I arrived in Delhi last night and woke up before dawn to the sound of crows, doves, and, on a tree outside my window, a very persistent koel repeating its call. The simul is still in bloom. And around the corner, a dhak tree, its petals covering the pavement. The Hindustan Times printed in its Sunday edition an article of mine which recalls the execrable “Insaf Ka Tarazu” but mostly pays homage to Shyam Benegal’s “Nishant.” I’ll post the whole article on this site later; here’s an excerpt:

You must have been a teenager when you had watched Shyam Benegal’s “Nishant.” In that film, Shabana Azmi had played the wife of the village schoolteacher. She was young and beautiful and was fond of paan. She had put paan in her mouth and tied a red ribbon in her hair when going to the market.

That is when the landlord’s sons had seen her. The youngest one, tender and unmanly, had fallen in love with her. His elder brothers abducted the young woman. How did the film end?

You might imagine that the character the writer had now become turned in his bed at night toward the partially-lit window—, trying to remember what had happened to the schoolteacher’s wife at the end of the film. But he couldn’t.

All that he could remember was the red paan in her mouth, and the red ribbon in her hair, and the way in which she walked. Such a sense of abandon, in a small place that wasn’t safe from violence.

You too had found very attractive the schoolteacher’s young wife, and had then felt guilty when she had been taken away and raped. The film’s name “Nishant” means “the night’s end,” but it is possible that you had found it easier to believe then that darkness lasts forever. That is why you has had no memory of the film’s ending. Perhaps.