Inherent goodness

A film that had that left me speechless was Deepa Mehta's 1947-Earth starring Aamir Khan, Nandita Das and Rahul Khanna. The story is set in Lahore at the time of India-Pakistan partition. It chronicles this phase of our history through a group of simple people who meet regularly in a park. How the lives and characters of these people change in the aftermath of the partition forms the crux of the film.

In the film they have shown using both explicit and implicit means the horrendous acts that took place in those troubled times. The scene in which a train carrying dead bodies arrives at a station was spine chilling. In another one the little girl Lenny baby pulls apart her doll to discover the end a man lynched by a crowd of nearly a hundred must have faced. The climax of the film where the icecandywallah Dilnaawaz sweet talks his way to find out the whereabouts of Shanta from Lenny baby and then betrays her trust by giving away the secret to an angry mob left me speechless. All these acts gave truth to the dialogue spoken by Dilnaawaz in the film

Hum sab mein ek jaanwar hai. Bas bahar nikalne ki deri hai. (meaning ... There's an animal in all of us. It only needs time to come out in the open.)

I on the contrary believe that there is an inherent goodness in all of us. It might not be visible all the time but it is there. We all have our favourites for whom we always feel protective and hence try and act as shield for them. But there are also times when help comes from unexpected quarters. I have seen people going out of the way to support those they might not share a special bond with. Its a pleasant surprise to find instances where people who on the face appeared as being bindaas (carefree) to me have actually turned out to be the reason behind a change.

I guess just like the bad, the good also needs a push.

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Let me leave you with this cartoon strip in which Garfield is trying to be on his best behaviour. :)