Swades.

I believe It's hard to make a movie without glitches and Swades is no exception but when you leave the theatre (or in my case, switch off the TV at 12 in the night) with a tiny lump in your throat and a general feeling of goodness and wistfulness, I guess that means that the director has delivered his goods well.

Swades - a movie targeted at the NRI crowd, or so they claim, but is Indian all the way. I assumed Swades would be a movie about your typical NRI who would return back for reasons that are likely to present themselves in your life and mine but this movie is not that applicable to your typical NRI. SRK returns to a village back in India where even electricity is not a given, where the village post office master does not know what "Internet" is, where privacy is valued less and there are hardly any strangers and what is predominant is a general naivete that we associate with village life.

But, mixed with all this ignorance is the feeling of being in India; Ashutosh Gowarikar does a good job of capturing the simple beauty of village life - innocence, small pleasures of life, little kids running behind buses, a general feeling of communion if you will...intangibilities that remind us of home, subtle and intense at the same time...

SRK is charming and cute, your regular NRI return ;) that any girl can go ga-ga over and Gayatri Joshi has done justice to her role, underplaying it but leaving behind an impression - a mischievous smile, a controlled but passionate speech, sadness and love - she is comfortable with herself and her gestures are realistic and adorable. The scenes with SRK and Gayatri Joshi - the school scene where she asks him to name the five major rivers in India and he awkwardly mumbles the wrong answers, when he does his little piroutte after she turns down a prospective groom - made me smile. Kishori Ballal as Kaveri amma is perfect - genial, motherly, wise and almost angelic.

The songs are definitely hummable (A.R.Rahman) and the title song (especially when seen and heard on Independence Day :) ) does it's job :) - the scenes and the melody leave behind a touch of melancholy and nostalgia...

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