Monday, November 7, 2016

Wild Strawberries


With Malathi back from US, Rama evenings are booked; alone watch and re-watch non-commercial films; on Monday it was the second viewing of 1957 film Wild Strawberries written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. An old man trying to live on a retake of his childhood. A Wikipedia note on the origins of the film: 'Bergman's idea for the film came on a drive from Stockholm to Dalarna, stopping at Uppsala, his hometown. Driving by his grandmother's house, he suddenly imagined how it would be if he could open the door and inside find everything just as it was during his childhood. So it struck me --  what if you could make a film about this; that you just walk up in a realistic way and open a door, and then you walk into your childhood, and then you open another door and arrive in some other period of your existence, and everything goes on, lives. That was actually the idea behind Wild Strawberries.' Later he would revise the story of the film's genesis. In Images: My Life in Film, he comments on his own earlier statement: 'That's a lie. The truth is that I am forever living in my childhood.' Me chatted the idea with Rama and she agreed to turning back to times in Sreevatsam and Dombivili. Well, what happens when a childhood is bruised; there cannot be a flashback as it happens to Ajoba. After years, Ajoba confesses to not feeling sad when his parents died; he felt and still feels an unusual freedom. Yes, it hurts Ajoba but this has to be put down. Childhood was fear, fright: fear of a fierce father and slightly milder mother; of course, the extended family will disagree with Ajoba; but for Ajoba it was not a living; beaten up with utensils and cricket bats, some verbal abuse ... yes they did love .... but their love was hard for Ajoba to understand or grasp even at 70. And the prayers: morning, before going to school, after school, evening, night; and when festivals came, hell prayers; gods became a disgust; sure, Ajoba was well fed, clothed, sent to a priced school; they had hopes and Ajoba failed them entirely; they wanted Ajoba to hold a job with office paid home, car and all that as near and distant cousins; they were upset over a journalist Ajoba. Ajoba at 70 is afraid to dream of them. Yes, appa and amma were good, in their way, Ajoba never could make. A day after appa's death in Kolkata, Ajoba went for a walk to the Hooghly river and for a second laughed loud and free, touched the river's flow; yes, appa will not be any more to place a halter. Yes, Ajoba turned free after amma died. It was as if Ajoba had none to report to. No bosses; good bosses, yet bosses. Ajoba became entirely free. That meant he could not back flip into a childhood like Prof. Isak Borg (done by Victor Sjostrom) in Wild Strawberries. Ajoba has to peep into the future and that is living forever in a new wardrobe. Uncomfortable. No Wild Strawberries.    

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