Mr. and Mrs. Iyer: love and compassion across religious differences

At least once in your lifetime, many of you must have experienced what I experienced last night. A dear friend of mine lent me a DVD 1-2 months ago, and I have not the chance to see it (shame on me!). And when she asked me of the movie, I went, shit! I have not seen it yet! So, last night I put Mr. and Mrs. Iyer into my DVD player and watched it while making myself a fish curry.

And I was blown away by the sheer beauty of the movie. The curry almost forgotten, I immersed myself in the beautiful story of Meenakshi Iyer, an orthodox Hindu married woman (played by Konkona Sen Sharma) and Raja Chowdhary (played by the gorgeous Rahul Bose), a Moslem Bengali wildlife photographer. Both were trapped in a bus that traveled through a chaotic part of Himalayan India when the Hindus were very much in favour of killing the Moslems, and vice versa.

Being an orthodox, Meenakshi was shocked to learn that the man who had helped her nursing her child Santhanam (or ‘Santa’ as Raja called the baby boy) was actually a Moslem. Initially, she was disgusted (and I wanted to slap her for that!), but when the fanatic Hindus barged into the bus to look for Moslems, she protected Raja by claiming him as Mani Iyer, her husband. As the result, throughout the journey to get out of the conflict area, Meenakshi and Raja had to play husband and wife (sans the sleeping together, duh!), and consequently developed an understanding and bond they never had thought to share before.

The ending was beautifully painful, for of course Mrs. Iyer needed to go back to her true Mr. Iyer, an okay guy but so pale in comparison to Raja’s silent charm. In the end, Raja walked away from Meenakshi, Santa and her husband, but not before giving her a roll of film containing pictures of them together he had taken during the journey.

Mr. and Mrs. Iyer is in my DVD purchase list, and the fact that the movie had been nominated for ten awards and won oh God nine of them made me busy blaming myself for not watching the DVD sooner!

To close the post, I would like to give you gentle readers a poem by Devara Dasimayya, a 10^th century Indian poet and saint. The poem was made into a song that was beautifully performed in the movie as Raja took photographs of people in the conflict zone. The song was titled Gustakh Ankhiyan; and perhaps the poem as well. Though I know zilch Hindi, Tamil or Bengali, after listening to the song and paying attention to the translation, I suspect that the title means 'Sinful Eyes'. The poem was so powerful, I shed myself some tears.

Sinful Eyes

Where, O where are You, O merciful Lord
Where is Your abode?
These my sinful eyes
When my sinful eyes
Cast their beseeching gaze

Where, O where are You, O merciful Lord
Where is Your abode?
For what shall I wield this dagger O Lord?
What can I pluck it out of
Or plunge it into
When You are all the world?

To behold You
I will give up my life, my whole world
Your glory illumines everything with light
When my sinful eyes
Cast their beseeching gaze

And this is the Indonesian translation for my fellow Indonesians, for we need to contemplate the real meaning of Unity in Diversity, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika.

Mata yang penuh dosa

Di manakah Engkau, Tuhanku
Di manakah rumahMu?
Saat mataku yang penuh dosa
Menatap dan memohon

Di manakah Engkau, Tuhanku
Di manakah rumahMu?
Untuk apa kutikamkan belati ini Tuhanku?
Dari mana harus kutarik belati ini,
Ke mana harus kutikam dia

Saat kusadar Engkaulah seluruh dunia ini?

Untuk memelukMu
Ku akan berikan seluruh hidupku, seluruh duniaku
Cahaya terangMu menyinari seluruh dunia
Saat mataku yang penuh dosa
Menatap dan memohon padaMu

Pic 1: DVD cover to Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, from Wikipedia

Pic 2: Raja and Meenakhsi photographing the deer, from Hindu.com