Pakhi From 'Lootera'―A Blazing Fire

By Oishi Pattanayak

How does a daddy's-little-girl turn into a silent sufferer of the biggest betrayal overnight? It is with the Satanic power received from the brutal artwork of having her innocent heart ripped off inside out, slain, chopped into pieces...that the lady succeeds in turning topsy turvy from what she used to be forever before! 'Lootera' narrates this very journey of Pakhi. The lover. The beloved. The betrayed.

The lucid sky his Pakhi was flying across was protected by her Godlike father, with happy clouds all the time! Hence, she never outgrew the innocence and immaturity of a child; neither could she be strong enough to face the nails and claws of the world outside Manikpur. It took Varun so little time to burn the entire nest of Pakhi! And, he did not only loot wealth from the zamindar, but also ran off with the last remaining living cell of his 'tota'–the heart of Pakhi!

What did all this catastrophe result in?

–Only in the gain of that very power which freed the Phoenix from daddy's girl into a strong woman.

Sadly however, women like Pakhi have this self-destructive nature of accepting betrayers back, when the latter knock their doors. Varun returns. In the identity of Atmananda Tripathi. But, not for Pakhi; he comes back for the sake of his own life only! Varun stays to draw his 'masterpiece' and hangs it up on a tree for Pakhi. Little does his egoistic self know that the silent sufferer has now turned into an evergreen tree herself, and can very well do without his pity! Pakhi can live without Varun, like she did for so many years with Tuberculosis now. Like she did without the protection of her father.

Pakhi stands against storms, as the firm tombstone of love in the graveyard. As the holder of a heliograph for innocent hearts that take the road of trusting wrong. She is the chaos of silence,–the kind of chaos that questions your conscience. And sends it back to its rabbithole.

By Oishi Pattanayak