet Prof. Siras with rhymes and Lata music. Wikipedia terms him a method actor; do not know what that means; you walk back home with him; he does not leave you like the unfairness of it all. Perhaps the film is most important to the different humans living with us and also to the Supreme Court agreeing to discuss homosexuality. Others are human, as human as you and me and cannot be red carded out of living. At Maxus, Borivili (W), went for the first show, watched the film with about 15 others. Me rating: Many A.