Naseem : The The Morning Breeze
With the release of Parzania and the surrounding controversies I’m reminded of another movie that dealt with the same subject.
“Dadaji, yeh ashmaan neela kyun hain”
“Kyun ki mere ko peela raang pasand nahin, toh maine ise neela rang se paint kiya”
This is one of those several memorable dialogue exchanges that characterize the Syed Mirza’s 1995 film “Naseem”. The story is about a typical Muslim middle-class family at the back-drop of communal tension prior to the Babri Masjid demolition. The movie follows their day-to-day life about a few months before the Dec 6-th events takes place. The initial few reels are spent on strong character built-up based upon the interaction between the two of the main actors. Naseem, played by Mayuri Kango, is a teenage girl who needs answer to a thousand questions. The Grand-pa, played by Kaifi Aazmi, who is living his last few days amongst his memories. As the tremor of the events at Ayodhya casts its shadows, a simple teenage girl goes through the confusion of trying to understand it all.
The brilliance of this movie lays in the amazing simplicity with which director handles the whole script. Nowhere in the movie we have flashing scenes of ravaging communal riots, nor we have high-pitched melodramatic dialouge sparked between the actors. Yet it strongly brings out the terror and anger in the eyes of an average Muslim guy, as the writings on the wall becomes clearer. The different blends of the reactions to this communal tension are aptly given dimension by the different members of the family. While on one end, lies Kaifi Aazmi’s representation of old-school of tolerance, on the other end lies the elder brother’s (played by Salim Shah) hot-headedness that wants eye-for-an-eye revenge. And in between is torned the mom and dad (played by Uttara Baokar and Khulbhusan Kharbanda) who play the indecisive passive roles in the whole chain of events surrounding their daily lives. The whole spectrum is brought forth through the eyes of the teenager Naseem, superbly under acted by a de-glamorized Mayuri Kango. The movie ends with the death of the grand-father’s death on 6-th of Dec, the very day that history will remember for an entirely different reason. Perhaps the death signifies the end of the tolerance of an earlier generation that is steadfastly loosing its value amongst the turbulent times.
Sadly this was a last movie for all the three: Syed Mirza as a director, Kaifi Aazmi as an actor and perhaps Mayuri Kango in a lead role. In his last effort of simple yet touching story telling technique involving real life characters, Syed Mirza does leave a mark on his viewer. And maybe simplicity is the sole reason that makes this mark special to last for a lifetime. And therein lays the success of any creativity and its creator.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
I saw this film, few years ago on TV. If I recall perhaps KK was also there. Mayuri was good and perhaps best part of the film.
One good thing about DD is that you get to watch all these desi films which you would otherwise miss – they won’t run for long in the theaters and will never get on DVDs.
Wonder why NFDC doesn’t consider DVD releases of all its films.
wow, you rekindled my memories for this lingering film. feel like watching it again.
@RK: They showed this movie on TV ? That’s a real deviation from TRP hungry TV channels usual fodder. Or perhaps the print came in cheap during a budget-cruching time.
@WB: Was hearing a lot of NFDC absurdities from a film-maker friend of mine. I think promoting films has escaped from their rader a long time back. Infact I’m having a hard time trying to remember the last NFDC release that had an impact.
@Tushar: Thanks bro…good to know that my post brought back memories.
Bishu:
yes I saw it on TV. They have to show films all the time so they show all kind of films.
Bishu, Could we put ‘Mammo’ in the same ’simplicity’ league?
Man, I never heard of this film yaar..But that’s very strange because I normally keep track of all the offbeat films. Like I have seen ‘mammo’ many times on DD..Hmmm,good old DD.
An open Letter to Sayeed Mirja.
Dear Sayeed here is the excerept of the letter I wrote to Shekhar Kapur ( Film Maker).I would appreciate your response.
Dear Shekhar,
Thank you for your warm response.
Could you please, explore the possibility of talking to Director Sayeed Mirja.During the years 1985-87 , when NVK Murthy was the Director Film Institute, Pune, Professor Rahat Yusufi, then then head of Direction department was sent home unceremoniously.
Sayeed Mirja was on the selection committee for admissions and he apparently, In order to get even rejected the admission of one of the students promoted by Mr.Murthy.
Mr.Mirja also apparently made it a point to mention to the candidate,who could not get in to Film School that he was doing so because what was done to one of them by Professor Murthy is being returned back.
Most of the information and events that seem to have happened at that time come out as ambiguous as the true nature of events could be different and understandably Mr.Murthy is quite capable of playing politics( to serve his purposes, organize strikes and divide students
and faculty, since he is also not an alumni of FTII.
I would greatly appreciate for your time and efforts, if you could throw some light with regard to these events by talking to Mr.Mirja.
Thanking you.
with loving kindness,
Indrakaran.
Boston.
Star Gold used to show this movie quite regularly in their close-to-midnight slot. Kay Kay has a brief cameo in it appearing towards the end of the movie, and he’s brilliant.