{"id":4405,"date":"2016-04-06T13:26:51","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T07:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4405"},"modified":"2016-04-06T13:26:51","modified_gmt":"2016-04-06T07:56:51","slug":"election-fake-news-rajat-kapoor-ankhon-dekhi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4405","title":{"rendered":"In an Election Year Filled with Fake News, Lessons from Rajat Kapoor\u2019s Ankhon Dekhi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“D<\/span>o samanaantar rekhayein agar kabhi nahin milti, toh infinity pe jaake kaise mil sakti hain? (How can two parallel lines converge at infinity?),\u201d an agitated Bauji asks an unsuspecting Mathematics professor, who is caught on the wrong foot, like a politician asked about India\u2019s falling <\/p>employment<\/span><\/a> rates. After all, we\u2019ve been conditioned to trust blindly and never question anything that is taught to us \u2014 like Bhai fans before an Eid release or BJP trolls downvoting Microsoft Excel, we\u2019re just dragging ourselves through life\u2019s maze, rather merrily yet painfully blindly. But to what end? Rajat Kapoor\u2019s <\/span>Ankhon Dekhi <\/span><\/i>(2014) seeks to answer this question. <\/span>\n\nBauji, played by the tenacious Sanjay Mishra, works as a <\/span>travel agent<\/span><\/a> and is the patriarch of a tightly knit family from Old Delhi. \u201cTight\u201d is the operative word here, purely because the family\u2019s interpersonal tensions are bottled into their haveli like a pressure cooker waiting to explode. When Bauji\u2019s daughter Rita is rumoured to be having an affair with a ruffian from the <\/span>neighbourhood<\/span><\/a>, his old-world values are offended and the men of his family accost the boy and rough him up. When the supposed ruffian turns out to be a timid, docile boy, Bauji feels like he\u2019s losing his moorings. <\/span>\n\nThat night, he wonders how easily the family had trusted the word of someone from the streets over their daughter\u2019s. This shakes his perception of what \u201ctruth\u201d truly is. Bauji decides that from now on, he is going to let go of all acquired knowledge (newspapers, books, and the <\/span>internet<\/span><\/a>) and only believe in what he experiences first-hand. \u201cMera sach, mere anubhav ka sach hoga,\u201d he proclaims, without realising the problems that lie ahead. <\/span>\n\nAs a <\/span>millennial<\/span><\/a> launda who\u2019s just learning how to adult \u2013 and to conform to rules and structures at workplaces, dating apps, and shared cabs \u2013 <\/span>I can tell you that I\u2019d behave like fellow Odia Sambit Patra on crack and rant about everything from chai to China if I had to let go of the internet for a day.<\/span> Perhaps because the internet is our primary source of information, and the flood of <\/span>fake news<\/span><\/a> on social media has made our judgement of the information we consume weaker than ever before. But imagine going through the ordeal of questioning your beliefs very late in life, like Bauji, who decides that the only way to arrive at this fable-like idea of \u201ctruth\u201d is by questioning the very pillars we base our lives on. <\/span>\n\nThe first drastic step Bauji takes is that he stops praying and visiting the <\/span>temple<\/span><\/a>. He\u2019s offered prasad by the neighbourhood priest who he politely corrects by calling it \u201cmithai\u201d. It might seem like a mere shift in semantics, but it conveys the fact that the process of questioning things starts with unlearning them in the first place. <\/span>\n

He believes that silent retrospection is the only way to find rhythm in the cacophony that surrounds him.<\/blockquote>\nMake no mistake, Bauji is no superhero, in fact he\u2019s more the village idiot. To the outside world, he\u2019s a laughing stock. To the <\/span>family<\/span><\/a>, a major source of embarrassment. Bauji is surrounded by a handful of men from the neighbourhood who ridicule as well as adore his eccentricities in equal parts. <\/span>\n\nMost of the ridicule that Bauji faces from the outside is unwarranted, because people seem to think that there are things like politics, religion, and morality that are beyond the realm of questioning. This reminds me of the UGC protests, the protest against the Delhi University Vice Chancellor, and the <\/span>protests in JNU<\/span><\/a>, most of which stemmed from the fact that one was not being allowed to question or critique the establishment. The popular slogan at the time was, \u201cHumne suna hai, ke jinko chuna hai, unhone kaha hai, ki poochna mana hai!\u201d This is pretty much the crossroads at which Bauji finds himself. When the world is full of half-truths and misconceptions, the answer actually lies in looking within. <\/span>\n\nBauji ups his game and stops talking altogether, communicating only in gestures with one and all. He believes that silent retrospection is the only way to find rhythm in the cacophony that surrounds him. Bauji\u2019s silence is a welcome change in today\u2019s world where IT cells of political parties, news outlets, and lobbyists engage their considerable resources in trying to mislead our sense of judgement. We live in times of President Trump and our own <\/span>Chowkidars<\/span><\/a>, and maybe sometimes silence is the only way to distance oneself from the hate emanating from the echo chambers all around us. <\/span>\n\nAnkhon Dekhi<\/span><\/i> is Rajat Kapoor\u2019s ode to his <\/span>teachers<\/span><\/a> Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani, who are stalwarts at creating characters that live, breathe, and in many ways resist their environment. Bauji is a product as well as an embodiment of his environment. At an early point in the film, he references the fable of the frog in the well, saying, \u201cBhale hi main kuein ka maindhak hoon, main apne kuein ka maindhak hoon, apne kuein se parichit hoon.\u201d But as soon as the \u201cmaindhak\u201d is taken out of his well, he can see himself and his world clearly.<\/span>\n\nAs Bauji\u2019s story draws to a close, he realises that the misplaced idea of \u201ctruth\u201d he was chasing was actually a mirage; what truly exists is the harsh reality of the present and not the assumptions and half-truths that accompany it. Perhaps what we can take away from Rajat Kapoor\u2019s <\/span>Ankhon Dekhi<\/span><\/i> is that the truth is all around us, but you won\u2019t find it unless you have the courage to look for it with your own eyes.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The flood of fake news on social media has made our judgement of the information we consume weaker than ever before. But if we wish to gain an understanding of the \u201ctruth\u201d, we must question the very pillars we base our lives on, like Bauji in Rajat Kapoor\u2019s 2014 film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":4406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3114],"tags":[7821,1476,4436],"class_list":["post-4405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bollywood","tag-ankhon-dekhi","tag-election","tag-rajat-kapoor"],"yoast_head":"\nIn an Election Year Filled with Fake News, Lessons from Rajat Kapoor\u2019s Ankhon Dekhi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The flood of fake news on social media has made our judgement of the information we consume weaker than ever before. 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