Saturday, February 27, 2010

My Name is KHAN: One Life and Many Paths.

The world is nothing but an inter twined lace-work of roads. Everyone born here have their own paths to walk on. Every person comes to this world along with the path that he or she is destined to walk.

Though, the number of roads are enormous, one can classify all of them into two groups-- roads of hatred and roads of love, just like the two paths taken by Mandira and Rizwan Khan, in the film, "My Name Is KHAN".

Image Courtesy: Google
Mandira, in losing her only son, was falling down the abyss of a huge loss. She wanted something to hold on, a support, something light that can help her lessen the pace of her fall. She found it in hatred against her own husband, Rizwan, a person suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, whose religious identity caused her to lose her son. He was a Muslim and the place they lived was the post -9/11 United States.

Mandira was broken terribly after the loss of her only son. She screamed eccentric to Khan asking him to leave her life, so that her dead son wouldn't be labeled as a terrorist's son, and she too would have a peaceful life. It was not Khan's fault, but Mandira's destiny or 'fate', in a sense that made her life worse. But as every other person in difficult times, Mandira also found fault with the person in her life, her husband. In return Khan had only one thing to ask her; a question, which enveloped all the innocence existing in the human world--"When'll I come back, Mandira?".

Image Courtesy: Google
It was Mandira's words in reply that wrote Khan's destiny. He started off his journey to meet the president of the United States. He met different people, experienced life in different regions, carried himself through all the difficult moments and no one he met, forgot him for, he had given them a very special gift: compassion.

Compassion is that form of love that human beings are capable of sharing with every other living being. Compassion is the opposite of the hatred disseminated by terrorism. Compassion is the soul of all great philosophies. That is why it is said: "Vasudhaivakutumbakam" or "The world is one family.".

When Rizwan Khan met the president, he had Manidra by his side, defeated in her battle of hatred. Khan wanted nothing else, but to return to Mandira's life. For that he had to meet the president and tell him that his name is Khan, and he is not a terrorist that is what Mandira had asked him to do out of hatred-- in which she sought solace-- for coming back  and he promised her to do out of his unfathomable love for her.

Indeed, there are only two paths in life, the path of love and the path of hatred, in which the latter is doomed to fail.
Image Courtesy: Google