A Flight of Pigeons*

A flock of birds pastes itself across the crimson morning hues. Up high they soar united by their flight when one little bird chooses otherwise, another way, another flight. Can we really say if any one of the two entities is on the wrong path? To each his own, we can think.

But rules of the human world are not as simple as that of the animal kingdom. The apparently simple act of choosing one’s own way is intervened by parental whiplash, social interjections, financial qualms and above all one’s own apprehensions in following the ruling of the heart.

‘Udaan’ to me is more of a flight within than the one in the material world.

A teenage boy, expelled from school, comes home after 8 years to a father who hasn’t seen him all this while and he gets to see not just his indifferent father but also a 6 year old step brother he didn’t even know of. The angst and hollowness of not being loved must have been accentuated with a feeling of being cheated. Yet, an embittered Rohan gives in to his father’s wishes – right from going to engineering college to the early morning jogs – all out of an emotion which is perhaps somewhere in between an attempt to understand his father and a fear to go all out on his own. The bottled up fears and dreams steer their ways through the industrial noise of Jamshedpur and find themselves on a lonely grass-patch or lying on the train tracks; while the anger gets into a rendezvous with the night and finds itself screaming into water tanks, smashing the car and venting out the subtle resilient aggression through ‘Jo leheron se aage nazar dekh pati, toh tum jaan lete main kya sochta hun’.

When Rohan runs in the end, it is his ‘leap of faith’ that he takes, his flight that breaks him free from his own restricted self.

So another flock of birds took off and another little one is staring at the dusk, grabbing the clouds by the wings – it hasn’t lost way but found his own.

-----x-----

When I watch a movie, I am completely engrossed in it which also explains why I end up crying in most of them, but more often than not the cinematic world ends within its own duration. Udaan has stayed with me and will stay etched forever like all my favourite poems do.

It has hovered in my mind and stirred through my thoughts, slept in my dreams and found a corner in the peripheries of my eyes. No wonder I take this attempt at writing about it and I don’t really find myself successful given that I have so much so say about each and every moment of this film. Nevertheless, it took me back to one of the moments I wrote some three years ago...

“I would change my dreams, but what do I do with the eyes that see them...”

बर्फ के बागानों में

दुनिया सरपट दौड़ रही थी

अपने उड़ने कि हसरत को मेरे पैरों से

तुम ही तो बांधे थे

भूल गए क्या?

कि अब पंख कतरने की

जिद पे अड़ते हो!

परवाज़ नयी बंधवा लाऊंगी

पैर कहाँ से लाऊँ ?

खिड़की के उस पार है वादी

इस पार समंदर

दोनों के भी पार देखती अपनी आँखों से

तुम ही तो मिलवाये थे

भूल गए क्या?

की अब खिड़की को दीवार बनाने की

कोशिश करते हो..!

नये ख्वाब तो चुग लाऊंगी

आँखें कहाँ से लाऊँ ?

And no, mine is not an ‘Udaan’ story. But yes, I did realise much later that my struggle was just about me trying to break free from me.

-----x-----

* A Flight of Pigeons - Titled after the Ruskin Bond Novella of the same name, one of my favorites and also a one of it's kind flight of faith and heart.

p.s. to me this is a rather unsuccesful attempt at penning my thoughts, but given the choked mind right now couldn't better it.. may be in a while from now, i will..