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Is
‘Chak De, India’ only about hockey?
 Make
no mistake, Shahrukh Khan Starrer ‘Chak De, India!’ is, like all good
works of art having multiple shades of meaning. Hockey, and especially
women’s hockey is just one aspect of it. Like any other artistic
creation it has a life and a personality of its own thereby adding new
dimension and meaning to the life and circumstances alluded in the
movie.
It is a very
pleasing coincidence that ever since the release of Shahrukh Khan’s Chak
De, India! Indian sports is witnessing an upward trend. After a wait of
many decades, India won Nehru Cup football championship. This is
significant as the participants included many high ranking teams from
Asia and Indian footballers beat first Kirgizstan and then Syria to lift
the Cup. Both the teams rank much higher than the India.
Even more important
than the victory in the championship, which no doubt is very important,
is the fact that after many decades the Ambedkar football stadium of the
national was full to the rafter with enthusiastic spectators. The
footballers had given them something to cheer about in a game that is
genuinely universal and people’s sport.
While more and more
people were still being drawn to the cinema halls to watch the girls
play hockey, mould as a team and win the World Cup, the Indian men were
engaged in battle to win the mantle of supremacy in Asia, and they did
it in some style at the end of it! Meanwhile, the sport which is much
reviled and blamed for the eclipse of other popular sports was not doing
too badly either. Much reviled after the debacle during the World Cup in
West Indies, the men with the willows and leather ball did well in
winning the test series in England and then not doing too badly in the
one day series. To cap all these achievements, Sania Mirza, the latest
icon of Indian sports was making spectacular progress in the world
ranking. Languishing among the sixties for much of the time during the
year, Sania beat one after another a number of high ranking tennis
players to leap frog among the twenties. Indian sports has never been so
sunny in a long, long time.
Does this mean that
the sunny spot that the sportsperson are enjoying today is inspired by
the Chak De movie? The truth is that though even the film maker might
have conceived it as a movie that narrates the saga of the much reviled
and disgraced goalkeeper of the 1982 squad that got drubbed by Pakistan
in New Delhi in the presence of the leading dignitaries of the country
and his redemption, the story assumed a life of its own create multi
layered responses to the picturisation. It does not take a viewer to
identify with the various characters as most of us come across people
from all over the country. As more and more economic opportunities arise
young boys and girls move from one small place to a bigger one in search
of a new and better identity. They reach out to various regional and
national centers, learn the new idiom and after assimilating the new
environment, merge with it. In the process they undergo bonding before
assuming a cosmopolitan personality.
This phenomenon can
be seen all over the countries in cities that have better educational
and career opportunities. It is true of the boys as well as the girls
but ‘Chak De, India’ underlines the ambition and the desire of the girls
to explore possibilities of finding opportunities to test the new waters
and see if they can achieve the full potential of the talent that they
believe they possess. The derision that is faced by the girls chosen for
representing the country in the World Cup is the same that faced by
girls everyday in their homes and outside. Usually they are allowed to
indulge in something new in the belief that sooner rather than later she
has to come back to the eternal career of home making. ‘Chak De, India’
breaks this stereotype as is unraveled in the climax of the movie. The
bitterest of on field rivalry is forgotten in order to settle score with
the age old tormentor – man!
In the cinema hall
one has to see to believe that most of the whistling comes from the
girls as the characters bash up boys and finally, the maturing of the
Punjab girl and the acceptance of the ambition of the girl by the
Haryanavi father clearly indicate to the rise of the girl power. Make no
mistake, ‘Chak De, India’ is a movie about the empowerment of women and
assertion of the small town boys and girls in the space that was
considered their own by the privileged people of the cosmopolitan. | 
