"Elsinore" Leads the BIFA Nominations
4 days ago
November 30, 2008
AD-LIB
Somehow I feel so proud to be an average Indian today. I learned a little while ago that Major Unnikrishnan's father refused to let the Kerala Chief Minister inside his house. And yesterday, Karkare's wife refused Narendra Modi's offer of a crore. The average Indian needs to stand up for his/her dignity as a human being, even if that means merely humiliating the representatives they had chosen to electoral power and who have repeatedly failed them.
CITIZENSPEAK
I feel sorry for the Congress pre-elections. I feel sorry for Ratan Tata post-Nandigram-Singur. 2008 has been unkind to them. But, though down, they are not quite out.
What about the 183 who have died? What about their families? What about the hundreds of others who will recover from their injuries but suffer from the trauma for the rest of their lives? What about the millions in a nation who will feel helplessness and fear every time they step out of their homes or lock their doors at night? What about our security forces that will have to expend time, effort and money to replace the 14 who have laid down their lives in the line of duty? What about them? What about you and me—the Bihari, the Mumbaikar, the Bangalorean, the Delhite—who waited 60 long hours for a nightmare to end and who are living with a lurking fear that it may begin again any day?
You and me—we are no intelligence experts, we are no ministers deciding on the defence budget. We are merely India’s citizens who can speak up and demand our right to feel empowered. I want to feel empowered with the knowledge that my India gives me the right to be safe in any place of the country, with the knowledge that I can have Muslim friends visiting my home without being suspected, with the knowledge that no Chief Minister will offer my family a measly crore for the loss of a dear one, with the knowledge that 25 misguided, crazed young men at a time will never again make life come to a standstill.
I do not know for sure where that power will come from. I may sound naïve when I say that I have a nebulous hope that the power might just come from you and me…from our shedding our deceiving belief that it cannot happen to us, from our shedding our apathy to take the time to look around, stay alert and reach out to all who may need us to stand by them, from our decision never, just never to let go.
Sanjana Kapoor was right when she said that this is not a war for in a war you know who you are up against. Here we are in the dark, groping for answers that will hardly help. It just might be impossible to win this battle but we need to pledge our solidarity against these forces of the dark. The sad truth is that, after all, it is a reality we will have to learn to grapple with. It is a matter of our survival—yours, mine and every Indian’s.
What about the 183 who have died? What about their families? What about the hundreds of others who will recover from their injuries but suffer from the trauma for the rest of their lives? What about the millions in a nation who will feel helplessness and fear every time they step out of their homes or lock their doors at night? What about our security forces that will have to expend time, effort and money to replace the 14 who have laid down their lives in the line of duty? What about them? What about you and me—the Bihari, the Mumbaikar, the Bangalorean, the Delhite—who waited 60 long hours for a nightmare to end and who are living with a lurking fear that it may begin again any day?
You and me—we are no intelligence experts, we are no ministers deciding on the defence budget. We are merely India’s citizens who can speak up and demand our right to feel empowered. I want to feel empowered with the knowledge that my India gives me the right to be safe in any place of the country, with the knowledge that I can have Muslim friends visiting my home without being suspected, with the knowledge that no Chief Minister will offer my family a measly crore for the loss of a dear one, with the knowledge that 25 misguided, crazed young men at a time will never again make life come to a standstill.
I do not know for sure where that power will come from. I may sound naïve when I say that I have a nebulous hope that the power might just come from you and me…from our shedding our deceiving belief that it cannot happen to us, from our shedding our apathy to take the time to look around, stay alert and reach out to all who may need us to stand by them, from our decision never, just never to let go.
Sanjana Kapoor was right when she said that this is not a war for in a war you know who you are up against. Here we are in the dark, groping for answers that will hardly help. It just might be impossible to win this battle but we need to pledge our solidarity against these forces of the dark. The sad truth is that, after all, it is a reality we will have to learn to grapple with. It is a matter of our survival—yours, mine and every Indian’s.
November 28, 2008
BLOWIN' IN THE WIND
It has been impossible to watch television in the last two days and not wonder what is real and what virtual. For it is playing out like a video game in Mumbai, even as we try and fail to really comprehend the enormity of it all.
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesen't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesen't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
SEPULCHRAL
As terror rips apart Mumbai, I cannot help but recall a scene from the movie ‘Match Point’ where a murdered woman returns to haunt the murderer, asking him why she had to be killed when the target was someone else. The accused nonchalantly says something to the effect that when the cause is important, innocent bystanders are killed as history has shown us so many times. Innocent bystanders—Mumbaikars—no longer need to show their resilience. It is time not to move on but to fight back. Don’t be resilient. Break down to become whole again. Even as I say this, my words ring hollow. Only when our own suffer, do we realize what it means to be innocent bystanders. I feel anger and helplessness, and yet hopeful as I recall Shelley:
PROMETHEUS UNBOUND(Act IV)
Demogorgon:
This the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for heaven’s despotism,
And conquest is dragged captive through the deep;
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! Is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!
PROMETHEUS UNBOUND(Act IV)
Demogorgon:
This the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for heaven’s despotism,
And conquest is dragged captive through the deep;
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! Is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!
November 27, 2008
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun
Is moving in slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-W.B.Yeats
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun
Is moving in slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-W.B.Yeats
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