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Perfect Union

Watched Asha Jaor Majhe recently. The only way I can describe it is a bitter-sweet ode to Kolkata. Not a single word is exchanged between the two main characters in the movie and the action takes place in a twenty hour period in the couple's life. Some sequences were too protracted to my taste - maybe because I am Bengali and know all the detail that scene is unfolding too well.

But that aside, it is an amazing movie about what love in marriage might look like where the couple is very young and yet have no time to be together, never mind be intimate. The acts of love are abundant and in fact being able to perform them seems to be the sole source of energy of each of them to carry on with the daily grind of earning a living. 

The fact that the movie is made in 2014 feels wrong in that the Kolkata that unfolds through the scenes is the one I knew from my childhood. One would imagine that things are not the same anymore. The squalid living quarters and crumbling back-alleys are reminiscent of Ritwick Ghatak and Mrinal Sen movies. They reminded me of the places I knew as a child, relatives who lived in homes that looked ready to collapse any minute. 

I want to believe that change has come upon Kolkata too - that people have more choices and better lives than they did back then. Yet, setting the story back in the past takes away from it being the story of a contemporary couple who have a marriage that works like magic. The magic lies in the synchronicity - how they are able to be there for their partner without ever being there physically.

This is the only way perhaps a modern union can work - anywhere in the world. If the two are busy pursuing money, career or dreams there is still a way to be a warm, immovable emotional and spiritual presence in each other's lives. Whether or not it was the director's intent, this movie is about why marriage is so venerated in India -  if the pairing is right, it can to lead to the state of perfect harmony, which serves as an infinite reservoir of strength. 

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