A boy said that he first came across Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost when a friend suggested it was a pretty good movie and very disturbing long after you are done watching it. Finding the concept of a film which incorporated ghost stories with emotional themes rather interesting, he thought it was worth a shot. That, however, was not what he braced himself for, coming out of the mesmerizing world of the film, which was astonishing, as well rough to him, in ways he had not thought.c As a die-hard fan of the yoyo, he really understood t, at it, penetrated all capable seventeen years. A man so young as to have started to perceive such notions as identity, belonging, burden of expectation- all that Qissa portrayed with so much vigor.
The main character of the narrative was Umber Singh, a Sikh man who is displaced by the Michigan partition that relentlessly followed Partition of India. The boy was always provoqued by Umber’s sound: the reason, the desperate need to grasp something and the way of wishing to reshape the surrounding universe by her imagination. He was so consumed with wanting to control everything, especially a male child for whom he would take the losses – that of his homeland. But, it seems rather ironic that those losses still persist to be somewhere deep within him, as if tree trunks do rot within their barks – now, his homeland is demographically broken one. This is when a daughter is born for the fourth time, Umber decides to bring up the child as Kanwar rather than female and treats , ignores her biological sex. Kanwar being on the other side of the screen, found this aspect interesting – the way how Umber’s desire to posses that ugly fake world Created plans inside people’s heads especially disturbingly Kanwar’s.
The boy found himself filled with compassion towards Kanwar, a deserving girl who was a victim of her father’s unfinished conflicts. She also has a father who simply cannot comprehend her as she truly is, and the boy found it all rather practical, how very typically people have to live in a way that is quite opposite of how they really are. In sapno Ke Apne Pita ke nazar me, Kanwar was not a boy or a girl. She was only a reflection of The Milady’s unfulfilled ambitions. The boy started feeling somewhat distressed about the ways in which people are constrained by societal expectations. It was an internalized image that Kanwar maintained with great force—the image of a person Umber wished her to be.
As the story unfolded further, the little boy realized that he was more enchanted by the eerie almost dream-like scenario inflicted by Anup Singh, the director of the movie. The story was not then simply a narrative around gender and identity- it was a ghost story in its truest sense in that the ghosts were actually the characters’ pasts; memories lived rather than battled. The child came to the conclusion that the true ghost from the picture was not a fictitious character, but – the specter of the repressed, the memories of the repressed. This inability of Umber to face his truth provided an arching ghost for Kanwar which inhibited her from being able to be herself.
The film shifted direction when the character of Kanwar who had still not undergone relations and is living in male’s clothes was shown to get married to a woman whom he calls Neeli. It was a crucial moment for the boy because it made clear the consequences of living a lie. Neeli, in a way that Kanwar rather lacked comfort in doing, did not know the truth that Kanwar possessed, she represented the outside world that was not Umber’s reality. The boy’s eyes observed how the inner fight of Kanwar grew—how is she going to survive, being an impersonator of the world, and what happens when Neeli finds out what she never wanted to find out. The gap between how Kanwar was supposed to behave and how she felt from within and wished to behave was too constricting; the boy’s mind wandered, he saw the helplessness, people were expected to behave in ways that they had not opted for.
The reason for the emotional core of the film culminated in the relationship between Kanwar and Neeli whereby the boy found himself caught up in their destinies. Neeli was willful and self-reliant as well, someone who was able to make Kanwar appreciate her in ways he had never appreciated anyone else before. It was through this woman that Kanwar started to deal with the ghosts that had haunted even her entire existence and the boy witnessed that as a turning point of sorts. And yet, the shadow of Umber’s power remained oppressive to this day. The conflict of Kanwar was that all this was inspired by her father, who had caused them so much pain through the extent of his selfless dedication for their welfare, and the desire to escape the claustrophobic cage that he has created for her.
Inevitability: It became evident to the boy, as the plot developed to its saddening ending, that loss and selfhood, which was present throughout the movie, were two of the themes worth contemplating. As it occurred, this kind of thinking by Umber, and trying to come to terms with the world, and the obsession with the idea of having a male heir, made life for him and the people around him into a living hell. Even as he attempted to ensure that Uday’s name and legacy lived on, he had done the very thing that he intended to prevent within his society. The boy understood this to be a story of moral lessons, not just against the perils of the past and the expectations that society tried to impose, but instead, its moral about what one chooses to deny comes with a price. A constant shadow of his past haunted Umber’s existence, and in order to attempt to break free, he created others.
The last parts of the film were heart-breaking. Knowing the truth regarding the Kanwar, the bond is destroyed between them and Kanwar is more cut off than ever. The boy began to feel the idea of living outside one’s character. Man’s being a tool of someone else’s fulfillment, all about the Kanwars’ existence was a different even ghastly kind of despair. There was a kind of beauty even in the most intense &ugliest part of the movie. The boy perceived that there is self or human within Kanwar who wants to be free way or the other, to grow and act that in the true sense of the term self.
While Kanwar is resigned to her fate as the film comes to its inevitable end due to the choices of the father, the boy remained seated quiet while processing all the things he has just seen. A man adrift was not the only theme Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost easily resonated with—identity crisis and displacement were merely the repercussions of subjecting people to the wrong template. It was about the ghosts that dwelled beneath one’s surface, the narratives written into defense mechanisms, and the falsehoods that were meant to be meticulously avoided.
Eventually, the boy came to the understanding that Qissa was not so much about the ghost in its literal sense, but in the ghosts – the trauma of the past that remains unacknowledged and unexorced and how the experience of the past influences the present. He began to reflect on his own life, the roles that the society, family and even he himself expects him to carry as a man. The film had made him understand that running away from the truth, whether it is the truth of yourself or the truth of the world around you is only going to make things worse. And that it is not rest and retirement that one should be aiming for, but rather fights with those ghosts — no matter how ugly they might be.
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