My stint at the School of Art & Aesthetics, JNU, challenged my understanding of Cinema. I was a regular Festival-going king till such time, and knowing Bergman and Kurosawa were mostly a part of hanging out with interesting friends. At JNU, I was fresh out of a tragic-situation, most part of the coping the was done by shutting mself inside my room during the day, curtains drawn, no inch of light, watching movie after movie (Ray, Majidi, Polanski etc), and continuing into the night. By the time I came to JNU, my eye-power had drastically increased and my Compaq had justifiably crashed.
It was a new time, in more ways than one.
I was not prepared for that matchbox of a room at Yamuna, as compared with the large foresty expanse of the campus, I was not prepared for the 7 am January cold which could not be beaten even with turtleneck, sweater and coat -- worn one over the other, and, I was so not prepared for the study that went into Visual Arts and Cinema Studies, which I was then auditing, along with being an RA. The Cinema Studies classes began around 1.45 pm and went onto 8.45 pm (inclusive of playings and discussions). It was exhaustive, did you think? No, no. No, no, no. Not as much as the material that was given for studying (thank goodness I did not have to). Barring my neutral observations and love for binge watching, I was minus on cinema knowledge. I almost began to feel like hay. Like, whatever that is.
Cut to now. I watched Chalk and Duster last night. More like listened. And, it was a JDBI playback (except for the ending). It is true, I do not remember the name of the teacher who taught me A-B-C-D, but I do remember all the things I have learnt from the movies -- my greatest teacher -- not in the craft of filmmaking, but in the art of life and living. Isn't it true, how cinema has conditioned us, for good, or for the large part -- for worse? Yet, like teachers, who have their flaws, cinema too can be forgiven for not being perfect. Those flaws, in turn, become perfect material when needed to mimic upon.
Just how important is cinema to our lives, we can never truly acknowledge. The breakfast toast hardly gets a toast, you see. As I was cooking the rich chicken today, the tedious constant stirring felt nothing as I heard SRK claim from the other room about "the common of a power man...er...power of a common man!" It does not require study of structures and powers, to laugh along the swaying colours.
I am no longer ashamed that I could not study Cinema as a subject; it is the friend, philosopher, guide one passionately loves, even while they disagree, and, the reassuring presence of eggs in our fridge. Or, of teachers and parents in our lives.
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