The Sun's Seventh Horse (Movie and Novel)
Suraj ka Satwan Ghoda is novella by Dharamveer Bharti and also a movie based on the same book by Satyajit Ray. The novel in itself is a unique masterpiece, an altogether different kind of story-telling, much reminiscent of the story telling in pancha-tantra. I had read the novel some time back and remember being affected by it, I never fully understood it and went on to read it again and then once again only to find something new each time I had a go at it.
So when I finally got to watch the movie, I wasn't really looking for something I had not read, I wasn't even much excited about it as I didn't expect that it would be possible to do justice to this story and to possibly bring some one like Manik Mulla - a master story-teller, a highly skilled raconteur on screen.
Suraj ka Satwan Ghoda is not a love story, but it is a story about love. It tells us how love is not beyond the realities of life, it is not how Devdas would have you believe. Love is bound by social and economic realities of life, and spread throughout the novel is a story of three girls - each representing a class of society, and it's doomed aspirations. And contrary to what the stories will have you believe, that all love which transcends such boundaries is bound to fail and is a slave of one's social and economic environment, there is still hope - much like the seventh horse of sun, which represents the future.
The movie is equally good if not better and complements the book beautifully. They should be sold as a combo as much as one without the other looks incomplete.
I'll include a couple of quotes from the book which I often find myself revisiting.
TBU
So when I finally got to watch the movie, I wasn't really looking for something I had not read, I wasn't even much excited about it as I didn't expect that it would be possible to do justice to this story and to possibly bring some one like Manik Mulla - a master story-teller, a highly skilled raconteur on screen.
Suraj ka Satwan Ghoda is not a love story, but it is a story about love. It tells us how love is not beyond the realities of life, it is not how Devdas would have you believe. Love is bound by social and economic realities of life, and spread throughout the novel is a story of three girls - each representing a class of society, and it's doomed aspirations. And contrary to what the stories will have you believe, that all love which transcends such boundaries is bound to fail and is a slave of one's social and economic environment, there is still hope - much like the seventh horse of sun, which represents the future.
The movie is equally good if not better and complements the book beautifully. They should be sold as a combo as much as one without the other looks incomplete.
TBU
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