Know more about kintsugi, Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘hobby’ in the film ‘Pathaan’

Kintsugi is an ancient Japanese art form of putting broken pottery pieces back together using gold powder rather than rejoining ceramic pieces with a camouflaged adhesive. According to mymodernmet.com, Kintsugi is “the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery. Rather than rejoin ceramic pieces with a camouflaged adhesive, the kintsugi technique employs a special tree sap lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Once completed, beautiful seams of gold glint in the conspicuous cracks of ceramic wares, giving a one-of-a-kind appearance to each ‘repaired’ piece”.

The art form gained so much popularity that people would intentionally break pottery and repair it with gold as it would increase its value.

Kintsugi as a philosophy

Kintsugi is rooted in the philosophy of accepting our flaws, shortcomings, brokenness and failure. It emphasises that we should embrace our flaws and imperfections, just like the kintsugi art form highlights the brokenness and cracks by filling them with glittery gold powder in them.

It, in turn, increases the beauty of the object and iterates that broken things can be repaired and are more beautiful because of the experience that they went through. The ‘scars’ are highlighted as part of the design in kintsugi.

Kintsugi in Pathaan

When Shah Rukh Khan’s character Pathaan, an ex-RAW agent who got brutally got hurt during the course of his duty, talked about Kintsugi with his boss Nandini (Dimple Kapadia) in the film, he proposed the formation of a group named Joint Operation and Covert Research (JOCR), that would recruit an army of RAW agents who were forced to retire due to trauma or injury. He was successful in getting the group formed, however, Colonel Sunil Luthra (played by Ashutosh Rana) was dismissive of them and called them ‘broken eggshells’.

However, it is these broken eggshells which were responsible for saving the country from the ‘deadly virus’ attack by Jim’s (John Abraham’s) terrorist outfit Operation X.

In the film, we see Pathaan (SRK) jokingly talking about the multiple “metals” that are inserted in him due to severe wounds caused during his serving tenure. This incident highlighted the fact that the hero, too, has brokenness that needs filling. However, these cracks and wounds do not strip him of his heroic-ness.

Shah Rukh Khan’s comeback and Kintsugi

The concept of Kintsugi can be applied to Shah Rukh Khan’s box-office resurgence as well. The movie Pathaan has reestablished SRK’s superstar status after the actor failed to impress with his last few releases and then took a break from films for four years.

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