"Craving" the movie (Trishna)

IFCfilms.com/films/Trishna; Trishna the Movie

Slumdog Millionaire's breakout starlet Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed co-star, with original songs by Amit Trivedi and an original score by Shigeru Umebayashi, in Trishna (Sanskrit tṛṣṇā, "craving," Pali tanha). Shot in India and based on the novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, TRISHNA is the story of a girl named Trishna.

She lives with her family in a village in Rajasthan, India's largest state. As the eldest daughter, she works in a nearby resort to help pay the bills. Jay (Riz Ahmed) is the wealthy son of a property developer. When he takes up managing a resort at his father's request, he meets Trishna at a dance and fate takes its course: Jay finds every opportunity to win Trishna's affection, and she accepts his advances with shy curiosity. But when the two move to Bombay (Mumbai) and become a couple, Jay's deep family bonds threaten the young lovers' bliss.
 
Produced by Melissa Parmenter and directed and shot with Michael Winterbottom's agile camera, TRISHNA is a powerful look at the tension between ancient privilege in India and modern equality, between codes of urban and rural life. Ultimately it is a hymn to both the glory and the tragedy that accompanies beauty in all forms. 

• Twitter: updates and information @TrishnaMovie

Indian outcast millionaire mulls caste, riches

Tim Sullivan (AP)

AGRA, India - As far back as he can remember, people told Hari Kishan Pippal that he was unclean, with a filthiness that had tainted his family for centuries.

Teachers forced him to sit apart from other students. Employers sometimes didn't bother to pay him.

Pippal is a dalit, a member of the outcast community once known as untouchables [who often leave Hinduism to become Buddhists, which recognizes no castes]. Born at the bottom of Hinduism's complex social ladder, that meant he could not eat with people from higher castes or drink from their wells.

He was not supposed to aspire to a life beyond that of his father [according to the Vedas, a collection of sacred Indian Old Testament-style texts], an illiterate cobbler. Years later, he still won't repeat the slurs that people called him.

Now, though, people call him something else.

They call him rich.

Pippal owns a hospital, a shoe factory, a car dealership and a publishing company. He owns six cars. He lives in a maze of linked apartments in a quiet if dusty neighborhood of high walls and wrought-iron gates.

"In my heart I am dalit. But with good clothes, good food, good business, it is like I am high-caste," he said, a 60-year-old with a shock of white hair, a well-tailored vest and the girth of a Victorian gentleman. Now, he points out, he is richer than most brahmins, who sit at the top of the caste hierarchy: "I am more than brahmin!" More

How to Get Riches: the Buddha

Once the Buddha addressed the [multi-millionaire] householder Anathapindika:

"O householder, there are five things that are wished for, loved, and agreeable yet rarely gained in the world: long life, beauty, happiness, fame, and rebirth in heaven(s).

"But of these five things, householder, I do not teach that they are obtained by prayer or by making vows. If one could obtain them by prayer or vows, who would not have obtained them? For a noble disciple, householder, who wishes to have..." More

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Neighbors of actor Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail watch the a telecast of the 81st Annual Academy Awards near his home, in a slum in Bandra, suburban Mumbai, India, 2/23/09 (AP/Gautam Singh).

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