Umrao jaan ada

Why do certain things stick in your head? why do i remember a movie i saw 20 years ago in all its sights, sounds, smells and emotions but i can't remember the big 3D movie from last(?) year? and i liked that one too
I had an epiphany as i was trying to explain to the wife why i like Muzzafar Ali's Umrao Jan. it started with the songs which by the way always blow me away, and which i think fit the movie like no else. if one put the songs in order and played all of them without having seen the movie, I am of the opinion that even if one did not get the whole story, one would still be able to lose one's self to Umrao's pathos and the movie's ethos.
Let me get back to my epiphany though. as i was trying to blunder through my verbalisation of why i like that movie, it struck me all at once that it was a story within a story. and both were shadows of one another...the one on the surface metaphorical of the one that was vaster, intrinsic to the story as well but sub surface. there for you to not see but spot. feel. the story of the courtesan is but an allegory of her land and her people. Umrao Jan Ada is stolen from her home, sold into the trade, loved, liberated, her hopes cruelly shafted on fate's whims, and left alone and desolate and destitute. if you must ask, her story is set in the plains and palaces of avadh, on both sides of 1857.
There is sparse little on what happened to the common man, to the warp and weave of the peoples and lands in 1857, outside of military histories. and as i think back to the epiphany, i realise that this movie from 20 years ago is my emotional window to that time long ago. it may appear far fetched, even blasphemous to noble nationalism, to offer such a connection but really - could they have felt so differently, consideing it took us nine more decades to complete the job?
And you reader, let me throw a little something at you, something else altogether - do you know mirza muhammad hadi ruswa? some stories are bigger than their teller...