The Place I’ve Never Been To.

I fell in love with your soul, not your religion.

Bombay. A movie that created an insight. It was a bold move, I must say, for the courage it took Mani Ratnam Sir.

I agree the soul stirring part of the movie is how religious prejudice can affect the lives of innocents. How it can give them nightmares that lasts for a lifetime. How ignorance leads to destruction. How peaceful lives can be dragged into wars they never even dreamt they’d be part of.

Religious wars suck. They do. We cannot just just tell someone what to believe in! Religious intolerance! Duh! What? Just because two people doesn’t believe in the same doesn’t make one of them bad! Every coin has two sides. Again, who am I talking to? What am I trying to change? Some things never change!

The story of a Muslim girl who fell in love with a Hindu Brahmin boy, and decided to spent a lifetime with him. They fell in love. Simple and clear. You cannot tell them who to fall for. They were homo-sapiens. Wasn’t that enough? The same fluid ran through their veins. Wasn’t that enough?

Our bloods are one.

What did their kids do anyway? They had to suffer because they didn’t know their religion and caste? Because the parents left it to them to choose it once they grew up and think rationally? God! What a country we had back then! Kind of still do.

But, every time I watch this movie, my heart goes out to those buildings and streets. And this familiar dream runs in, asking for shelter, again.

A nostalgia! Its weird to use that word. Because I’ve never been there. But it feels like I know the place. Like a home? I don’t know. I cannot put that feelings into words. How can I, when me myself cannot decipher the feeling? But I walk. Those lanes… Its like a reminder.

Walk and remember.

So many stories within each of them there. The shop-sellers, even the by-passers, they must have a lifetime of tales within them. Waiting to be unleashed. Those bazaars so full of life. Children playing, Mothers ranting, workers trying hard to meet both ends. The shops, where you could get anything… Pani puri, vegetables, toys, books… As if the streets have come to life. Nothing like the cities we are in now. There is just rush everywhere. Oh and yes! You get to post letters! Who does that these days? I wonder. I keep walking.

I know you. Have we met before?

Those old buildings. Again, its like I’ve been there. Like I know every crack and crevice in them. Like they’ve been touched by me. Like they’re yearning to be touched by me, again. There is a lady standing by the shop selling flowers. I stop. She smiles at me. I find her intimidating. Like she wants me to remember. She is familiar. I find her scars familiar. I don’t know how. May be they are mine too.

And then the rain starts. Every time I dream, there is this rain. This heavy rain. I stand there and a drop hits my eyelashes. And I wake up.

And then I feel a sense of… ϐєℓοиgιиg. . . . Shekhar and Shaila are hugging their kids. The end. Is it, though?

Malarodu malar ingu Magizhnthaadum pothu Manathodu manam indru Pagai kolvathyeno Madham yennum madham oyattum Dhesam malar meethu Thuyil kollattum… plays in the background.*