Just back from seeing Bajirao Mastani the second time. There is something about seeing a movie twice – you can appreciate the nuances better. First time you are busy feeling the movie, flowing with the movie, enjoying it. The second time around you have enough leeway to be able to observe it objectively, to be able to feel and at the same time connect the dots and learn things.
Barring the slapstick comedies, I endeavor to learn from all types of movies while I am savouring them. Got four insights while watching this one.
Love gives huge courage
What this movie reinforced in me was the power of love and the prodigious courage love can beget. Most spiritualists discard romantic love calling it unnecessary entanglement and disparage it as base and carnal. However one cannot deny the fact that even romantic love has a spark of divine love in it. Unless it was divine how wouldBajirao and Mastani get so much courage?
Love sanctifies everything
In this movie, one cannot but notice the helplessness of love. It would be very easy to blame Mastani or Bajirao for the pain that they wreak upon others in the movie. Aredeeming scene from Jab We Met came to my eyes when Shahid Kapoor (who was forsaken by his mom when she runs away with her lover) forgives his mom understanding that a person becomes helpless in love. He or she is perhaps too full of love to be able to look at the practical realities of life. And it is the holiness of love that sanctifies everything and makes everything fair, no matter how unjust it appears.
Love lies in shedding your conditioned personality
On our way back, my wife told me one of the hallmarks of the movie was to see how everyone was caught up in their personalities and unable to change. Life could be far better for Bajirao and Mastani if some of the others would change or life would be far better for others if one of these two could change. I couldn’t agree more. It’s utopian but certain adjustments on part of all characters could have brought in some unique solution.
Love goes beyond the soulmate
One of my very close friends and spiritual guide Manoj Lekhiji once told me something very beautiful. I was mentioning to him about Richard Bach’s concept of soulmate. He told me he finds the concept of soulmate restrictive. He said that our endeavor should be to have a soulmate-type relationship with everyone. Why stop at the exclusive when it can be made all-inclusive? I found it very profound.
I also agree that each of us could have preferences and we would resonate with some people more than others – so each of us could have a soulmate. But one’s growth and happiness lies when besides those few exclusive relationships (which are equally valid), each of one’s relationships starts feeling like that with a soulmate.
All said and done, the beauty of a movie is because, just like as in lives of many, there is sensationalism in the movies – situations and people who are not perfect but passionate. I loved the movie so much for the passionate hues that it is awash with.
