A Weird World
April 3, 2007 | Filed Under Mumboji, Point of View | 3 Comments
I am a self-proclaimed drunkard.
As I recount my events from last night, which I vividly remember, I have only one observation to make - it’s a weird world.
I was standing outside the Jal restaurant and bar. I was sufficiently drunk. People use the phrase ‘helplessly inebriated’ for the state I was in.
A BEST bus came by, I felt like a tiger spotting its prey. The prey slowed down and I spotted my chance and made a final dash and entered my prey through its back door entrance.
I was inside and I realized that I didn’t have money to buy the bus ticket. Luckily I had my watch. It was a cheap gold plated thing but it seemed enough to buy the ticket. So I started offering my fellow passengers to buy it. Unfortunately, they didn’t take it very well. One of them even complained to the bus conductor. The bus conductor was not a nice person. He asked me if I had money for the ticket, and when I told him that for the exact same reason I was trying to auction the watch, he started hitting me. He asked the driver to stop the bus. And tried to throw me out. I stood my ground complaining. It was of no use as the bus conductor and four more men started hitting me and pushing me towards the exit. They managed to throw me out.
As soon as I got out, I ran and picked up a stone and hurled it in the bus. It didn’t hit anyone, I think that was a good things as the closest it came to hitting was a woman with a little girl in her hand.
I had no money left, so I slept in the soft gravel by the road.
Terrorist?
March 1, 2007 | Filed Under Mumboji | 5 Comments
One of my friends passed me an interview of Mohammed Afzal. He has been given the death sentence for the parliament attack that happened in India.
The guy finds himself alone in his struggle as he has not been allowed a fair representation at the courts. In fact, I fear, this interview will probably be the only time we will hear his side of the story. There is no greater injustice in a democracy than to muffle the voice of a person.
Kashmiri’s have never had it fair. Both India and Pakistan are fighting an ego war on the land of Kashmir and it ultimately leads to someone becoming the scapegoat.
Here’s a part from the interview that really moved me:
What comes to your mind when you think of your wife Tabassum and Son Ghalib?
This year is the tenth anniversary of our wedding. Over half that period I spent in jail. And prior to that, many a times I was detained and tortured by Indian security forces in Kashmir. Tabassum witnessed both my physical and mental wounds. Many times I returned from the torture camp, unable to stand, all kinds of torture including electric shock to my penis, she gave me hope to live…We did not have a day of peaceful living. It is the story of many Kashmiri couples. Constant fear is the dominant feeling in all Kashmiri households.
We were so happy when a child was born. We named our son after the legendary poet Mirza Ghalib. We had a dream to see our son Ghalib grow up. I could spend very little time with him. After his second birthday I was implicated in the case.
What do you want him to grow up as?
Professionally, if you are asking, a doctor. Because that is my incomplete dream.
But most importantly, I want him to grow without fear. I want him to speak against injustice. That I am sure he will be. Who else know the story of injustice better than my wife and son?
[While Afzal continued talking about his wife and son, I could not stop recollecting what Tabassum told me when I met her outside Supreme Court in 2005 during the case’s appeal stage. When Afzal’s family members remained in Kashmir Tabassum dared to come to Delhi with her son Ghalib to organize defence for Afzal. Outside the Supreme Court New Lawyers chamber, at the tiny tea stall on the roadside, she chatted in detail about Afzal. While sipping and complaining the tea for excess sugar she told about how Afzal enjoyed cooking. One picture she painted stuck me deep—one of those dear private moments in their lives, he would not allow her to enter kitchen, make her seated on the chair nearby and Afzal would cook, holding one book in his band, a ladle in the other and read out stories for her.
I agree that terrorism is a bane. And even if we assume that Afzal is the culprit, I wonder what leads one to terrorism. How does one inspire someone to create inhumane acts. Of course there is a constant brainwashing of individuals leading them to feel the atrocities all the more. But we as countries too do things that we can feel ashamed of. And later they come back and haunt us.
I can’t believe that someone who names his son, Ghalib, can be a terrorist. The poet in me refuses to accept it.
Lage Raho Munnabhai
February 14, 2007 | Filed Under Jumboji, Mumboji, Point of View, Theatre & Movies | 3 Comments
Jumboji: Why Munnabhai out of the blue?
Mumboji: I wanted to remind people something about the movie. I have known people who have loved and hated the movie. But sometimes I wonder if people realize why it’s probably amongst the best few hindi movies made.
Jumboji: You think so?
Mumboji: Don’t you?
Jumboji: It doesn’t matter what I think, you tell me what you do.
Mumboji: If you don’t mind, let me just tell the plot in short.
Jumboji: Must give spoile warning then…
Mumboji: The story is about a man who falls in love.
Jumboji: So that’s why you are writing it on Valentine’s day?
Mumboji: Ehh! No. But anyways, so he falls in love with a radio jockey (with her voice i am guessing). The guy is a goon and the girl apparently is having a contest with her listeners. The contest is a quiz on Gandhi and winner gets a chance to meet her. Obviously this is the chance that Munnabhai (the goon) is waiting for. He manages to win the quiz with a little help from “friends”. Munnabhai gets to meet the love of his life and now is absolutely floored by the dazzling beauty. He has to get to know her and moreover get her to like him. The only way being - knowing everything about Gandhi, Munnabhai has no choice but to read up everything on the life and principles of the Mahatma.
Jumboji: hmm…
Mumboji: The plot thickens here, spending day and night in the museum dedicated to Gandhi, the ghost of Gandhi manifests before him. It’s this ghost that helps him throughout the movie in achieving seemingly impossible things. Things that are out of the box and extra-ordinary and extremely funny coming from a man who has been a goon all his life and can’t talk with anyone politely…
The movie is light-hearted and fun all throughout but there comes a moment that makes you respect the story. In one scene Munnabhai is questioned by a psychiatrist. The q/a session occurs in a press conference and it is systematically proved that Gandhi’s ghost doesn’t really exist. It is probably some kind of delusion. But what is remarkable is that the scene reveals much more than it actually does.
It tells that Munnabhai has actually gone the distance in understanding Gandhi and has subconsciously accepted his principles and is following them. Just that the man is still wearing a goon’s body and there is an inertia in the transformation. The only way probably is through hearing the same things the mind says through a holocaust image of the eyes. I like how the movies says this without actually saying it.
I also like how the psychiatrist is portrayed in the movie… focusing on the problem and not the individual, which also seems to be a reality in our society (i am generalizing, there could be exceptions).
After the scene, everything in the movie seems less contrived and one can’t help but feel for Munnabhai.
Jumboji: I agree.