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Dasvidaniya Movie Review

I have been praying for her death. Almost everyday. The last time I met her, she could not recognize me or recall my name. I tried hard. But after few minutes, I gave up. Could not see her in that condition any more. She is quite old, completely bed-ridden with a fractured leg, has blood pressure problems and some complex disease that’s killing her brain slowly. Doctors can’t do much. They don’t want to operate as anything can happen. Her only son is also praying for the same.

Death is a strange thing. You don’t think about it unless you face it, some way or other. On my way back to Mumbai, all I saw was old men and women, and kept thinking about the all those days i have spent with her. so many memories. Train, bus, road, restaurants, flight. Everywhere I saw the …

Two recent obits brought back a question that I often get asked outside of India – “why does Hindi cinema continue to purvey the same formula with minimal changes to its audience and why does the audience not tire of it?” It’s a question asked on PFC on many occasions.

The answer is….Wait. May be I am getting ahead of myself.

First the obits:

Albert Hofmann, Swiss pharmacist and the man best known for being the first to have synthesized LSD and tasted it, passed away on April 29, 2008. He was 102.

Vijay Tendulkar, playwright, social observer and commentator best known for his plays and scripts in early 70s which exposed political and social hypocrisy prevalent in Indian society, died in a Pune hospital on May 19, 2008. He was 80.

So, what’s the connection between them and the original question posed?

The counterculture movement of the 60s has a lot to …