Swades, A Review, 4/5*

Swades comes highly recommended by a workplace friend. The film is about an NRI (non-resident Indian) professional working in the US who decides to spend two weeks in India to bring his boyhood caretaker back to America. While there, he falls in love with a childhood friend, Gita, and finds himself fully immersed in the culture and drawn to its people and traditions. Weeks become months. Begrudgingly, he returns to the US alone. After the predictable lack of sleep and restlessness, he sacrifices his very promising career as a program manager at NASA and returns to India to better his people and find happiness and love. [I’m an expert on Indian film now, this being my first full-length feature from that country, all three hours of it.]

I can see why Swades resonates with my friend, himself an NRI, and a Compaq, Canon, and Creative Labs owner: the main character, Mohan, travels back to his homeland in style, armed with a digital camera and a notebook computer—electronics being the first things NRIs buy when they land on these shores.

And like Mohan, I suspect every tech worker sent out west has to juggle success and progress with tradition and spirituality, both personally and collectively as part of the newly globally affluent. The film addresses this struggle as one branch on a tree, then tackles the tree and finally the forest—India herself. Issues such as the emancipation of women, poverty and the caste system, and the ineffectiveness of government are brought to the fore.

While I can’t speak for my dear young friend, I can understand better his hesitation when answering the oft-asked question “Why not stay, surely things are better here than in India?”

***

I didn’t care much for the singing and dancing, minimal as it was, especially Gita's parts. An acquired taste, no doubt. Nevertheless, Swades gets a few bonus points from me. Any film that mentions the stars and showcases a telescope, even a flimsy one of the department store variety, gets an additional ½ star rating. Also, all the technical NASA-speak shores up my belief that program managers in fact do nothing. And oh yes, wrestling, no matter what country you’re in, is just not a normal activity.

All-in-all a good movie with tender and humourous moments. Other apt titles could very well have been "Crossroads", or, "A Tale Of Two Indias". Now, everybody, go light your bulbs!

BTW, I am told that NRI jokingly stands for “non-returning” Indians for a large number of those working in the States.