Babu Gautam
Deadly Innocent, picarseque on more than one counts, imaginatively recounts the short-lived life of an adolescent rebel, Leelu. The picaro here is a troubling teenager whose exploits come as cries to the busy world, and go unheard. On a factual account he’s a rebel without cause. But the facts make way for the truth, when we come across the uncut reality of an adolescent underworld in the times of cholera and war. In a rising republic of sufferings and hope, India that was, Leelu, the rascal kid, lived his today as if there’s no tomorrow.In a quasi- Freudian account, Leelu’s delinquency is essentially a consequence of the broken family. Unlike his perennially absent father, Leelu asserts his presence wherever he is, to pronounce himself a real man.The reason behind his destructive acts is nothing but ’you gotta do something’ against the authoritative system. For an errant boy, on the verge of being declared enemy of the society, and the ’cosh’ being in the hands of the social authority, ’vanishing into thin air’ was the only way to redemption, if it has to be. The truth remains, at the end, that Leelu was too damaged to have survived.
