| Bilgi :The film starts with Saketh Ram as a very old man and almost immediately goes into flashback. As a young man he is among his friends, in conviviality. He has taken a Bengali wife, Aparna, and everything is wonderful in his life. But the year is 1946, and the imminent independence of India from British suzerainty is complicated by religious antagonism between the Hindu majority and the large Muslim minority, who demand their own independent state. Saketh and Aparna visit Calcutta; rioting is reported, but Saketh goes out to get some food, and he soon encounters a Hindu woman being chased by Muslim rioters. He rescues her, but the rioters later come to his house, and brutally rape and then kill his wife. Saketh is devastated and takes to the streets, determined personally to kill as many Muslims as he can find. He meets up with Sriram Abhiyankar, who is leading a group of Hindu extremists, and Saketh becomes temporarily taken with the cause himself. At the same time, he is persuaded to take a new wife, Mythili, and life begins to stabilise for Saketh after all. However he then falls in with an eminent Maharajah who is leading an underground group with the intention of assassination. Travelling with the Maharajah, Saketh meets one of his old friends from younger days, who has fallen on hard times. Reminiscing, and getting his old friend back on his feet deflect the process of recruiting Saketh, but only temporarily, and soon he is manipulated into committing himself to renouncing his family and his new wife, in the interests of the cause which now is disclosed as the assassination of Gandhi. Although a fellow Hindu, Gandhi was felt by some to be too conciliatory to Muslims and in the logic of extremists, Gandhi became the prime target. Soon Saketh is informed that Gandhi will be in Delhi for some weeks, and that Saketh is to take the opportunity to do "his duty". However, hiding from a snap search by the police, he has to hide his pistol on a delivery lorry, and it is driven away to a factory owned by Muslims. Going there hoping to retrieve the gun, he becomes engulfed in a shoot-out between some Hindu attackers and the Muslims, and finds that his loyalties are not so clear cut as he had imagined. Finally he escapes after the death of another of his old friends in the crossfire. The next day, January 30th 1948, he contrives to be near Gandhi in a public prayer ground, his appointment with destiny. But the film still has 20 minutes to run, and the ending is not what you expect.The movie begins at present day with Saketh Ram (Kamal Haasan), an 89-year-old South Indian Brahmin who is dying. The scene reverts back to the past as Saketh remembers the 1940's, when he and his good friend, Amjad Ali Khan (Shahrukh Khan) were archaeologists working together under their boss, Mortimer Wheeler, in Mohanjodaro (Indus River Valley Civilization) in Karachi. Relations are pleasant between the Indians and the English, and Saket and Amjad do not approve of the Partition and the creation of Pakistan. Aparna Sen, Saketh's simple Bengali wife is living in Calcutta in the midst of riots and chaos over the issue of the formation of Pakistan. Saket goes to Calcutta and is swept into the madness. In one instance, Saket saves an innocent Punjabi girl from the hands of a Muslim gang. The Muslims are angered and decide to take revenge; the group is headed by Aparna's tailor, Altaf, who break into Saket's home. They brutally rape and maliciously slit Rani's throat, and the scene, so vividly shot, leaves little for the imagination. This itself turns Saketh Ram maniacal and puts him on a wild killing spree, avenging his wife's disgrace and killing every possible Muslim in sight. On his apparent sortie he comes across a bunch of right-winged Hindu fundamentalists, led by Abhyankar (Atul Kulkarni). Abhyankar preaches him about the need of the Hindus to come together and save their brethren from the Islamists who according to them are mere intruders from across the Khyber.. He soon joins fanatical Hindus and loses sense of himself, falling victim to the chaos and religious hatred around him. He is also urged to marry again and agrees to it reluctantly. Mahatma Gandhi (Naseeruddin Shah) is solely blamed for the division of India and of the two religions. His wrath gets the better of him as he pledges to take revenge co-opted by the Hindutva Brigade and he travels from Calcutta to Madras to kill Mahatma Gandhi. There he meets his second wife (Vasundhara Das) , another light eyed beauty. Saketh Ram does not love her but only marries her under his father's (Kavignar Vaali) orders. Saket Ram is entrusted the task of killing Mahatma Gandhi, after his friend Abhyankar is left paralyzed in a freak accident. He has a change of heart only when he falls prey to a bunch of Muslims, where he also meets old chum Amjad Khan (Shah Rukh Khan), an ardent Gandhi admirer. At the climax, Saketh Ram is prepared to murder Mahatma Gandhi but is stopped by Amjad. He later realizes that without Gandhi, India would be destroyed. He goes up to Gandhi and begs for forgiveness but Gandhi says he has to go and that he has no time for his apologies. When Gandhi is about to leave, a young man approaches and kills Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi with a gun. The movie ends with the old Saketh Ram, slowly dying on his death bed.Saketh Ram comes from a wealthy and educated South Indian family, and is curently touring Karachi, British India, in the company of his businessmen friends, Lalwani, and Amjad Ali Khan. Saketh goes to Calcutta to meet his beloved wife, Aparna. Then religious riots break out, and soon there are Sikh and Hindu gangs killing Muslims on sight, while there are Muslim gangs who kill non-muslims on sight, as well as rape and molest their women. Unfortunately, Aparna happens to be one of those women. Saketh is enraged, first at the muslims, then at Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, for advocating peace with the muslims, and soon he becomes involved with a revolutionary group of right-wing Hindu from Maharashtra who want to assasinate Gandhi. The British leave a bitter and divided India, and Saketh comes home, where his family get him married to Mythili Iyengar. Subsequently, both of them leave, and re-locate to Maharashtra, where they meet with Maharaja, and are soon involved in plotting to assasinate Gandhi. Saketh Ram and Shriram Abhyankar are entrusted with this task, however, Shriram has an accident, is paralyzed, and subsequently dies, leaving Saketh to complete the task of assasinating Mohandas, who will later be known as Mahatma Gandhi. |
