After
‘Gandhi’, I have to
mention the film named Blue from the famous The Three Colors series. or its creator Krzysztof Kieślowski. His art of storytelling
has influenced my thought process to a great extent.
I had
been writing a series of parallel stories since the year 2000; I had no idea at
the time that these are called parallel stories. Most of the stories dealt with the dark
aspect of the human mind and had an undiluted structure. I didn’t compromise by
altering even a single sentence of this chronicle just for the sake of so-called
linearity of structure. The result was that for those who couldn’t devote
enough time to a paragraph and reflect on the human feelings behind those words,
this series remained indecipherable or worse, an exercise in futility. I
experienced great creative satisfaction while writing them and was eager to see
the reaction of my readers. This was where I faced a problem; you see, most of
my friends are not into literature and hence, I couldn’t depend on them to give
me a proper feedback. Moreover, I was residing away from my home state, Assam, so
I could not understand first-hand how the readers were responding to my
creative effort by any sort of interaction with them.
I concluded
that the stories into which I had put so much time and effort, turned out to be
some incoherent gibberish. I went into a kind of depression, repeatedly asking
myself whether I should compromise on my writing style. Should I start writing
in a simple linear style (which is not my way of storytelling)? Should I write
about populist clichés that do not excite my creativity at all? (Assam has its
own trends of bestselling plots). On a more megalomaniac note, I was beginning
to think that there was no one in this world, who thinks like me, that there were
no takers for original thinking, that I was a lone man amongst an indifferent swarm
of people.
Then
I happened to come across this much heard series – directed by Kieślowski .
Three colours Blue was my first Kieslowski movie, which I watched in 2007. As
the film progressed, I realised that the thought process of the protagonist or
the scriptwriter behind the scenes reverberated with mine. Many of the frames of ‘Blue’ inspired me. What
I found most inspiring about this series is that the auteur didn’t compromise
on anything while presenting his creative vision, yet he was able to connect
with his audience, to convey his version to the world. This fact encouraged me
and eventually I decided NOT TO CHANGE MY STYLE.
In
this movie, there is a scene in which the female protagonist was having coffee
in a restaurant and a street musician was playing some music. The tune was the same
as the one her husband was composing, but he died before being able to complete
it. How could an unfinished musical score have reached the street musician? Later,
during an interview, Kieślowski had this to say about it, “Music never dies, it
vibrates, swirls in the atmosphere, you just have to pick it up from nature.”
I
watched Three colors Blue in 2007, but this message from the scene was the seed
of a Play –ঐক্যতান Akoikyatan
(The Beethoven of someone’s love), I had written, directed and staged in 1997.
At
that time, the whole unit of the play had the same doubt that I had been having
– “Does anyone think like us?” The
discovery of Kieślowski through Blue was a positive propelling force for me, it
reinforced my intention to continue writing in my own unadulterated style by
being true to myself.
