THE WOODS ARE LOVELY, DARK AND DEEP...

...But I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP, MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP.



In a city full of people with the same dreams who share the road with you every evening, some you over look while some obstruct your pace. In the hustle bustle and chaos of what they call ‘the fast life’ of Bombay, amidst the glitz and the glamour, in every rented house... lies a pack of dreams – rusting away to the struggle of making it somewhere. Somewhere in the eyes of this fake world or perhaps somewhere in the eyes of your parents.. Somewhere in your own eyes or somewhere in the long inexplicable stares of your patronizing boss. Its almost every day that one battles these questions, of ‘What If?’. Its like a reserve of a 100 coins slipping away every day leaving you with little option to enjoy each expense as you keep worrying what happens when all is gone?


So what is it about this city, this life, this pain that makes us stay longer, battle it all out, get up yet again with the same passion? It is, the same feeling that we felt when we would play Hide and seek as kids hours and hours in the sun only to experience the joy of that one moment when you would win. The dark corner and the solitude wouldn’t scare us, it would be the thrill and the chase of winning the game that kept us going. Day after day, hours of sweat and thumping hearts... we would love this game.


Scores of films and novels and columns have been written on staying alone in Bombay – this city of unending dreams where some fall in love with this city while some simply fall in love. The film ends with a beautiful song in the rains of the city and tells us of a happy ending. Well, which is precisely the reason why it is to be enjoyed in those 3 hours of comfortable theatre velvet and come back to what is real and your own. Some how these 3 hours of the film seems to be stretching over 80 years of your own life, where this is perhaps the ophase right before or after the intermission. The phase where things change. Story shifts, new protagonists enter, hero develops to do something he’s never done before, the heroine rebels home. .. All happens in that one ‘usual day’ of morning tea, day in office, evening with friends and the night alone.


Yet it is this very drama that unfolds in those subtle ways every day, often unsettling, that causes you to want to steer this film in a new direction. For it to have a new ending, every day. Somewhere lying unnoticed beneath the crumpled clothes, forever buzzing mobile phones, house lease papers and job contracts, lies a passion enveloped by a halo of a dream that crawls up in your bed beside you every night- showing you a vision so beautiful, a dream so achieve-able, a target so close...that every morning you wake up with enthusiasm renewed.


And as you go on sharing the sidewalks with those with the same dreams, you don’t seem to mind. And suddenly the noisy chaos of what they call ‘the fast life of the city’, the loud screeches of vehicles and conversations doesn’t seem to bother you. The loud music buzzing from those night clubs and cars doesn’t amaze you... as this city looks the same as it did when you came in. Nothing around you changed. What's different is, today you’re not looking around or are ears to the mad sounds of this city. You’re treading along the same path, humming your own beautiful song...

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"Youth is, after all, just a moment, but it is the moment, the spark, that you always carry in your heart."