Ankahee...

Saw this beautiful and intense movie today. Ankahee. Starring Amol Palekar and Deepti Naval had won a national award in 1984.

The movie quintessentially talks about the part destiny plays in our lives. How much of our life is our own and how much of it is preordained. In the movie the educated protagonist struggles to find a way out of his father’s (also an astrologer) doomed prophecy which threatens to tear his world apart. He believing his father's predictions loves one woman but marries another. The movie explores the murky space where faith transcends into superstition. Something most people struggle with. I have seen educated engineers from my college turn around when black cat crosses their path and highly qualified doctors run to the nearest astrologers to sort out their kid’s future. Like the doctor in the movie whose patient’s eminent death is predicted by the astrologer says – what is the point in living and inventing if every second of our life is writ in stone? Why bother at all?

On a parellel note the movie also delves on the existence of free will primarily through the choices the girl (whom the protaganist does not marry) makes or is forced to make. How people under the garb of duty, love, pity, guilt and other such varied emotions push people to act against their free will.

Deepti Naval delivers a stellar performance as an innocent village belle struggling with her demons. The story in itself is powerful but Deepti Naval takes it to a different level. Amol Palekar is a superb story teller but the credit of this movie goes to the writer and Deepti Naval.

The last line of the movie actually summarizes it all –

Zindagi har kadam par aadmi ka apna chunaav hai…