{"id":4337,"date":"2016-07-23T17:14:26","date_gmt":"2016-07-23T11:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4337"},"modified":"2016-07-23T17:14:26","modified_gmt":"2016-07-23T11:44:26","slug":"10-years-gulaal-politics-poetry-anurag-kashyap-cult-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4337","title":{"rendered":"10 Years of Gulaal: Why the Politics and Poetry of the Anurag Kashyap Film Have Acquired Cult Status"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

J<\/span>ohn F Kennedy believed that <\/p>\u201cIf more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politic\u201d the world would be a better place. Zoya Akhtar\u2019s <\/span>Gully Boy<\/span><\/i><\/a> is perhaps the ideal example of a man who knows his poetry, but may not know his politics. A decade ago, Anurag Kashyap produced a film situated on the opposite end of that spectrum, where young men know their politics, but not their poetry. Now a decade old, <\/span>Gulaal,<\/span><\/i> is perhaps Kashyap\u2019s most unforgiving film and not because it\u2019s dressed in Kashyap\u2019s trademark brashness or penchant for violence, but because like life, it is grounded in cynicism. <\/span>Gulaal<\/span><\/i> tells us that the hostility of <\/span>youth<\/span><\/a> is often misdirected and eventually devoted to causes born out of scorn that no amount of poetry can subsume.<\/span>\n\nReleased to little fanfare only a month after his much more anticipated <\/span>Dev D<\/span><\/i><\/a> hit theatres, <\/span>Gulaal<\/span><\/i> was at the time a risibly odd film. Gulaal \u2013 the colour red \u2013 is symbolic of a number of things: love, anger, lust, and betrayal. Kashyap\u2019s film addressed all with a palette so evocative that it plays a character in itself. <\/span>\n\nGulaal<\/span><\/i> follows Dileep Singh (Raj Singh Choudhary) who arrives in a fictional town of Rajasthan to study law. Out of sheer bad luck, he ends up living in a bar where his <\/span>roommate<\/span><\/a> is the moustachioed Rananjay (Abhimanyu Singh), a man who wears his Rajputana heritage with as much pride, as he carries the glint of <\/span>masculinity<\/span><\/a> in his eyes. In a couple of scenes he stands bare-chested, his pelvic area covered by a V-shaped underwear that on anyone else, would have invited ridicule. Kashyap, clearly understands the relationship between masculinity and flamboyance. But even the cock-eyed Rananjay with all his machismo is a pawn in a bigger game of Rajput politics with both Dukey Bana (Kay Kay Menon) and Karan (Aditya Srivastav) vying for a throne that is more fog than the presumed mountaintop behind it. <\/span>\n\nKashyap\u2019s films often cast weak, loserly men and Dileep fits the bill: A man surrounded by men so electrified by aggression and <\/span>violence<\/span><\/a> that their mere presence causes his spine to lean and eventually mould itself. Dileep\u2019s own Rajput heritage becomes a burden; a call for pride that he inevitably answers. <\/span>Gulaal<\/span><\/i> is tonally nihilist, a film where death and deliverance are minor considerations in the bigger scheme of things. A scheme that is about power that promises a \u201creturn\u201d to the utopia where Rajput pride was unbridled and seemingly intact. <\/span>\n

Gulaal isn\u2019t a purportedly grim film; it just refuses to rescue its characters or its viewers.<\/blockquote>\nFrom the outset, Kashyap does not mince his politics: Most men in this vile world are afterall, beyond the charms of <\/span>democracy<\/span><\/a> and fairness, hardened by their bitterness, out to get what they believe is theirs to take. In one scene, Rananjay tells his father off by saying \u201cMujhe Amar Chitra Katha mein nahi jeena hai.\u201d In another, he tells his friend \u201cYouth hi change karta hai samaj.\u201d These are statements that in retrospect seem relevant. Kashyap\u2019s men may be angry, but they still believe in ruminating about ideology. Their poetics may be off, but there is still incessant faith in rebelling with principle. <\/span>\n\nGulaal<\/span><\/i> isn\u2019t a purportedly grim film; it just refuses to rescue its characters or its viewers. Mentors here are as scheming and manipulative as <\/span>enemies<\/span><\/a>. For someone like Dileep, with time, his identity corners him, as he becomes part of a wave he did not even plan to stand on the shore of. Much like present-day India, where the politics one finds themselves enmeshed in, is non-negotiable, even irredeemable by reason.<\/span>\n\nThat said, <\/span>Gulaal<\/span><\/i> earned its <\/span>cult status<\/span><\/a> largely due to one man: Piyush Mishra and his doomsday poetry from the film. Mishra\u2019s idiosyncratic appearance in the movie where he rhymes atonally about worldly witticisms is a metaphor, perhaps for the \u201cbigger picture\u201d that is menacingly misunderstood and overseen. \u201cIss mulk ne har shaqs ko jo kaam tha saunpa, us shaqs ne us kaam ki maachis jalaake chhod di,\u201d he says in the middle of one of his spontaneous bursts. <\/span>\n\nI talk about <\/span>Gully Boy<\/span><\/i> when I talk about <\/span>Gulaal<\/span><\/i>, because at the heart of both are poetry and politics. While the former softened its reflection of present-day India to an extent, <\/span>Gulaal<\/span><\/i> embraced it with the kind of bloodlust that cinema rarely does. Even though both are completely different movies set in seemingly different worlds, they are tied together by a nervous man, in the middle of it all. One\u2019s dream liberates him while the other\u2019s is besotted by doom. Though <\/span>Gully Boy\u2019s <\/span><\/i>Murad (<\/span>Ranveer Singh<\/span><\/a>) presumably escapes through his poetry, it is likely his politics, or lack thereof will catch up with him after the credits end. But Dileep, on the other hand, is fatally restricted by his own privilege. In one scene Karan asks Dileep \u201cRajneeti ka matlab jante ho?\u201d Dileep naively, yet profoundly replies \u201cPolitics\u201d. Kashyap and <\/span>Gulaal<\/span><\/i>, thankfully, never abandon their own. <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gulaal is perhaps Anurag Kashyap\u2019s most unforgiving film and not because it\u2019s dressed in his trademark brashness, but because like life, it is grounded in cynicism. That said, the movie earned its cult status largely due to one man: Piyush Mishra and his doomsday poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":4338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[1287,7766,1291,7580,33,5503],"class_list":["post-4337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-anurag-kashyap","tag-cult-status","tag-gulaal","tag-gully-boy","tag-politics","tag-zoya-akhtar"],"yoast_head":"\n10 Years of Gulaal: Why the Politics and Poetry of the Anurag Kashyap Film Have Acquired Cult Status<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gulaal is perhaps Anurag Kashyap\u2019s most unforgiving film and not because it\u2019s dressed in his trademark brashness, but because like life, it is grounded in cynicism. 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