Swades

Swades tells the story of Mohan Bhargava, a "NRI" or "Non-returning Indian" who emigrated to the U.S. to pursue an American education and holds a job at NASA as a distinguished project manager for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM). He has settled in America and enjoys all the comforts of life, yet memories of his life in India and the loving nanny that brought him up begin to haunt him. He takes a two-week leave and returns to India to find and care for Kaveri amma, the woman who brought him up like a "second mother". He finds her in the small village of Charanpur with the intention of bringing her back to America. There, Kaveri amma has brought up two other people who also lost their parents at an early age, Gita and her young brother. During the two weeks, he learns much about the small village, its people, their pride in tradition and culture, and the barriers that prevent the village from improving its conditions. These barriers include illiteracy, caste discrimination, and close-minded views. Mohan realizes these hindrances and by winning the hearts of the villagers by sharing in their traditions and making them realize how some of these traditions prevent better conditions, he successfully enrolls new students in the local school despite the castes they come from. As the two weeks come to an end, Mohan decides to stay longer. At Kaveri amma's request he travels to the home of Gita to collect rent from a family that leased the land. A train ride, boat ride, and bus ride later, he and his village friend, Mela Ram, arrive at the destitute home of the family. He learns the story of the weaver that lost his job after textile factories debuted and was forced into farming to raise money for his family. To local village officials, this shift in jobs meant a shift in social status, limiting his access to water, and, in turn, leading to the unsuccessful harvest. His family barely gets along and lives a meager and shameful life. Mohan realizes that the hindrances he had found in Charanpur are constant across India. He leaves the farmer, paying for his rent and leaving him with the money he had. As his leave finally draws to an end, Mohan, lastly, creates a water turbine to generate electricity for the village. With the help of the villagers, he proves to the higher elders that every person, despite caste, can work together to improve the conditions of the village. At the demand of the GPM project, Mohan leaves the village and his new love, Gita, with a heavy heart. After the GPM project comes to a close, Mohan resigns and returns to India to marry Gita and live in the village of Charanpur.

I feel that among all the film screenings to date for this class, this movie was the most successful in blending an equal amount of clear national and global aspects of cinema. The film carries the definition of a Bollywood masala movie in that in contains the romance, drama, periodic song breakouts, and field spinning. Yet these aspects of Bollywood were limited. The song interruptions were not the usual choreographed dance, matching costume, and backup dancer norm. Instead, the only slightly choreographed routine to be considered would be Shahrukh Khan's bit with the swami-looking traveler on his way to Charanpur. The songs were well-incorporated into the themes of the movie, and not as random as other Bollywood movies I have seen. The movie opened with the problem of caring for the elderly. In the Indian tradition, this respoinsibility of caring for the elderly resides on the grown children, another national aspect. In addition, landscape shots were prominent in this film, as they are in many other Bollywood films. Mohan's train ride on his journey to collect Gita's rent is a good example of these landscape shots. They also tied in well to the main theme of the movie: "returning to the motherland". It should also be noted, with no offense intended to Shahrukh Khan, that by casting him as the protagonist is basically another Bollywood trait.

The global aspects of Swades, with risk of redundancy, is this exact limitation of Bollywood aspects. The story of Gita and Mohan's romance was not the focus of the film, nor were there any very action packed scenes, or overtheboard drama. While abiding to these more dramatic guidelines have won Indian audiences in the past, and reaped in outstanding profits, this film differed. This is obvious in the types of audiences the movie attracted; it was very successful in foreign countries just as much as it was in India. Instead of a high-packed action scene, the climax of the movie may be considered as the scene when Mohan accepts a cup of water from a destitute-looking child at a train stop on his way back to Charanpur. In this simple scene, volumes can be spoken of Mohan's feelings, the conditions of the poor countryside in India, and the unrealized potential for improvement, especially for the youth of India.

Water was uniquely used as a theme in this film and was synonomous to land. My favorite part of this film is how these national and global aspects tied so seamlessly into themes of water and returning to the land. Mohan moved to America and became a manager of a Global Precipitation Measurement project (the idea of water in the opening scene) He traveled to India, to his homeland, drinking water only from bottles during his stay. A turning point occured for him when he accepted the cup of water from the boy at the train station. He returned to Charanpur, and brought electricity to the village by manipulating a local stream into generating a water turbine. While he returned once more to America to finish his project, he comes back to India, the last scene of the movie focusing on dipping his feet into the water and finally returning to his homeland.