On the fringes

I was listening to a song the other day on my phone. The last time I heard it was in the movie D-day. I happened to like it on Youtube and today as I hit Play all the same song came on first thing in the morning. It's not exactly the song you want to hear just when you've settled down with your cup of chai and are set to enjoy the peace of a quiet morning. I could have skipped it but the voice and the words of the song in beautiful Urdu wouldn't let go of me. So I heard it and it reminded me of the relationship between Arjun Rampal and Shruti Hassan's characters in the movie.

An assassin and a prostitute both doomed in their fleeting and uncomfortable love. In cold blood he slits the throat of the man who scarred her face and yet he never tells her that he loves her. He walks out the door only to return a moment later with words forever unsaid. She lets him go never insisting, never demanding for what he cannot give her and grateful for all that he already has. The next time he sees her she's been raped and brutally killed. The only kind of possible end to a relationship between two people who live on the fringes of society.

Another film The American sees George Clooney an assassin fall in love with a prostitute. Again a doomed relationship as he dies bleeding in his car driving to see her one last time. Something about all these characters is so heartbreaking. I know it's all fiction but it makes me wonder what life is really like for people like them who live outside the sacred circles of morality. Do they fall in love? Do they get hurt? Are they more or less sensitive to life's vagaries than those who live within these circles? I don't know. I've never talked to a prostitute. I've never met an assassin.

Here's the song that brought on this post

Ek ghadi theher

Ek ghadi theher ke jaan baaki hai
Tere lab pe mere hone ka nishaan baki hai