‘The Namesake’

It’s not that one writes about a movie that deeply moves her a week and a day after watching it. I am doing it because I cannot put it off any further.

I meant to write about ‘The Namesake’ last Saturday after I watched it with Nan. To tell the truth, ‘The Namesake’ was one of those books that I hadn’t read beyond a few pages. I do that sometimes with books. And people. Just skimming through them, reading a few pages, knowing them only superficially makes me decide that I would not like them. Sometimes, later, when I somehow mange to read them whole, I am faintly shocked at how absurd was it of me to think that I wouldn’t like them. Like ‘The God of Small Things’. It had managed to convey an adverse first impression. But when I did read it later it haunted me for days and nights together.It made me cry. It made me grin. It made me restless. Ammu and her children refused to move out of my head after repeated notices. I didn’t want them there, they did not make me feel good. Their pain got at me in a way that was too personal, too achy. Finally I had to allow them to stay. I have even been brave enough to go back to the book again, and again, and again. Like a masochist.

The Namesake that I decided warranted a little more than casual dismissal after the book has started inhabiting my bed since last Wednesday when I picked it up from the library. I am wondering what made me abandon it unfinished last time. I love it. Not like The God of Small Things though. There is no lingering sense of sadness associated. Just a strong sense of wonder and admiration for Jhumpa Lahiri’s flawless craft of story telling. She makes you relate to her protagonists in a way you feel one with them. You hope their hopes, you clench your fingers at their frustrations. I have noticed this while reading her other book ‘The Interpreter of Maladies’ too. I have felt like Lilia, Miranda, Sanjeev, Gogol. In spite of differences in ages, gender, life situations. Arundhati Roy on the other hand makes you feel for her protagonists as an outsider. Just as well. I don’t want to not feel sane and safe.

Going back to talking about the movie, I liked it. It seemed a little slow, but thirty years is a long time. You cannot race through it. I would think that ‘The Namesake’ is a difficult, long and complicated novel to make a movie of, but Mira Nair as usual is effortlessly brave and brilliant. She knows her stuff. I winced at the decaying Calcutta it portrayed, teeming with people like ants on an anthill. I felt unreasonably embarrassed at Ashoke’s and Ashima’s accents, at their protectiveness, at things I would not have particularly noticed had not an American lady who confused a saree with a salwar kameez been sitting beside me.

“Oh, really, Calcutta isn’t just that. Not anymore, anyway.” I told her. She pointed out that the movie made a fine job of showing both the cities of Calcutta and New York back in time. She asked me about many things including the Bengali wedding rituals, shown twice in the movie (Ashoke’s and Gogol’s). She said she found Tabu very pretty. When I asked her how did she find the movie overall, she said, “it was poignant.” In the undulating semi-darkness of the theatre, I had found her wiping her eyes at the same places that I did.

The movie made me relive my distant, unreal, irrational fear of picking up a phone call and receiving ‘bad news’ from a home located halfway across the world. It made me re-experience my frustrating generation gap with unreasonably loving and protective parents. In Ashoke and Ashima I saw the same sense of resignation overwhelming my parents when they realized that imperceptibly, with time, they had lost control. They had to let go. They now had to be happy because they supposed I was too, fearing somewhere deep within that I was simply not matured enough to make my own decisions. Scared that I would commit a life-spoiling blunder.

To tell the truth, I have the same worry about me. But I cannot let them know can I?

I found Irfan Khan’s acting powerful beyond measure. His portrayal of quiet strength and undemonstrative love was very real, very touching. Everyone was convincing in their roles. Tabu is not just beautiful, she acts in a way that does not seem like acting. Kal Penn is intense, Zuleikha Robinson breathtakingly sexy. It’s a well made movie. It’s a movie that comes back to me now and then, making me think of it in the most unexpected of places. Perhaps writing down about it is going to reduce the frequency of its intrusions in my head.

Intrusions not totally unwelcome, i assert.

~ by feistyfeline on April 16, 2007.