Is it just a coincidence that most of the people who felt that Swades is boring are those who were bred in the biggest cities of our country? well, I am not going to comment on that. I have a tendency to deviate from the topic of discussion and you will see this a lot in almost everything I write and speak. I never had the oppurtunity to see this movie when it was released and I saw it recently when it aired on star gold. I think it is a common tendency ot brand movies with a message an being ’’preachy’’, but I think that there is something that eveyone of us learn from this movie. even I have had the oppurtunity to live and study in the city, but then there was a time when I was obligated to live with my grandparents in a village in east godhavari, andhra pradesh. I finished my high school there, and I remember studying in the light of a kerosene lamp. It is really a question of how you can relate to the, movie and that is where the movie failed to do well, as most of the ’sehari baabus’ were bored to death in the theater. The movie can make you feel really guilty, especially in my case, I started to feel like a horrible person. now that i’m out of that village, I never bothered to go back there, i’m in bangalore in my final year of engineering, i’m placed in an MNC and I don’t have to worry about my bread and butter for another two years atleast. Coming back to the movie, I feel that Ashutosh Gowarikar has done a really good job in the movie, he doesn’t say that India is the greatest civilisation in the world, but he proves that we have the potential to be one. I think that everyone of us is familiar with the cast and crew, so i’m not gonna talk much on that. i’ll just try to focus on the plot of the movie and that only.
The movie is about an Engineer from NASA(Mohan Bhargav-played by shahrukh khan), who comes to India in search of his Governess(not his Grandmother, dai maa, not daadi ma). He reaches this really small village Charanpur, where there is no electricity, the people are uneducated and it is plagued by the usual social evils like caste and creed. he is moved by the state of a weaver turned farmer, hariram who is treated as an outcast by the villagers for leaving the profession of his caste and going against the rules. he decides to make a few changes, he convinces the villagers to send their kids to school, makes them realize that they are the masters of their own fate, and instead of waiting for the government , and cribbing about the inefficiency of the officials, they can work together and solve their own problems. Ofcourse there is the love story between the male and female lead roles(which is a requirement, in any movie).
in conclusion I would like to say that this is not the kinda movie that you can watch on a lazy sunday afternoon to waste a few hours. Ashutosh Gowarikar and Shahrukh Khan have tried to give us a message through this movie and it is upto us to decide what we are going to do about it.