: Bengali film ‘Dostojee’ is a moving portrait of boyhood and a friendship beyond boundaries #IndiaNEWS The Bengali movie Dostojee takes its name from an invented word. But there’s nothing fantastical

Bengali film ‘Dostojee’ is a moving portrait of boyhood and a friendship beyond boundaries #IndiaNEWS
The Bengali movie Dostojee takes its name from an invented word. But there’s nothing fantastical about writer-director Prasun Chatterjee’s very real exploration of friendship, loss and healing.Dostojee (Two Friends) is set in the early 1990s in Bengal’s Murshidabad district, which shares a long and porous border with Bangladesh. Here, the honorific “jee??? is often added to a form of address, such as abba jee (respected father), Chatterjee explained in an interview to Scroll.in. Dostojee, or dear friend, is what the film’s eight-year-old heroes call each other. Palash and Safikul are perfectly coordinated buddies. They share a bench at school, dance in unison to film songs and look alike when seen from afar. Their bond is challenged first by circumstances that have nothing to do with them and then by an unbidden tragedy.Faraway events damage the delicate harmony between the Hindus and Muslims in the village. The Babri mosque in Ayodhya has been demolished, and the retaliatory bomb blasts in Mumbai have taken place. As extremist sentiment shoots up in the village, Palash and Safikul become knee-high symbols of a shared culture that existed before Hindutva politics spread throughout the country.The movie doesn’t idealise Hindu-Muslim harmony. “It’s never the case that Hindus and Muslims were brothers, but...Read more

Stock Market NEWS Best intraday tips Intraday Stocks below 100