Subhash K Jha looks back at the moving Yeh Khula Aasma, released in 2012.
It was that great poet-thinker Harindranath Chattopadhyay who said, ‘It’s very simple to be difficult but very difficult to be simple.’ By that logic, debutant director Gitanjali Sinha pulled off a reasonably admirable feat in Yeh Khula Aasma, a simple straight-from-the-heart film about the relationship between a neglected boy Avinash (Raj Tandon) and his lonely grandfather.
The film vaguely echoes L V Prasad’s 1970s tearjerker Bidaai, though not in any overt way. That the grandfather who embraces the boy’s loneliness and insecurities is, played by Raghuvir Yadav, is a happy coincidence and one that fills up the rather austere spaces in a nimble narrative.
The small-town ambience in Bihar, the old sprawling houses with acres of greenery stretching out from here to eternity, furnish the film with a burnished exterior. As for the interiors, don’t look too deep. Director Gitanjali Sinha seems content, skimming the surface of the emotions, gliding along gently as the boy finds a new beginning in his grandfather’s company.
Dramatic conflicts are created through some villainous elements creeping in with embarrassing inopportunity into the placid ambience. The build-up towards a kite-flying contest is negotiated with disarming naivete. Yeh Khula Aasma is an old-fashioned, simple, and transparent tale told with a straightforwardness that challenges current filmmaking trends of irrelevant complexities.
The narration is kept simple and largely formulistic. A romance between the gawky hero and the girl next door (Anya Anand) is teased into the tale. The real hero of the film, besides the small-town ambience, is Raghuvir Yadav. He is in his element, even pitching in with a folk song somewhere down the line. While the youngsters at the helm serve their purpose Yashpal Sharma as Avinash’s sophisticated tycoon-father is completely miscast.
