Skip to main content

Fiddler on the Roof


The movie, Fiddler on the Roof, is 45 years old.  Winner of three academy awards, the movie tells the story of a Jewish family in Russia of the early 20th century.  The Tevye family is economically poor.  But Tevye is a god-fearing man.  He has a lot of questions to ask Yahweh but all in a childlike trust tinged with the adult’s irony.  He follows the rules and traditions of his orthodox religion as meticulously as he can.  When his daughters fall in love one by one against the tradition of their religion, Tevye is shocked initially but bows to the love that shines in the eyes of his daughters. 

Finally, the family has to leave the place like the other Jews who are all evacuated.  One of the many evacuations that the Jews faced throughout their history which goes back to the biblical Exodus.  The eponymous Fiddler on the Roof is a symbol of the precarious situation of the Jews.  Perched perilously on the sloping roof, the fiddler has to produce his music which is his duty on the earth while at the same time negotiate the fears and dangers that accompany his situation.  He is the symbol of the Jew of the pre-Israel days. 

The movie is a musical classic which can be enjoyed even today by anyone.  Every frame is a delight to watch.  Every dialogue warms the cockles of our hearts.  Like the finest art, it leaves us with haunting thoughts and emotions.  It evokes compassion in our hearts.  It refines our souls.

I’m presenting here just one song, one of my all-time favourites.  If I were a rich man: that’s the song. Tevye thinks that if he were a rich man, he could not only build a big house with many staircases including one that leads nowhere but “just for show,” but also have his wife in a happy mood strutting around like a peacock and screaming at her servants.  Important men in town would crowd around him calling him “Reb Tevye, Reb Tevye,”  seeking answers to their problems, and “it won’t make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong / When you’re rich they think you really know.”  He would be able to sit in the best part of the synagogue and discuss the scriptures with learned men, if he were a rich man.

Finally he asks Yahweh if it would have destroyed some great eternal plan of His had He made Tevye a really rich man.

Today is Easter.  Here, through this post, I’m celebrating the “resurrection” of Jesus, a Jew who tried to reform his religion without success.  Like Tevye, I have infinite questions to ask God if He would ever care to listen. 



Comments

  1. Chaitali BhattacharjeeMarch 27, 2016 at 7:29 PM

    That's a good movie I have seen .

    ReplyDelete
  2. HemaMarch 27, 2016 at 9:22 PM

    What a classic! One of my favorites!

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMarch 29, 2016 at 12:22 PM

    AN all-time great film, which I can see again and again. The philosophy in this film needs to be pondered over by all.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
24 comments
Read more