Smorgasbord

A Veritable collection of ... anything !

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Jessica Lal vs The Blackbuck

There were two important decisions that came out of the Indian courts last week.

Actor Salman Khan was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison and asked to pay a fine by a court in Jodhpur. The court found him guilty of killing two chinkaras or black bucks, a deer species, in '98.

And a Delhi Court acquitted Manu Sharma and Vikas Yadav, sons of Congress politicians along with other co-accused in the Jessica Lal murder case. Model Jessica Lal was shot at point blank range in April '99 while she was working as a celebrity bar maid in an elite restaurant.

And as expected there were strong and wide-ranging reactions to both these verdicts. But one reaction caught my attention. Preity Zinta and Marc Robinson were on a news channel talking about the Jessica Lal verdict. And what they said struck me as odd and interesting. It went something like this although the words are not exactly the same - "What sort of Judicial system is this that lets a cold-blooded murderer go scot-free and sentences someone for killing a deer? Isn't a human life more important than that of some animal? If some people can, quite literally, get away with murder, then Salman Khan should be let off as well!"

So isn't a human life more important than that of some animal? Ofcourse it is. A human life is much more important than that of some animal. And I admire Ms. Zinta and Mr. Robinson for having a strong opinion and airing it.

I hope and wish as much as they do that the case is reopened and the murderers of Jessica Lal are convicted and sentenced, whoever they are, even if they are sons of powerful and corrupt politicians.

But the problem I have is why are they linking the Jessica Lal case to the Salman Khan conviction. And here's where I don't agree with that argument. Its almost like they want to protect one of their own, a co-actor, in Salman Khan. "So what if he killed a deer" they say, "just let him go, because the same judicial system is letting a murderer go scot-free".

So now the blame seems to be on the judiciary, even the media is going full steam casting aspersions on our courts. Its the same judiciary that the media used to rave about until recently, that its the only system in our polity which is above all the corruption and the petty politics.

But what can a judge do when he is presented with a shabby investigation and hostile witnesses? From what I understand, realistically no judge could have convicted Manu Sharma or anyone else in the Jessica Lal trial based on the shoddy case built up by the prosecution. So who is to blame? It must be the Delhi police, their collusion with the powerful accused, politicians misusing their power, and so on.

But now the celebrity brigade has taken it upon themselves to be the moral authority and opportunistically misuse the situation to bat for Salman Khan. Its not about a deer, or just some animal. Its about a rare conviction amidst a sea of abysmal progress in cases related to wildlife poaching, hunting and environmental exploitation in our country. Its about the future of our fragile ecosystem. The rustic Bishnois understand this, but our much-idolized celebrities don't. And that's very sad.

Offbeat Take - Street protests and Burning effigies

If there is one thing about which everyone and his uncle has something to say these days, its Sourav Ganguly. Should Ganguly be picked to play for India? Its like folklore with so many sobriquets to his name - Prince of Kolkata, Maharaj, God on the offside, and what have you! The Bhadralok is completely shaken up seeing how their Maharaj is being treated. But I'm not talking about only Dada here.

So here's a Conspiracy theory I have, and don't just laugh it off!!

Here's what's been happening each time the selectors announce an Indian team minus Ganguly. The people come out on the street and burn effigies of Chairman of selectors Kiran More and Coach Greg Chappel. Each time. Its there for all of us to see on all news channels, who are always ready to fall over each other to show the reactions of the man-on the-street first. "Remember, we brought it first", they say!

But looking at the goings-on off late, its no more just about Dada and his fans. There seems to be a lot more at stake.

The comrades are up in arms in their reds and with their sickles on the streets of Kolkata. But I suspect they are just using Ganguly. I think what they are really doing is trying to protect the effigy-making industry in the manufacturing sector and the professional protester industry in the service sector. Yeah, you read it right, the effigy-making and the professional protester industries.

After all, the Left is all for the workers and their rights, right? So here's a new cottage industry that has taken shape that has provided employment to so many unemployed people.

And its not just the Left which uses their services, the whole spectrum does - left, right, centre, everybody.

So far the demand for effigies was very restricted. But now its growing, and how! People want to bat for Dada and burn effigies of More and Chappel. Minority baiters want to protest against the Polish media for the Prophet cartoons by burning effigies of the publishers. Conspiracy theorists want to protest the alleged American hegemony by burning the effigy of George Bush. Supporters of Amma want to burn effigies of Karunanidhi and vice-versa. Animal activists want to burn the effigy of Salman Khan. The list goes on. So there is money to be made from the protesters.

Also, the industry is maturing too. Effigies no more look like the non-descript scarecrows. They seem to resemble the real people. Like the Salman one had no shirt and Amma's was rotund and had a shiny gown. So making them is a skilled profession now.

Some of us want them to stop bringing their protests out on the streets. But what happens to the effigy makers then? So they have to protest. And so controversies have to go on.

Besides there is the allied industry of the pay-per-protestor business model, where you can find people to protest for whatever you want as long as you pay them by the hour! So the show must go on.

Finally, I wonder what will happen if we bring up the issue of whether we must allow foreign players in the effigy making and the pay-per-protestor sector? Will they hate it, because its competition? Or will they love it, for they cannot have a more close-to-heart cause to burn effigies and protest against, than this?

Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi

As I finished watching this movie on TV tonight, "Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi", a thought occurred to me. But before that some background.

This Sudhir Mishra movie which came out last year, is set in the politically turbulent times of the '70s, with Indira Gandhi at the height of her power and the emergency imposed soon after. This movie was highly acclaimed by the critics and so I watched it. And it was a good movie indeed, but for the fact that it assumed some knowledge of the history of the time, which unfortunately I am not completely familiar with. Those were turbulent times for India, but those of us who were born after that period, do not know much about what happened then.

So the movie left me thinking and hence the thought I referred to earlier - "Do I really know so little about modern Indian history"?

Why did my text books in school stop soon after Independence? As I recall, the last thing that happened in India per my history text book was the Constitution being adopted in '50. And I last studied history in school in '93.

I vividly remember reading about Tipu Sultan, the Vijayanagar empire, the Mughals. But I do not remember anything about what happened in the Pak war of '71, the China war of '62, the Emergency of '75, etc.

Isn't it more relevant for us to know more about the recent history than about someone who lived centuries ago? We hear stray cases of Laloo and Mayawati and Vajpayee getting a mention in text books, but we all know that's opportunism and political propaganda and nothing else.

But text books are largely controlled by the state governments, so lets not go there for now.

So coming back to the movies, lets see what movies that came out recently tell stories from Indian history. There's Mangal Pandey, there's the pick-your-flavor collection of Bhagat Singh, and the retouched Mughal-e-Azam. And then there have been many versions of the Partition story on celluloid.

But anything about post-'50 India? Too few and far between. Talking again of the Emergency, there was Aandhi. There was Bhopal Express about the gas tragedy. Remind me but I can't remember more than what I can count on my fingers. And that, when we make over 800 movies a year!

Why are there no movies about the unrest in the North-East, about Operation Bluestar, about the IPKF misadventure in Sri Lanka?

Ofcourse I'm discounting the glamourised versions like the bunch of movies that came after the Kargil war and cashed in on the frenzy.

Don't Indian film-makers really see this point of view or are they afraid of trying something outside their set formula. Or maybe they are just scared of hurting the sentiments of someone or the other and then facing their ire. Today's popular young directors in India seem to identify their lead protagonists more often in New York and Sydney, rather than in New Delhi.

We need film-makers to tell stories of contemporary India with their ear to the ground. And there are very few who can do that.

We would want to see more movies about the real India, like this one. May the tribe of such film-makers swell.

What IS a Smorgasbord ?

No, it does not mean its going to be full of gas, or its about getting bored !

The Google dictionary (yeah, I don't know what world you are in if you still refer to the Oxford dictionary!) defines Smorgasbord as:

Smorgasbord is an anglification of the Swedish word Smörgåsbord. It is a buffet style table in a restaurant, or a holiday feast at home, prepared with many small dishes. In an extended sense, the word is used to refer to any situation which invites you to select whatever you wish among several pleasant things, such as the smorgasbord of university courses, books in a bookstore etc. ...and in this case my posts!

PS: Google borrows this definition from Wikipedia. But more about Google some other time!

Why Am I Blogging ?

Everybody has an opinion on everything.

We hear something, we see something, we read something. And each time we do, we feel something. We make opinions, we form impressions, we take a stand. Most times they do not matter to others, either because our opinions are ill-informed or because they are about matters which really are of not much concern to anyone else but us. But nevertheless we want to make ourselves heard, we need a voice, a platform.

Some years ago, we would need an audience, someone who would listen when we had something to say, and we all know how hard getting an audience can be! But then the Internet came along and brought along the Blog, and we could now say what we wanted and have the whole world as our audience. Ofcourse I'm hoping somewhere in this world, I'll find minds that will agree, that will resonate with the same opinions, and that there are like minded people. Or not!

Oh, heck, atleast here is a place where I can say whatever I want, and so I shall !

But why now? Should have done a long time ago, but did not, blame the inertia, to remain at rest! Its hard to get around to doing things, you know! Finally its happening now!

Everybody has an opinion on everything. Hopefully mine will be interesting!