Originally written on Svbtle on July 18, 2019


It’s raining in Pune, these days. Pune, of all the cities I have lived in (in addition to Kanpur, Chennai, Noida/Delhi), gets the most beautiful rains of all. Maharashtra in general gets gorgeous – if, at times, devastating – rains. I’ve been to Tarkarli, which is a few hours away from the more popular beach destination, Goa.

Yet, I’m glad I’ve seen Konkan in all its glory. A place that’s relatively less crowded and more, effectively, serene. A bike ride in the village is stuff dreams are made up of. A look in the corner shows you something new. Trees on the sides of the road are so dense that they filter sunlight. It’s gorgeous.

I watched Killa sometime ago. It’s set in Ratnagiri, Konkan, that is not far from Tarkarli, and after the Tarkarli trip, the movie is etched in my memory precisely the way that trip is. Almost as if the story was happening when I was roaming around in the village. The best part of the movie is that it’s alive. Like you are, and I am. I am an absolute sucker for cinema that takes me into its world. And the way it starts with a woman returning home from work in a rainy evening, it reminded me of me and my friend roaming around in the village.

Konkan is some kind of a misunderstood paradise. A place, people think, exists for its Mango farming. However, if I talk to some of the locals, the local people know that it’s a paradise. Air is clean, water is pure, and so is the child who’s fed up of a place where no one cares about him.

But this write up is not about the beautiful movie and its characters. It’s more about the visceral experience I had by watching the film and breathing in it. Over the years, I have seen films that can do this. You almost start breathing in its world. Thiagarajan Kumararaja’s Aaranya Kaandam was a similar experience. In a scene when a car is stopped at a checkpoint, you could hear clanking of metal. Some kind of a construction work is underway at a place in the distance. Kumararaja included that in his latest loopy showpiece Super Deluxe. He shows distraught kids running frantically on empty roads with metal clanking in the distance. I was surprised to revisit that sound effect. No one would have correlated it. I did, because, well, I’m a sucker for air. I like cinema to be a space where I could walk around. Anyway, we’re forced to experience a story of a world far from ours. I like it better if I can feel the world.

That reminds of fantasy, and why film-makers need to care about the world they show. JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling and George RR Martin spend a lot of time in building the space their characters will live. So that we can understand them, and then experience their story. I guess that’s true for cinema as well. A lot of times film makers try to show us characters, and that’s great. But I like it better when I can breathe in the air the characters are. That’s a less important aspect of film, however, it’s one I prefer a lot. I like empty corners. Makes me feel safe.