THE LIFE AND THE LARGER-THAN-LIFE






My wife did not want to watch ‘Bahubali-2’. “I have watched ‘Bahubali-1’, that’s enough,” she was very clear, “Except the grandeur and VFX effects, there will be nothing in it… I don’t want to watch it.”

But, I wanted to. The reason: I did not want to miss out on something created in our country as ‘too big’, ‘too ambitious’… just like the Taj Mahal, or, for that matter, our own (Mumbai’s) Sea-link, the Metro or the Monorail… the Express way or the Freeway… the IMX Dome… the Imagica… yes, all those had been larger-than-life creations… the ‘big things’.  So, like everyone else, I, too, wanted to be a part of the spectacle called ‘Bahubali-2’ only for that reason. To me, ‘Bahubali-2’ was our own ‘The Ten Commandments’, ‘Ben-Hur’, ‘Troy’ and ‘Gladiator’.

So, last week, I called up my wife and said, “I will be watching the 1.30 show of ‘Bahubali-2’… You don’t want to watch, right?”

“Yes, I don’t want to,” she was emphatic, “But, I don’t want you to watch it alone, either.”

“So, shall I book your ticket?” I asked, “Just an hour left.”

“I am coming!!!”

Inside the theatre, as Bahubali kept bashing and kept getting bashed, as the screen went on flames and as the palaces crumbled like pack of cards… as the mayhem started giving me terrible headache, my wife kept looking at me to tease, “So, you wanted to watch it, na?... Now suffer!”

They say, in Life, our pain is, always, inevitable… but our suffering is, always, optional. Whose choice was it to watch? Mine. So, to suffer or not to suffer, too, was my choice… Too much of destruction on screen was giving me a terrible headache… But, I chose to watch it, right?

Right.

“What did you like about ‘Bahubali-2’ movie? I have asked this question, in our on-going P.D. sessions, to both little-ones and young-ones, who had watched it invariably along with their families and friends… yes, in big numbers that is. Each one had liked it for one reason or the other… I hadn’t heard anyone telling me ‘I got a 1000-crore headache’. So, it really looked as if I was an odd-ball when it came to this biggest, highest, newest block-buster called ‘Bahubali-2’.

It’s okay… It’s perfectly okay to be an odd-ball…

But, interestingly, there was one scene – the most unlikely it may seem – which had moved me a lot. Bahubali and his fully-pregnant wife have been thrown out of the palace… They have come to live among the ordinary poor-folks… People shower love, respect and honor on the heroic couple… To them, Bahubali and his wife are their king and queen, the rulers of their hearts… Yes, despite owning nothing…  Their life looks like a life in paradise…And, there, inside the palace, the king, the queen and the entire royal clan are seen living in suffering… It’s like a life in hell. “Even though Bahubali lives outside the palace, he appears to be the happiest and the richest,” the King and his clan are unable to accept this truth…

Bahubali was God’s special child. He had earned the divine grace… He had earned people’s love, respect and honor… He was a blessed one, the hero… the legend…

For that, I stand up and say, “Long live the Legend!”


GERALD D’CUNHA
Pic.: Internet

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