Week 10: Arushi Naidu - The Power in Taking a Step Back
As a lover of watching good movies, one movie that will stay in my heart forever is a Hindi film titled Dear Zindagi. The movie follows a young woman named Kaira who deals with consistent roadblocks in her relationships. She eventually meets Dr. Jehangir Khan, or Jug, who teaches her the liberation of letting go of trauma and embracing life for its beauties. In one scene, Dr. Khan tells Kaira the story of a man who one day decided to climb Mount Everest with a group of people who did not speak his language. He kept climbing to further and further heights, despite the group’s warnings to slow down, until he comes across a snow leopard. Too far from his companions, his cries for help were mistaken for victorious cheers and the snow leopard ate the mountain climber.
I was confused when I first heard the story, but Jug later reveals the moral of the story: human beings often feel the pressure of choosing the more difficult path because we feel that the only way we can achieve great things is by punishing ourselves. What he means to convey is that there is nothing wrong with choosing the easier path, especially when we are not ready to face the challenges that come with the hard choice.
As students, we are surrounded with the compulsion to push ourselves beyond our greatest limits, in the process forgetting to give ourselves grace and kindness. I genuinely believe in the power of knowing when to step back and having the self-awareness to walk down the road that is ultimately right for ourselves. Not swaying to external pressure and to follow one’s own path in a world where we are always trying to jump ahead, prove ourselves, and stop ourselves from falling behind requires an unspoken strength that took me a long time to understand, but watching this movie as a seventeen year old gives way for deeper messages about the forms in which power takes shape.
(Movie Review - Dear Zindagi | Foodeva Marsay)
Thank you Arushi for the film recommendation! This is just a thought, but I think that the screams for help being misinterpreted as victorious cheers may have a secondary meaning. We usually tend to respect accomplished people, and believe they have easy lives and few problems. Likewise, the group of people may represent how people who are “further down the mountain” don’t completely understand what life is like at the top. On that same note, the people whom we respect and see as accomplished individuals—be it on social media, in the news, or even in person—may have problems that we don’t recognize or see.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I find it hard to take a step back because I generally see complacency as a negative thing. I’ll try to keep your post in mind when I’m registering for my classes next year! (No promises; knowing me I’ll choose a bunch of AP classes). Please let me know if you have any other short film recommendations!
Hi Arushi! I love the topic of your blog; I remember watching this movie a long time ago, but I definitely do not remember anything. The story of the snow leopard and mountain climber was quite inspirational; it depicts a story similar to Icarus, to not fly too close to the sun. I see how relatable it is to my life and many other high school students, taking on so much responsibility that it just crumbles down one day. We are taught to always keep going, and I definitely felt the weight of all these responsibilities when my courses loaded up in sophomore year; now, I’ve also learned to handle it a little bit better. For me, the way I handled it was also to stop myself sometimes when I beat myself up. Although hard work and talent is definitely a big factor in building up your future, that cannot happen without taking breaks, and some challenges do require time and deliberation before you jump right into them. Many believe that now is the time to do everything and anything, but still deciding what you should give your time for and compartmentalizing these tasks are skills that are quite valued in the future as well. The path for everybody is different, and whether it is subjectively easier or harder than others, some paths might not lead you to where you want or need to be, and that message was conveyed quite beautifully in this blog. Good job!
ReplyDeleteHi Arushi! This was such a beautiful blog and I love how you connected the movie, Dear Zindagi, to the pressures we face as students. It’s definitely true that we’re always being told to take the hardest path, and that struggling is just a part of successs. It’s refreshing to hear a new perspective that values self-awareness over unrealistic ambition. I feel like many of us tend to push ourselves to our limits without even realizing how detrimental it can be to our health. Sometimes the challenge isn’t even the right fit for us and we begin to question our self worth and why we are the way we are. The movie seems like an interesting watch so I’m excited to check it out soon!
ReplyDeleteHi Arushi! As students, especially in the bay area and in our junior year, it's easy to push ourselves past the limit and continuously strive for more. The competitive atmosphere we're surrounded by and external pressure from peers, parents, and content from social media only makes this worse. It's truly important to be self-aware of what's best for ourselves and to know when to step back instead of mindlessly pushing forward. I really love your perspective and how you connected the movie's message to real life challenges that we face. I've never watched this movie, but it sounds interesting and unique and I might check it out! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHello Ms. Arushi Naidu, similar to our good friend from first period, Caleb Truneh, I am also quite a film connoisseur, if I do say so myself. On top of having gone through various Hollywood film catalogues, I am quite fond of dabbling in the culturally rich and entertaining field of Bollywood, especially with my parents. Dear Zindagi was actually one of my favorite movies going into like second or third grade. Even though I was then too immature and innocent to truly grasp the meanings and morals shared through the film, just that feeling of hope and inner happiness it conveyed through the power of letting things go and being yourself, pursuing what you dream of was a feeling that put a smile on my face when I watched the movie and especially whenever any of its hit songs came on the radio.
ReplyDelete