Gnarly and twisted concepts filled my head as I looked at my phone and booked the much anticipated movie - Bohemian Rhapsody. Over the course of the last few days, I had been battling with the concepts of love, family, friendship, exclusivity and future. All are interlinked and ladder onto the final benefit of happiness - itself an illusive realm.
Somewhere down the road, life tells you that expectations are always meant to be unmet - or be un-mated. Convergence of hopes, dreams and expectations for the future are a folly - a mere futility.
As I made my way to the movie theater, my fevered body processed the slight nip in the wind with alarming degrees. Seemed to corroborate to the overall mood and myopia.
The 2 hours of magical spell left me breathless. From start to end, I devoured every scene - like the hungry teen who has been left bereft of Freddie's shadow. Unbeknownst, I realized, in one way or the way, Queen had its heart-prints imprinted all over my life. I have grown up with this music, with this school of thought and with this wonder.
The film starts first and foremost with the quest and question of BELONGING. Home by default is the belonging zone for many - but for a few, its a jail where you feel like a misfit. ESCAPE then becomes the only and lonely adventure to thrust the vagrant spirit into carving out a niche for itself.
Freddie never belonged - the feeling of void alone the stoke for his creative fire where he let loose his ire. He found a home in Mary - but the next question of SEXUALITY stole his nest.
Yet, he found a cocoon by way of GOOD FRIENDS in Mary along with his band members. The film then moves down the trajectory of discovering GOOD vs BAD FRIENDS.
The question of IDENTITY soon looms larger than life - all consuming in its flame, as Freddie grapples with time-lines, emotions, sexual borders and fleeting people to make sense of his own reality. What must be created, what already exists and what must be projected - the myriad questions hover around his own self-denial / acceptance of himself.
Here I take recourse to my own mind meanderings - highlighted by certain facets in the movie. Jim Hutton tells Freddie - to be loved, one has to love himself. True. Often we find ourselves hurtling down paths laid down by others - understanding the pathos of our own loss of control over our own reality but we are forced to live / re-live the compromise. We make believe that the fantasy world we are led through by the alpha wolf, is a beta war-path : our own emblazoned love beating in our hearts, a self-effacing war-cry.
In our lifetimes, we often meet people - God fearing themselves but unafraid to play God-men. They cheat themselves of the epithet of a Rainmaker - true. They make hay while the rain pours - from another's eyes.
The concept of friendship is either transient or transparent to the point of being non-existent. As I have grown older, not only has my friends circle shrunk to a miserable threesome - but within that too, I sense distance, malice and truancy. Or, is it all my imagination? See - we all fight with the quest for identity - closely linked with our immediate circles - real or virtual.
You keep questioning - who is there for you truly? Who is the real friend - not always in need or deed but just someone who respects the "being" in and of time?
Belonging - we yearn for that perfect home to enconsce ourselves - leaving our conscience behind. The mighty Almighty question of home is plighty - is it a person, a place or a combination of both? What if, the person you thought as home disappears - does the structure you return back from work to, cease to be your home or shelter? Does it not wrap you up in its essence - envelope you in its warmth? Was it not a home you'd once created too - with the departed soul before the latter became a soul-less ghoul?
In the tide of times, where do we begin and end? What makes us be us and to what extent are we really in control of our own lives? What makes us happy these days or is sadness the predominant emotion that engulfs as it separates reality from fantasy?
Yet we trudge on. Darkened by the darkness - set alight by the brightness of our own innate being-ness. The Show Must Go On.
