When almost everyone is celebrating ‘Mothers
Day’ with the customary praise for motherhood, I decided to look at what
motherhood means to me. According to me ‘Mothers Day’ is for mothers to realize
what it is to be an epitome of love and sacrifice. This post is for my twin
angels who gave me the indisputable status of a mother perennially supplemented
with joy and pride.
If you are someone who loves revisiting
your childhood this film cannot be missed. ‘Moggina Jade’ is a Kannada film
that will touch you irrespective of the language barrier. When I encountered
the film a couple of years ago, I was shedding gallons of tears, an act that I
quite enjoy doing while watching films. It
is not a sad, dark, depressing story at all…but an emotional tale that will
trigger one’s tear glands. The winner of the piece is the little girl around
whom the story is knit. She will just completely bowl you over with her
innocent face and living of the role not to be mistaken for acting.
Seven year old Priya (played by baby
Shreesha) lives with her parents and grandparents. To her company is her cousin
who moved in with his grandparents after his mother’s demise. Priya’s parents belong
to the breed of hardworking and aspiring couples who work on a relay race kind
of shift system with the aim of an improved standard of living. Priya’s
grandparents are the naïve, diffident soul’s dependant on son and daughter in
law for their existence. And finally the
last immovable character is Priya’s house, a typical middle class humble home. Innocent
that she looks all that Priya wants is simple things in life.
Priya’s mother, played by the Nayi Neralu star Pavitra Lokesh, hails
from an affluent family, and thanks to her love marriage gets engulfed in a
middle class life much to her dissatisfaction. Leading an almost robotic life
to make extra bucks to buy a dream home is her sole agenda. In this process
gets eschewed the little desires of her daughter as she imposes her tastes and
wishes on the little one. First bombshell being a short hairdo much to the
tears and disapproval of Priya whose long pending unrealized desire is to dress
up traditionally with a her hair decorated with a plait of jasmine buds as is
the custom in some parts of Karnataka. The argument being the universal
rhetoric ‘I know what is good for you.” (My mom had a good taste but that never
let her decide things for me or my sister. I remember, when as kids we had gone
to pick up clothes for Diwali, a little girl had come to pick up her birthday
dress. The girl was fond of a particular dress but her mother strictly declined
her choice along with a few strong words that made the poor girl turn silent.
May be the price of the dress was beyond their budget but the girl will never
be able to come to terms with her disappointment. Are mothers listening?)
Priya’s grandmother wants to fulfill her
desire but when household expenses are calculated and budget allocated strictly
spending on bit expensive jasmine buds was out of her reach. It is also not an
important expense to ask her daughter in law who is already hell bent on
chopping of her grand daughters tresses. Nevertheless she tells the flower
vendor to get her jasmine buds when it is seasonal in order to fulfill her
promise to her granddaughter who is upset when her grandson gets a bicycle from
his father and step mother.
Priya’s dad is the typical henpecked
husband. Someone who is caught between the nagging needs of his wife and his parents who are dependant on him. A small argument between his wife and father was reason
enough for him to be persuaded to move out of the house. Since their dream home
is in the final stages they take refuge in his mother in laws friend’s unoccupied
bungalow. There starts the loneliness saga of his daughter dear. To divert her
melancholy they take her for a holiday. The grandparents who are equally distressed
being away from their grand daughter come to visit at that time, guess what,
with a plait of jasmine buds. They leave the plait and homemade sweets and
savouries to the maid in the house who is about sixteen years old. The maid
tells Priya’s dad about their visit. She understands a rift in the family and
thus takes advantage by not disclosing what the visitors brought. She takes the
plait to her home and for a fee dresses up all the young girls in her
neighbourhood and takes pictures in a studio. And the sweet and the savouries
were safely tucked away in a cupboard. When little Priya sees her once munching
murukku she hesitantly gives her one. Later one night Priya asks her dad for
murukku and to his predicament as to where he get it at that hour she tells it
is in that cupboard. One look at it he recognizes his mothers labour and his
maids cunningness. He also sees the much rented and worn out plait with dried
up buds. He immediately takes and it discards it in a garbage bin at the end of
his street.
The next day Priya sees the little gypsy
girl camped closer to her house, wearing a dried up moggina jade. She immediately
runs upto her and requests her to share the plait with her for a while. Unaware
that the dried up moggina jade was weaved with love by her own grandmother
Priya wears it with so much of happiness. A scene that will swell up your eyes
and give onions a run for money!
However
the joy is only short lived when her mother finds her in that trance and
admonishes her for her behavior. This is later followed by the little girl
leaving the house, the parents in shock and in the mood to realize their
mistake, the girl lost in the city, then picked up by a stranger in a bike, leading
viewers to invoke all gods for help, and finally found safely perched in her earlier
school watchman’s shoulder brought back to her grandparents home welcome with a
sigh by her parents. And wait no prizes for guessing the end. The little
princess does let her hair down to bridge the huge gap between tradition and
modernity.
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