Tamas | Hindi TV Serial On DVD | Introductory Reviews

Tamas, a book by Bheeshm Sahni was well acclaimed and praised when published. Tamas means the darkness. It refers the time when India got Independence from the long running British Rule. It was the time when India got the gift of partition too! The Hindustan aka Bharat aka India was then divided into three independent countries, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It was the time when to achieve their political goals, some people have implanted hate, disbelief, jealousy, cruelty and other bad qualities in several communities. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and other communities which were living peacefully at one time, are now enemies of each other. Bheeshm Sahani himself witnessed the time and some of the incidents, which inspired him to write about the same so the people can know what was actually happened.

Though it is not a documentary, the historical value of the book is respected. Later Govind Nihalani brought it on the Indian Television in the form of a TV serial with the same name. The TV serial was acclaimed too. It was the TV serial where the author of the original novel comes introducing the events explored within the same. Bheeshm Sahani represented his emotional views regarding how lacs of innocent people affected brutally with the political agendas of a few of the others. Not everyone played a villain of course. There were some heroes too. It was the time when some people were dedicating their lives during the freedom fighting and also helping other citizens when such wrong incidents were being happened elsewhere.

As Bheeshm Sahni said in his introductory words, what was intention of making a TV serial at the time when almost everyone knew what happened that time, and how it did cost Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis? The hate spread with those incidents is showing its effect till the time. The idea behind is not to get the skeletons out of the coffin definitely. The idea is the people in the country are still having same qualities (good and bad); and for the matter of the fact, everywhere in the world. Terrorism is the outcome of hate (may be towards a person, a community, a country, a thinking, a culture, a tradition, whatever). If we know the characteristics of the people who cause inhuman behavior, we probably could fought wrong times properly. If we can identify them rightly we could prevent ourselves in being caught in their trap.) Secularism is the best thing to avoid religion oriented chaos.

It is worth to note that: The novel shows a gruesome side of politics, and the compassionate side of humanity that survives any carnage; won Bheeshm Sahni the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1975. Bheeshm Sahni is no doubt a talented story teller, but here, we think more than his skills, his emotions makes the book such intense and great read which document the historical events; ditto for the TV Serial director Govind Nihlani. All the talented actors of the time plays their role with so much fluency that it looks like we are revisiting those dangerous and messy times when the air was filled with the feelings of loss, cruelty, betrayal, violence and a few amount of hope, generosity, kindness and humanity too. Visiting history makes us wise and guide us to not to make the mistakes the people made in the past (though it is debatable that if we really visit history with that angle, or we even learn anything from the history, the stuff changes person to person). The TV Serial is not for pure entertainment of course (you can watch the scripted soaps and reality show etc for that). It must be watched by the new generation at least once, as per our opinion.