Dignity and Grace under Fire: Garm Hawa (1973)
December 5, 2006
Script writing is the art of compressing time on celluloid. Garm Hawa (dir: M. S. Sathyu, 1973) opens with a tired Salim Mirza (Balraj Sahni) emerging from the Agra Railway Station. The waiting tongawala, possibly a low-caste Hindu, asks him, his voice - a half mock the other half half pity - Aaj Kise chod aye miyan.... In those first 5 seconds of the film and in that line, is compressed the post-partition trauma of the sub-altern Muslim in India of that period. Of hard painful choices and each one made at great personal cost. Of the oppotunistic mendacity of the ruling class in both communities. And of the thoughtless strife that those in power spread in the lives of innocent bystanders. I saw Garm Hawa in 1973. I was fifteen then and I remember the 130-odd minutes of the film to be a major rite of passage in my first steps to adulthood. Such was the power of Balraj Sahni's potrayal of Salim Mirza that for the first time I knew what it meant to be an adult in the real world. With real pain and with real consequences of real decisions.