Way to go - Chak de India !

After a long I watched a Hindi movie that really touched me !! And not in the conventional way ! It was a FEEL GOOD movie - from an INNER MOTIVATION point of view.

It is set in the context of Indian Hockey cleverly juxtaposed over the over hyped and extremely commercial game of Cricket. Hockey is definitely the underdog game in India - though it is supposed to be the national game !

It also pushes the underdog needle on the meter by showing WOMEN's hockey !

Other than that it is a story of Human Drive, Determination, Defeat, Bitterness, Ego, Redemption and the ultimate cure for a pot boiler of Egos - true team spirit !

Victory can be sweet but Defeat can be oh so bitter - and it shows a perspective of the emotions behind the scenes. Of the players of what they go through when subjected to extreme crowd expectations - from cheering for victory to jeering for defeat and going even further to maligning and ostracizing !

But ultimately clear intent and determination pays off - and redemption is found in the journey towards victory !

This reminded me of another movie ( 1999) - ANY GIVEN SUNDAY with a similar story construct. Al Pacino is a loser football player who becomes a coach of a loser team and pushes them to ignore their "inadequacies" and start focusing on their possibilities !

I have posted a clip of the very stirring locker room speech already on this blog ( please do have a look at it - its a classic !)

Shah Rukh Khan performs a similar one - just before the main game - and I felt it was equally stirring and quite original !

This brings me back to the most MAGICAL quality of Human spirit - Believe in it and belief becomes Reality ! Whether it is Nike's classic - JUST DO IT or the recent Addidas' Impossible is Nothing , Chak De India stirs the most basic of human emotions - and I just loved it !!!

Hope it does the same for you ! Chak de !!