COLOUR OF INNOCENCE
For non-painters like me drawing anything white is a puzzle. Usually there is no white colour paint in our sets of crayons or sketch pens, especially for those among us who haven’t graduated beyond 12-colour sets. Additionally, the colour of a blank page or canvas is also white. How do we differentiate then between background and object?
Of course, if we are a little older, bolder, or adventurous, we will discover many shades of whites, blacks, and greys that can help fill a frame. In fact, often we may be surprised to see what appears white to us may be composed of shades of blue.
When Pikoo gets a new set of sketch pens from Hitesh, his mother’s friend, he is excited to try them out. It would appear there are more colours in this set than he’s used before. His mother then makes up a game for him – to find as many different flowers in their large garden as he can and draw them all with accurate colouring. He doesn’t realise this game is designed more to give the adults time to play than for him.
That’s the wonderful thing about life at Pikoo’s age, everything can be a game. A telephone can be used for prank calls, commanding a dog to be quiet can be a game, even fighting his grandfather’s coronary thrombosis can be a game (“Next time I have an attack,” the grandfather says to him, “you come with your gun and shoot the coronary thrombosis dead.”)
Later, when the rain forces him back into the house prematurely, the games are no longer the same. He hears his mother, behind locked doors, arguing with a man who is not his father. He doesn’t like the sound of it, it’s harsh and something about it feels wrong. It’s like the barking dog. He commands silence. Luckily, once again, his command is obeyed.
Having set one thing right he goes to his grandfather, whom he loves and who is also a curiosity in his life. Maybe he wants to tell him what he heard, or maybe he wants to observe his old, wrinkled body a little more. But none of that matters – the old man has died. It was the afternoon and nobody was around to sit beside him. One hand is outstretched towards the white call-bell meant for such an emergency, the hand looks like a frozen claw.
His body won’t be discovered by anybody else for a while because all the staff is on their lunch break, and Pikoo’s mother will avoid him out of her shame. Pikoo alone is dealing with death and infidelity, and he cannot understand either.
The lazy, uneventful pace of the initial parts of the film make it appear that this is just a day in the life of a young boy called Pikoo. By the end of it we know it is the day – this is the day he experiences death so closely, the day he realises the man bringing him gifts was taking much more from him in return, and the day he realises his mother is not who he thought she was.
Pikoo will keep drawing pictures but he can no longer be just a child. His pictures may not turn out the way he wants anymore. Each time he sees painting equipment he may spiral into disgust and anger. It’s also the day when he has lost his mother forever. It will be a while before they can look each other in the eyes.
This is not how the day was supposed to go. There was a world of death and cheating that was always there, but Pikoo shouldn’t have been pushed into it. The affairs of the household were known to everyone, family and staff, except Pikoo because everybody knew the child needs to be protected. His need is to play and draw and be curious and excited. This was not how the day was supposed to go.
By the end of the day Pikoo has learned that the workaround to drawing something white is to draw just the outlines in black. Just the outlines, not the insides. There’s even a lesson in there for him. But, he’s too young to colour it in with understanding yet.
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So many children in Satyajit Ray’s movies lose their innocence too early. Durga and Apu, Ratan, and Pikoo. There’s something so very painful about robbing a child of her or his childhood. The world suddenly loses so much colour for them.
Movies can have that effect on us at any age, too. So many of them bring us joy and laughter, but some of them can suddenly make us weep silently with them. For many of us, watching films can be how we lose our innocence too.