Highway – Film Review
Highway – Childhood trauma(CSA – Child sex Abuse) is difficult to get over with!
Story line: Alia is getting ready to get married. She decides to go on a long drive with her fiancée just the night before the wedding. Unfortunately they stop by to fill petrol and Alia gets nabbed by some goons who were trying to rob the petrol pump owner.
A Nightmarish phase starts for Alia – she is kept all tied up and goes through hell. In the mean time the goons bring her to a deserted area and she tries to run. He lets her run and she finds herself in a totally vacant area. She runs back to them…this time less afraid of them. She learnt one thing though – People need each other and that the things written in story books about beautiful stretches of lovely lonely land and the solitude bliss wasn’t true after all – we are all inter-dependent and need each other to live comfortably!
She begins to get pally with the goons and even starts telling them about her likes and dislikes – although they were not much interested to listen to her blabbering! One of the guys tries to act fresh with her when Randeep Hooda saves her dignity and wins her trust.
Gradually they both get friendlier and confess about their childhood traumas.
Randeep’s story – His father was poor and worked for a rich man. The debauch rich master used to often ask for his employee’s wife to entertain him! his mother used to do all her household chores – was loving and caring towards her child plus did what her husband asked her to do – that included ‘sleeping with the debauch beep master’– and later be beaten by the spiness ‘failure’ husband too – all this the child helplessly watched and because of this he had developed a lot of hatred for the rich class of people.
Alia tells her story of how her foreign returned uncle used to take her to the toilet by showing her a chocolate and sexually exploited/ abused her. Her mother knew about it (after she reported to her mother i.e.) but never took any step to stop it from happening rather asked her to keep totally shut about it! Thus she had this grudge about suppressing the wrongs done to her when she was just 9 years old.
In the meantime, police was searching for Alia and a day came when both had to part ways. Randeep gets killed and she is taken home. She screams all about her childhood traumas in front of the all the family members including the Beep abused uncle. She then decides to start a small cottage industry for the poor women so that they could get some financial independence and not be just an object to be used by pimp husbands or debauch money lenders in the locality.
Last scene shows that she was still stuck in that traumatic age – but is happier since she could blurt out her frustration and speak up against the BEEP. She sees herself (in her imagination) as a 9 years old girl spending time with Randeep- who is shown as 11 years old. They missed their innocence.