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Maya Memsaab
Direction: Ketan Mehta
Story: Based on Gustave Flaubert’s ’’Madame Bovary’’.
Music: Hridaynath Mangeshkar
Cinematography: Anoop Jatwani
Cast: Deepa Sahi, Farooque Sheikh, Raj Babbar, Shah Rukh Khan, Paresh Rawal and Dr. Sreeram Lagoo
What are they doing
The cops are investigating a mysterious death. They are asking my husband different types of questions. He is telling them what ever he knows. The cops now go places visiting many people asking them questions regarding the death. Everyone tells what they know about the one who is dead. But no one seems to know everything about the dead woman. Who is the right person to ask? Obviously me. I am the one who knows everything that happened with me. So what are these cops doing asking a bunch of fools who know bits n’’ pieces of the story? They are just trying to gather everything they can get and stitch it together to make up a conclusion for themselves.
Afterall, they cannot cross a thin line to question me; Can they?
Ask me instead:
A thin ductile line that passes between fiction n’’ reality. Which side of the line do we choose to live in? Are we happy with the reality or do we cross the thin line to choose fiction instead? I don’’t know about the others, but I chose fiction for myself.
It rained heavily that very day. It seemed beautiful as never before as the drops of water touched the earth. As usual I was in the world of my romantic novels. Just then, something went crashing. To my bewilderment, I found dad painfully sitting on the floor with a broken leg. I lifted him up and helped him to his bed. Then I called a doctor. He came in straight from the door into my heart. He had got wet in the rains. He had that cute lill’’ not so perfect attitude. But that was what I fall in love with. Soon I found a new life waiting for me with open arms. Marriage changed everything for me. It gave me a way to accomplish my dreams. Nothing has been so beautiful. A house of my own which I can decorate as I want, a loving husband, freedom..... and beauty; I can feel it as it comes upon me with each passing day. Days passed by and these beauty, dreams, house decorations, my husband’’s love all seemed to grow into a casual activity.
Where were my dreams to lead my life in fiction? They were still not accomplished and they don’’t even care to get accomplished in a middle class environment. I had to chase them badly. I needed to reach extremities of love, passion, wealth.... I needed it all for myself. I wanted to see men drinking out of my hands. But my husband seems to be a satisfied human being in all respects. No spark ignites the madness that I want to see in my partner. He thinks these are just my fantasies. And if they are fantasies, I want them right here in my life. That’’s it. I thought it all for myself.
One fine day I walked out of my house as if I was never there. Don’’t know what my husband must have thought of me then. But then who cares. I had to live my dreams, my passions, my fantasies....
I wanted to lead a life with all the riches. I wanted to buy love. I wanted sources of money for all these dreams. My journey of fantasies saw many men in n’’ out of my life as I wanted them to. But nothing seemed to quench my thirst for my fantasies. I was enjoying the bliss of making men dance on my finger tips. But my affairs soon became as boring as my marriage was. The money I had borrowed too had finished. I had to repay it. But how? Everything has come to an end. My house will be auctioned and gone for ever. I tried all my sources to repay the debt, but all men turned out to be bloody hypocrites and cowards. I couldn’’t see a way out.
I returned home. My husband was enthralled to see me back. He kept asking questions. I payed no heed to them. I sat on my chair thinking of where my fantasies had taken me to. Then something wierd happened. Something magical. Very much like my fantasies. As I wanted life to be, it ended in the same way. I drank a magical potion which saw me making my way out of this middle class environment to a world where I still search my life full of fantasies. When will this journey end? When will I conquer all my passions and fantasies? I still wait desperately for the day to come.
Why all this happened:
It had to happen the day I walked out of my house hunting for my dreams. But nothing won in satisfieing me. The fact being that I didn’’t exactly know what I was chasing. It was just a faint idea to be free. But did I commit a mistake? Is chasing one’’s dreams a sin? I did whatever I felt like doing. No boundaries were meant for me. I broke free from all the clutches of my society. I had crossed that line between reality and fiction. But if I had really crossed that line why wasn’’t I able to continue the way I was living? Where did this money factor come in between my path? Isn’’t money just a part of the fictious life? But the reality is that even my fictious life was based on dirty money itself. So I was just fooling myself thinking that I was living it my way. I was still living in the same reality. Fiction was just virtual. It was me who had created this virtual world for myself. With the fact that it was based on real money, reality caught hold of me, as soon as this money was drained in the labour towards completion of my dreams.
I don’t know if I ever crossed the thin line between reality and fiction, but yes, I did cross the thin line of my limits. The limits of every human being which were transparent to me.
Out in the real world:
“Maya” – a hindi word for “Illusions”. Maya Memsaab is a story about illusions that attract a human being. These illusions are pretty attractive for anyone. But when we go close, we find it was all just our own imaginations and expectations. Nothing else.
Here in the movie, we see Maya making a choice of walking out of her house to fulfill her dreams. She makes changes to her own life which adversely affect her innocent husband. Now he is left with nothing else but a bunch of questions for his wife which will be answered only when nature takes him to her.
Maya derives her goals in life from the romantic novels she has read. Maya lives her life in illusions and dies in the same fictious fashion as she had lived her life.
The Performances:
Deepa Sahi plays Maya showing the extreme madness of Maya’s character with charm. She haunts through out the movie with her natural grace.
Farooque Sheikh plays Maya’s husband by fine tuning his screen image of a confused innocent man.
The others, Raj Babbar, Shah Rukh Khan, Paresh Rawal and Dr. Sreeram Lagoo lend support with their commendable performances.
(contd. in comments)