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This post may contain spoilers! 

As I write this, I’ve seen Mani Ratnam’s Guru three times. But this third viewing was especially important, because it has changed the whole movie for me and made me look at it in an altogether new light.

The movie begins with a black and white scene at a stadium where a lone Gurukant Desai addresses his Shakti parivaar and tells them, and us, that his father had warned him not to see dreams, but he did. As he says these lines, the screen intermittently keeps fading out to black. On the first viewing, I assumed that the title credits would start rolling. But they don’t. For what reason then are the fade outs?

The titles come, almost suddenly, smack during the Mayya Mayya song. Until then, we’ve seen the young Gurukant and his ability to observe the minor details(the smaller glass) that others would overlook, but he capitalizes on. Mallika Sherawat and her tempting magnetism acquaint Gurukant with the allure of power. Her flagrant sexuality acts out a different, baser form of power, but Gurukant gets the message loud and clear. His obvious talent at that moment is moulded in the fire of lust and made into driven ambition. Gurukant from that moment on is Guru, and rightly so the credits introduce us to him at that apt moment.

But the question of the fade outs still remains.

The opening scene returns at the close, this time in colour and without the fade outs. The same dialogues are said, although now Guru has an audience of supporters. I admit, the ending troubled me then and it still does. It is just too damn commercial and cheerful for me. But then today, I noticed that during the closing scene at the stadium, Guru, who until then had been paralyzed on the right side was no longer paralyzed. He even thrusts his right hand in the air as he proclaims that Shakti parivaar will become the greatest company in the world and his dream, contrary to what his father believed, fulfilled. Was this a continuity error? Could Mani Ratnam have made such a simple mistake? I think not.

I’d mentioned in this forum that I found Sreekar Prasad’s choice of the strobe effect during the Commission hearings unnecessary and meddlesome. The strobe effect, I said then and still maintain, is used in cinema(atleast by learned filmmakers) when they intend to show hallucination, or to hide sound-sync problems. Maybe, just maybe, the whole speech of Gurukant Desai at the Commission hearing is his hallucination. Remember that a day before at the hearing, when offered to speak for himself, he plainly chooses to say “Namaste”. That scene immediately cuts to the funeral of Meenu, who in her last moments(in a previous scene) brushes her hand on the right cheek of Guru, incidentally the side that he cannot sense touch or feel. Guru, on his path to success, becomes so inaccessible that he is beyond the sense of touch even to those close to him, especially the debilitating Meenu for whom Guru symbolized all the heady possibilities of life.

Just before Guru has the stroke that renders him paralyzed, he revisits with his wife the house where he began his quest, the last time and place when he was probably innocent and clean(“Bambai mein naya hoon, abhi tak theek se jhooth bolna nahin seekha”). Guru seems to be going through a crisis at that moment, despite the tender jovial mood of the scene, and asks his wife whether she thinks he’s changed. She diplomatically replies that he still resembles the man she married, while the song in the background mockingly calls Guru a “jhoothon ka shahenshah”. Sujata’s reply may be politically correct, but fate answers Guru blatantly and hits him with a stroke that paralyzes his ‘right side’ as opposed to his ‘wrong side’. The price he pays to reach where he has is jumping over onto the wrong side of the line that separates right and wrong, and in this case right and left(ironical since left represents communism). Hence, when Meenu brushes his right cheek, it is only fitting that he cannot sense it, for she is trying to feel a man who is no longer entirely right.

That still doesn’t answer the fade outs in the beginning. I’d like to believe that sometime after Meenu’s death, Guru was paralyzed completely on both the sides or that he died. While paralyzed or as he dies, the Commission hearings verdict still pending, Guru begins to imagine his triumph over his adversaries. Hence, the strobe effect during his concluding speech. And the intermittent fade outs to black in the black and white scene at the beginning, are Guru’s eyes as they shut and open, and what we see thereafter(the whole movie that follows) is his life flashing before his eyes. In his imagined world, Guru is still a winner who conquers his detractors(the Commission) and is able to proclaim his victory, in entirety and not paralyzed; and probably why Guru thrusts his hitherto right hand in the air during the concluding scene at the stadium, and this time he is not alone but has his horde of supporters with him.

Pay close attention to the lyrics in the opening and closing scene-

“jaage hain deer tak
hamen kuch deer sone do
thodi se raat aur hai
subah to hone do
aadhe adhure khwaab jo
pure na ho sake
ek baar phir se neend mein
woh khwaab bone do”

Read the last four lines especially. What do they suggest if not a dying wish to dream again, and fulfill them this time around?

Ofcourse, all of this can also be read as over-indulgent observations of a filmi keeda!