A story

There's a story that I like and I mention it here because it's in a mood that I aspire to take the film to. I'm trying to tell something that is a Zen story. Now this is not the story of the film but just the mood...wondering if that makes any sense.

Okay so here goes.

I must mention here that I read the story in a book titled MYTHS TO LIVE BY by Joseph Campbell many years ago. I don't remember it so clearly so I am likely to make some 'adaptations'. Please bear with me.

A long time ago somewhere in China, there was a little village. One day a beautiful maiden materializes and all the men are besotted by her. Of course she can take only one husband so she tells the men that whosoever can recite the Heart Sutra will have her hand and she leaves. She appears on the following day and finds that there are several men who can do so. So whe tells them that the one among them who can explain the Sutra will have her hand. But on the next day too, quite a few men succeed in doing so. Now the maiden tells the men that whoever can realize the Sutra will be the one she wall marry.

When she returns to the village the next day, there is only one man who has realized the Sutra. She tells him that he is her chosen one and she leaves the village alone, giving the man directions to her cottage asking him to go there a little later to give her time to make arrangements for the wedding.

Towards evening the man heads for the maiden's cottage. When he reaches, he meets the maiden's parents. They tell him to go to the riverside to meet her. He does so. As he nears the river, he sees her footsteps in the sand. He follows them. They lead him to the water's edge and there, he finds the slippers of the Bodhisattva. They are his as his feet fit into them perfectly. In realizing the Sutra, he has attained a state of enlightenment. The maiden herself too was a Bodhisattva who had led the young man to his spiritual destiny.

For me this is a beautiful love story.

My daughter once asked me, why is it that whenever there is a man and a woman in a film, they end up hugging and kissing? And I've wondered about whether in Cinema we have explored relationships adequately. What possibilities are there in terms of relationships between men and women?

I am trying to explore this in the film.