Subtle, poetic, divine!

Subtle, poetic, divine

The essence of Delhi6 is that we Indians are a beautiful people, if only the black monkey in all of us – a metaphor for all that’s evil in our society - caste system, discrimination, corruption, religious fundamentalism, greed, hypocrisy and superstition can be destroyed, overcome and done away with. It gives us a glimpse of all that’s beautiful in our society and all that’s evil too, as seen through the eyes of Abhishek Bacchhan, an NRI son who comes to India for his grand mom’s sake. The director has captured the essence of what we are, in a very unhurried, subtle, sensitive way- it’s almost like poetry. AR Rehman’s music is so well blended with the story itself that it makes everything so magical. Perhaps the audience is so used to those in-the-face item numbers, melodramatic scenes and an onslaught of action, that this sensitive portrayal of India and Indians was lost on them. Or at the cost of sounding cynical, maybe the truth was too hard to digest – the callous police cop, the caste discrimination, the way we kill the aspirations of young girls, the male chauvinistic society that we are – maybe it was a bit too hard to face. I simply loved the film. It seemed to me like poetry in an old Delhi setting, just as Billu was poetry in a rural setting. Hats off to these directors for their brilliant work. They made each frame in the film picture perfect with their artistic mastery, driving home a message too with divine subtlety. My 11-year-old son called the movie thought provoking-that I think is the best compliment a director can get.

Poornima BV