Celluloid On Art Paper

At the outset, Husain himself reveals had he not made the film, he would have attempted a 100-ft-long painting. There is an interplay between time past and present and future. Also an uncanny sense of people transmogrifying as gods did, and the face-off between reality and illusion. Madhuri Dixit’s role, now as beatific Shakuntala, now as Prem Chand’s heroine or as Mona Lisa with her mysterious smile simultaneously seduces as it distances, for no woman is permanently real. As a tribute to womanhood surely nothing could have been more skilfully woven into the fabric of popular imagination. As Gaja Gamini walks out of the wall the movement of the present through art, popular cinema, street life and human relationships is vividly juxtaposed like a sulphuric painting.