Ankhon Dekhi 2013

Rajesh Bauji is a man in his late 50s, living a dreary but eventful life in a small house in old Delhi with his extended family. The film opens with Bauji narrating a dream of flying like a bird, a moment of pure, unburdened freedom that hints at a deeper longing to see the world as it truly is. This quiet yearning is upended when a family crisis arrives: his daughter has fallen for a boy who is whispered about in town for all the wrong reasons. When the elders confront the situation, the family decides to lock up the girl and teach the boy a hard lesson.

The confrontation unsettles Bauji in a way nothing else has. To him, the boy seems decent, and this is the turning point that births a radical creed: he will believe only what he can see with his own eyes. This audacious stance becomes the backbone of the film, and its title, Ankhon Dekhi, takes on new meaning as Bauji tests the boundaries between faith, perception, and reality. In short order, he starts to strip away rituals that he once took for granted, treating prasad as nothing more than another sweet passed around at the temple. He even quits his job as a travel agent—he has never laid eyes on Amsterdam, so why pretend to believe in a place he hasn’t seen? This decision marks a dramatic shift from routine to experiment, and the world around him responds in kind.

What begins as a personal experiment soon ripples through his neighborhood. First contempt, then curiosity, and eventually a slow shift toward admiration as Bauji’s insistence on observable truth earns a following. He steps into the gray areas of life—dealing with a petty loan issue and a loan shark—not by accepting reputations, but by watching and learning. This path leads him into the loan shark’s illegal gambling den, where a new circle of followers joins him, drawn by his uncompromising quest for clarity.

Family dynamics deepen as Bauji’s process influences the most intimate bonds. He agrees to let his daughter marry Ajju, taking steps to heal strained ties with his estranged brother along the way. With responsibility loosening its grip, he and his wife, Amma, set out on a vacation, seeking moments of lightness amid the trial of his experiments. Their conversations reveal a buoyant tension: Bauji tells his wife that he feels weightless, like a bird in free skies, while she jests—perhaps a little mischievously—about whether he truly understands how a bird flies.

The narrative retreads the opening dream in a quiet, contemplative cadence as Bauji wanders toward a cliff in the middle of the night. He recounts the dream that began everything, lingering on the idea that he has yet to truly fly. The film closes on a provocative image: Bauji, having pursued certainty through sight and experience, is seen flying down the cliff, leaving the audience to ponder whether he has finally learned to fly or simply embraced a new definition of seeing.