Searching the need for being Amal…

Last week I saw a movie called “Amal”. For people who don’t know anything about this, it’s a 2007 released movie featuring Naseeruddin Shah (whom am a big fan of especially after watching him live in Katha Collage), Seema Biswas, Roshan Seth (the Nehru in the movie Gandhi) and an unknown guy to me Rupinder Nagra who plays the title role.

The movie is quite simple about a billionaire (played by Naseer) who in disguise is on a lookout for “insaniyat” in the city of delhi to give away his entire wealth and comes across this Auto-rickshaw driver (Amal) and leaves everything to him just because he founds this man to be humane and in spite of being in poor condition still following the path of truth and making sure he doesn’t hurt anyone with his actions. Amal doesn’t gets the wealth is a different question and if he had got it whether he would have taken it is also questionable (you would need to watch the movie for details of how, what, where etc)

There were a couple of things that struck me in the movie, one something that the narrator repeats a couple of time about what exactly success means and the poorest of men are sometimes the richest. Also, personally it struck me on the point of trying (and making sure too) not to cause hurt to anyone knowingly and unknowingly both even if it causes pain or makes your life miserable in the eyes of the world.

As soon as the movie unfolded against my eyes and my mind started to relate it to self (I know it’s something one should avoid, but can’t help), the first thoughts the came to my mind were how different we actually are in reality to how we should be (as per Amal)

Here is a guy who is not able to make his ends meet and is still making sure at every point in his life he makes all possible efforts in doing the right things and helping others. Be it he helping a poor needy beggar kid by selling off his auto-rickshaw or accepting that it’s his mistake when the person boarding his auto scolds him for hearing the destination name incorrectly even when he was right. There is never a point where he has any second thoughts on the actions he would take and the conviction he has in his beliefs is beyond description in words.

And here we are, on face we always say and to an extent also try to make sure we are doing things rightly (as per our value system) and try not to cause harm to people around us. But our convictions take a beating when pitted against two things which we don’t want to cause harm at the same time. We always make a choice of where the destruction would be less and go ahead with it and then spend the rest of our lives trying to justify that we were right. Sometimes as an afterthought we admit too that yup we were wrong, but by then the damage is already done as through each and every action of ours someone gets affected by it in the positive or negative manner.

But then is it necessary for us to be right and act in a particular manner? I mean who decides that a particular action of ours is a correct one or we have been wrong. After all it’s always about the choices we make at every point of life. We all can retrospect and be judgmental about things but it is the person concerned who has to make a choice at a particular point of his life. It then comes down to the value system of ours which choice we make. As long as we are not regretting the choice and are at self ease within us, we should be good. (Not necessarily happy but at self-ease as we might have caused harm to someone by taking the other choice) It is my life and my decisions, if you agree it doesn’t matter to me and if you don’t, even that doesn’t matter an iota to me.

Coming back to Amal again, the guy makes all his choices within the realms of his value system. He doesn’t regret it although to a normal person it might seem he is an idiot (as one of my flat mate shouted in the middle of the movie) but so be it. Idiot he is if you want to call him that and a person with very high levels of “insaniyat” as the billionaire calls him. It again doesn’t matter to him. He would not utter a word on being called an Idiot and he would not take a penny for being very humane.

But what does he end up with?

Happiness? …maybe
Materials? …A zilch
Chaos?…A lot

So was his the way the right way? I don’t know the answer to this and I don’t think am educated enough to answer this. So why the need for being Amal? Why the need for being good to people and being someone with helluva lot of “insaniyat”? Coz am sure we all have some place for all the materialistic desires in heart (some more…some less…some say…some don’t) and definitely no one wants chaos in their lives…and when being happy is also “maybe” if you take the other choice…why not take the first one??

Makes sense?
!!!!!!!!!!!

Story of My Life...