7aum Arivu (7th sense), is a recent Tamil film starring Suriya & Shruti Hasan. Being a fan of Suriya, or rather the kind of films he has been doing since his film Nanda, I wanted to see this one too. Another reason being martial arts. I picked up this titbit that the movie revolves around martial arts. I love martial arts, more as away of life, if only I had my way, I would been a monk (definitely not affiliated to any religion) in some far off mountain practicing martial arts. But when I saw it my excitement went for a toss, cause martial arts features in the film for about an hour in all rest is masala, but Suriya manages masala also pretty well. In all, only an hour or so of the film interested me, that is the first 45 minutes (mainly dealing with Bodhi dharma) or so and the last 10 minutes.
Film plot:The female lead, a genetics PhD aspirant working on her project arrives on the premise that with a little external help latent genetic traits in humans can resurface. For eg, descendants of a scholar or a artist, unaware, have the qualities of their distant relative in them. These qualities can be brought to the forefront and can be put to good use. In this film the protagonist is the descendant of a man today known as Bodhi Dharma in India and as Dhamo in China. Surprisingly not many knew of this chap, at least till the release of this film, including me. Our ever friendly neighbour "the dragon country" is about to declare a bio war on India by unleashing a deadly virus and this can be stopped only by the descendant of Bodhidharma, which they ( male & female leads) manage to do by the end.
So, what is special about this Bodhi Dharma or Dhamo? This film refers to him as a Pallava prince who excelled in Indian martial arts (kalaripayattu), hypnotism, academics, traditional Indian medicine,especially Ayurveda and much more. His quest takes him to a village in China where he is initially considered the evil spirit who brought a fatal disease inflicted upon the people. He uses is knowledge of Ayurveda to free the village of the disease. Soon he single - handedly protects the village from looters using his martial arts skill only to be welcomed by the villagers to stay in the village. They also begin to learn martial arts from him. This today is known as Shaolin.Years later, he decides to return to India, the villagers decide to kill him not wanting to lose their guardian angel. So our good fellow decides to fulfill their wish and consumes the poisoned food he is offered. He is buried in the village and immortalized. I do not know far the information in the film is authentic one can always check out these links: Bodhidharma on Wikipedia &/or 7th Sense in The Hindu (slams the director for giving wrong info).
My point, the film ends with a message, which is, instead of labeling our practices as religious if we explain the scientific reason behind it the younger generation will accept it willingly, the inability of the past generations to explain why, what, how, when has resulted in the in loss knowledge, languages, tomes, practices, ideals, ideas and many more.For example: We lost the patent to turmeric as an antiseptic to the University of Mississippi Medical Center, while we have been using it as an antiseptic for ages.
I completely agree with the director with regards to the message he tried to give, if we continue to force and impose stuff on our people without explanation we end being losers. Then when in future when somebody comes returns our stuff in a new package with a fancy we go gaga over it not knowing in realty it is ours, except we failed to preserve it and promote it. I the first step is to be proud of our diversity. Somebody once said, "if I cannot speak another man's language, how can I expect him/her to speak mine". One cannot master everything but we can at least try to appreciate and not depreciate.
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