STORIZEN CONTRIBUTE
Under The Starlit Sky by Sumana Bhattacharya
Photo by Shalva Gogichashvili
Remember Girish Karnad’s Cheluvi, a film where the protagonist Cheluvi (Sonali Kulkarni) had the magical ability to turn into a flowering tree from a beautiful girl (translation of Cheluvi) to a beautiful flowering tree. Cheluvi and her sister would sell those flowers for a living. The film ends with the agonizing image of the Cheluvi trapped in the tree trunk, neither a woman nor a tree, after the village kids mercilessly break the branches of the flowering tree. The film was aired on TV when I was in college. Cheluvi, beautiful retelling on a Kannada folk tale by Karnad, made quite an impression on me. To me, the film symbolized the magic on nature, the oneness of man with nature. Probably all of us have a flowering tree in us or mystery of the dark forest, the vastness of the sky or depth of the ocean. We need to nurture that little piece in us, be one with it. Only then can we feel connected to the universe. Those were the days when I felt closer to nature. Agartala was 40
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STORIZEN MAGAZINE
JUNE 2020