Kurai Kurai - Verhalen met de Wind

Kurai, Kurai: Tales on the Wind is a beautiful, poetically told tale, suffused with soft sunlight and recurring metaphors of wandering and vagabondage: not as much directionless as the tumbleweed (the kurai) it is following, but still anchored to many people, many erring ways and many questions wrought internally, with fear, confusion and pain. The film is a search for meaning, for identity, for acceptance: by many people, all circumscribed by the endless desert, the never-ending chasm between human desire to be loved and human action to undo it all. As a song from Chanakya (ep. 45) says, "Desires rise like a volcano, reaching for the skies; the one who aims at them is him/herself sucked beneath more and more." Often sucked into incomprehension, sadness, an inability of joy and creation. And this is what the film reveals: wandering like the kurai is the solution, the only way out for many of us. Irrigating our heart with the patience required to listen to the tales of the eternally wandering kurai is what will give us the wisdom to bear with equanimity this world's turns and reverses for the good, for the bad.

Beautifully shot, with some lovely, dry humour thrown in, the film is a delight for the eyes as much as the mind: the few characters met in the film are some humans, some tumbleweed, some trains and some wild camels, all borne on the wind, detached from roots, trying to find new roots. All carrying new tales, new seeds as they float along.