Praktan

Praktan, an awesome Bengali film by Nandita Roy and Shiboprosod Mukhopadhyay explores the philosophy of life, love, complexities of relationships, positive sides of relationships, maturity etc. very beautifully. This film’s plot is designed from the perspectives of people from different walks of life. Everybody’s life is a story in itself. The film depicts how 24+ odd hours of train journey from Mumbai to Howra becomes a life changing experience for a few of its travellers. How their perception itself towards life changes? Many times, we are burdened with the thought of not able to find answers to many of our questions, but a journey ultimately ends up giving answers to our questions, isn’t it amazing ?

Travellers embarking life-changing journey are:  A newly-wed couple (Biswanath Basu and Manali Dey), an elderly couple (Soumitra Chatterjee and Sabitri Chatterjee), a mother Molly (Aparajita Adhya) with her 6 year old daughter Udita aka Putul, Sudipa (Rituparna Sengupta) and a group of musicians. Ujaan (Prasanjit) joins the journey much later. The screenplay is well crafted to introduce all the characters and their emotional baggages. One of the musician is reminiscing about his former band member. Newly married couple is full of love with each other, but very soon husband turns insecure. The elderly couple does feel nostalgic about past. Lives of gregarious Molly, cute Udita and reserved Sudipa get interrelated. What realizations struck Ujaan, a guide for Heritage Walks?

Praktan talks about what happens during their journey. They go through self-discovery process, leave their baggages, and move ahead with a new found positivity, love, passion, togetherness. Beautiful philosophies of life, which are discussed in the film:

• Adjustments /compromise in love, in relationships, is not at all losing oneself. When we love someone, it is important to give a part of us to the other person without feeling powerless.
• One cannot undo the past, so why to worry about it, and future is uncertain, so why to bother about it too much. ‘Present’ is so important.
• Many times, we don’t realize that egos can kill a relationship till it actually goes out of the hand. The loss becomes irreparable.
• We want to watch our spouses or loved ones in a particular frame designed by us and if they don’t fit into our frame, we start getting uncomfortable. Praktan also talks of, how peaceful, joyous and loving it can be, if we don’t try to design frames for our loved ones.
• When we love a person, as we accept the good aspects of that person, can’t we become more tolerant towards their not-so-good aspects as well?
• At times, we have to ‘let go’, learn the art of forgiving,
  need to gather courage to move ahead and explore better aspects of life,
  leaving the ‘feeling of loss’ behind, respecting the ‘good’ of life…

Praktan and its characters’ journey will leave you awestruck, a film which is very rich in its content, screenplay, dialogues, acting, music, theme, philosophies of life.

Note: I wrote  Praktan’s review on this blog, later modified the same to write this article for City Scroll; Theme ‘Travel’.