Baghban – The Celluloid Navaratna

Baghban – The Celluloid Navaratna

Baghban – “the caretaker of a garden”, probably the best script written in the Indian celluloid history, probably the best acting done by all the stars and co-stars. They pulled out the naked truth that all families face, that all parents face, sometime or the other, which all children inflict on their parents.

It is a custom of an Indian family where ones’ father is seen as GOD and ones’ mother is seen as the Gateway To Heaven. These are two individuals who are known to be supreme. They are the creators of future generation. Every mother and father has a dream that their child becomes a person that the world recognizes as a true human being. All parents always want their child’s well being. They leave no stone unturned in providing happiness, joy and pleasure to their children. They go to the extent of sacrificing their quota of happiness, joy and pleasure for the sake of their children, just to see them smiling all the time. They are the ones who teach them how to speak, how to walk, how to read, how to write, what is wrong and what is correct for their well being, in a nutshell, they are the ones who bring infants to life, show them the light of the world. They take the place of the Almighty in molding us from raw clay to hardened bricks that can form a strong building.

But we tend to forget all these when we start a new family. Well established now, we don’t need them anymore; we start neglecting our parents. We forget that it is because of them we are what we are today. We owe them our life that is not possible for us to fulfill our debt and no parents will ever ask for that. What they ask for is support when they are old, when they require solace; but, shame on us that we neglect them. We have used them as stairs to climb up the ladder of social security, now that we have reached the summit, we don’t need them, we throw them as waste, pieces of torn shirt, pieces of used up furniture and dump them in the can. This is what reality is and Baghban has truly become successful in teaching worthless, shameless sons and daughters like us who think parents are burden when they grow old. When an old dad or a mom can’t expect a little solace and love from their grown-up and established children, I am sorry to say it is an absolute necessity that parents have every right to disgrace their so-called children. They have sacrificed their yesterday for our today and this is what we present them.

Baghban should come out as a book so that every single person can realize that they are the LIVING GOD, instead of neglecting and harassing them in their old age, we need to love them, we need to show them respect and we need to worship them. Such movies should go for Oscar Fevers. We need strong coordinators in the film management box office to forward such gold movies to the Oscar management, and I am sure if Baghban goes for Oscar, it will give us some sort of achievements, if not the Oscar.

By Arunava Das