We have never thought about this but our cinema defines different moods for different seasons. So, while monsoon is unanimously identified with erotica (recall our innumerable rain songs) and spring with its myriad colors with festivity, autumn is usually reserved for regret and reflection (zindagi ke safer mein jo guzar jaate hain…) and summer in my opinion is associated with conflict. Remember the bride in Paheli as she stops by the village pond to rest for a bit? The burning summer is the beginning of a conflict for Rani Mukherjee.
So, as all of us battle with the present heat, I conjure montages depicting summer in our movies
In KA Abbas’s Do Boond Paani, the village women, carrying pots on heads, walk miles in search of water. In Rudaali a weather-beaten Dimple Kapadia roams bare-foot on the sand and a tanned Shabana Azmi in Mrinal Sen’s Genesis squints at the scorching sun while working on a barren land. In Satyajit Rays’s Sadgati wood-cutter Om Puri collapses with a sun stroke and wife Smita Patil can do nothing to revive him.
To be concluded