Veteran Actor Irrfan Khan’s Hindi Medium is a Bollywood production that can be remembered as a sour-tasting lemon drop wrapped in the thin strings of bright candy floss. It is an open wound that exposes the moving slums of India, with an emphasis on the societies that thrive there. In addition to showcasing the life of the poor, it also revolves around the sharp-edged axis of desperation: of food, livelihood, sustenance and above everything else, of opportunity. In my eyes, opportunity was a benevolent mother who looked upon everyone with equal eyes. However, Hindi Medium told me otherwise.
Opportunity favored the rich and privileged. Instead of being a benevolent mother, it was a biased parent that did not think much of wrestling fruit from one child’s hand, only to give it to the offspring that it loved more. When this premise was established in the movie, I expected it to burst into a full-throated protest against the concentration of resources and opportunities in the hands of the rich. But it didn’t do so. Through a combination of authentic cinema and vibrant music tracks, the movie embraced poverty with both arms. In sociological terms, poverty—or poor people—are looked upon as pity-inducing entities. They’re assumed to be individuals who are in constant need of care and treatment. This is what led to the conceptualization of phrases such as help the poor and save the poor, reducing them to wisps of life that need to be rescued.
But Hindi Medium doesn’t do that. Instead, it humanizes these forsaken areas and presents them as areas that are complete and thriving. The movie also goes on to demonstrate the existence of genuine happiness in these seemingly murky areas. It emphasizes the existence of rainbow happiness in cockroach-infested alleys, stating how there too, dwells human life. This is further emphasized by fakiri—a foot-tapping song that describes a gradual acceptance of the ‘poor’ life, associating it with the eventual truth that all human beings have to eventually come to terms with.
The lyrics spoke to me differently. As I listened to the song for probably the twentieth time, I found myself going back to the lines: Jo sukh paayo ram bhajan mein, voh sukh nahi ameeri mein which translates to: the joy in true worship cannot be found in riches. But the song didn’t define what worship means. For a person who’s living in a dilapidated slum area, worship doesn’t necessarily involve going to the temple and making extravagant offerings. So what does it mean? Submerged in a self-created swamp of confusion, I remember trying to analyze the ram bhajan or worship that occupied such a central position in this song. Soon enough, I found my answer.
Worship wasn’t about extravagant riches and massive offerings. It lay in the simple essence of living life with fierce determination. The poor don’t get life spread out into easy tapestries at their doorstep, and they’re definitely not born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Nevertheless, they strive to make the most of what they have by wrestling with challenges. They fight fire with iron hands, and Hindi Medium highlights this by emphasizing how the hands, or rather the palms, of poor people are blistered and bruised. In contrast, the palms of rich people are smooth and butter-like, almost as though they’ve never been touched before. The poor don’t shirk away from this contrast, and instead own their bruises and calluses with determination. “This is us,” they seem to say, holding up their hands like newly wed brides displaying their henna designs with pride.
For the poor, ram bhajan or worship is also observed in the sincerity of their attempts. Despite their limited resources, they give life a sure and determined shot—whether it involves fighting for a place on the morning bus, or trying to give their children a decent education. They live up to the principles of the Bhagavad Gita, demonstrating themselves to be individuals who are entitled to attempts, but not to the fruits of their attempts. If their aspirations don’t yield the result that they desired, making them fall into the dusty of failure, they get up, brush their clothes off, and start all over again. Their resilience is their worship—it’s unparalleled and ever-increasing.
And the poor love every bit of this experience. They’ve adapted and embraced it for over 500 years, and the Indian Saint Poet Kabir Das has captured this emotion in his iconic line: Man lagyo mero yaar fakiri mein, Man lagyo mero yaar garibi mein (My mind embraces poverty, my mind embraces simplicity) that recurs in the song. Combined with an upbeat and foot-tapping rhythm, Fakiri describes how the essential simplicity that stems from the heart of poverty is worth celebrating. It also leaves ram bhajan or worship open to interpretation, like a piece of moist clay that can be moulded into a sculpture of one’s choice. Above everything else, fakiri attempts to teach us that the boundaries between life and worship aren’t as well defined as they seem to be.
Suffice to say, worship doesn’t need to be executed or discovered. It exists within our everyday lives with the inevitably of the sky and moon, and just needs to be realized.
