The best part about Canberra skies is that they kind of talk to me. And today they said, “Amit… So jaa… varna Hastar aa jaayega…” (English translation: Go to sleep, else Hastar will haunt you; Hastar is the name of a beast).
The line is actually from a masterpiece called “Tumbbad” (a 2018 hindi movie). It is one of those movies, which primarily captures a single emotion/thought and follows it throughout beautifully to show its various aspects from multiple angles (for example, ‘obsession’ in the 2006 classic, The Prestige). Here, in Tumbbad, the primary emotion is ‘greed’. It shows the ‘obsession’ with greed and the related vicious cycle in its most raw form. You need to accept a few assumptions about that world (very much like what you have to do for the Harry Potter series) but then the movie takes you through a journey of its own. May be the ending is somewhat expected (i.e., the need for breaking the vicious cycle) but the execution of that idea is shown in a very unexpected way. To be specific, the protagonist faces something which he himself has done and is ready to accept his fate but the choice is not his anymore. It is one of my favourites movies, especially also for its marvellous ending (another one being The Prestige). May be I am drawing too many parallels between The Prestige and Tumbbad but I guess both of them are unique movies and they do probably have a lot in common. I wish the Canberra sky would sometime say “Amit… The secret impresses no one... The trick you use it for is everything…”
Now, let me give you a context on the line “So jaa… varna Hastar aa jaayega…”. In the movie, the line is said to the beast to calm him/her down. There are multiple beasts and the line works like a charm for all of them. This is because they all come from a common source (connected directly to greed!). Some of their offsprings, even after seeing, calming, and killing those beasts, focussed on the greed. They developed a strategy to minimize risk to satisfy their thirst. The strategy seems to work for sometime but then one generation choses to enhance it for maximising gains. Unexpectedly, this enhancement leads to an unexpected change in the act and now the question: continue or break! The person with the choice is ‘now’ safe to go either way but for him it was a Hobson’s choice. What would you have done?
However, having said that, the line still works like a charm! I wish it was that simple for beasts in our life too. But do all those beasts also have a common source? May be not.
Also, why did the sky chose this line? Maybe it is raining here continuously as in Tumbbad. Just when I was wondering about this and other similar questions, the sky slowly said, “Viraasat mein milli har cheez par daawa nahi karna chahiye…” (English translation: One shouldn’t claim everything from their inheritance). Another extraordinary dialogue from Tumbbad. And I just responded back to that beautiful cloudy sky, “So jaa… varna Hastar aa jaayega…”!
