Chidiya Is Hands-Down The Most Precious Film Of The Year

Rating: *****(5 stars)

Writer-Director Mehran Amrohi,  who has struggled for ten years  to  finally get his  directorial debut into movie theatres, deserves a standing ovation for his minimalist masterpiece.

 Chidiya  is  a gem  of a film, an instant  classic, if you will. It conveys what the  director so succinctly  describes as  “the joy in scarcity” with such an austere stare at  neo-realism , I immediately want  to  put him up there with the  masters  of neo-realism Vittorio de Sica  and  Satyajit Ray.

The theme of “joy in scarcity” characterized de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves as  much as Ray’s  Pather Panchali.Echoes of past greatness do not colour the contemporary texture and the lucidly  lensed  chawl  life of  Amrohi’s  simple  yet strong supple saga  of  the survival of the  frailest section of our society.

 Amrohi lets his two  young protagonists Shanu and his kid brother  Bua,  played with wondrous  spontaneity  by  Svar  Kamble  and Ayush Pathak( the  boys are so  brilliant they  could teach our Filmistan’s superstars a  thing or two about how not to act as though you’re acting), have their say in the incredibly kind world of deprivation that they inhabit.

 There are no villains, no nasty characters in Chidiya. Even when someone  snaps into  an acrimonious mode ,the mood of assertive  positivity is restored in no time. This is a  universe freed of  greed, hellbent on staying afloat even  if  the struggle to do so seems  incommensurate with destiny’s  tyranny.

 If Shanu and Bua’s universe seems  so denuded  of  despair, it is because the  narrative furnishes  their  arid existence  with  splashes of joy. Miraculously  upbeat , the  chawl  becomes  a microcosm  of  hope  and resilience without any punctuated  dramatic  moments .

 The  soundtrack is largely liberated of  street signed  background nudges. Whenever  a musical interlude  or a  song  comes on, it is so organic that we don’t feel we are  being led on to feel empathy for  the  eminently  likeable  characters.

 I have not seen so many convivial selfcontained  characters in one  film before. Whether  it is the  young boys’ uncle Bali  or their  eternally  hassled  simple mother Vaishnavi (watch her when the uncle  teases her  about  the boys’ first trip away  from her), or the teaseller Suraj at the film studio where the  two boys abandon their childhood to become premature wage-earners:  each  character has tremendous takeaway value , thanks  to  the  unassuming  spontaneity with which they are played by Vinay Pathak and Amrutha Subhash and Brijendra  Kala.

 But my favourite  character  in  the film is Taj, the  physically disabled tailor played  a marvellous  mix of perkiness  and playfulness by Inaamulhaq whose  saree-blouse ribaldry illustrates what the  film says with such sparkling  validation: if life serves you  lemons make yourself  sugarfree lemonade.

 I would like to see  an entire  film on this tailormade character Taj. I would also like to see  our two young  heroes Shanu and Bua  arrive at  the end  of their rainbow , the badminton court  even if the ‘b’ word is  never mentioned.

 There is hope  , magic ,passion and grace in underdog’s  saga.I don’t know  why a moment such as the one where  Shanu buys an  icecream  for  the  little girl whose icecream he has snatched away all through, moved me so much.  Could it be the underlining outflow of  empathy that runs through  the  narrative  , like  a  stream in an arid mountain path?

An epic  quality runs through the  film even  as the  characters  struggle to  stay afloat, that one  moment when Bali hugs his two nephews as  all the three men remember Mangesh, the missing link in their world of  famished  longings serves as the  most articulate  gesture of  joy in  scarcity.