india on fire

normally this type of heading will suggest some sporting victories by our country but in this post i have no intention of talking abt indian hockey team retaining bronze in the azlan shah tournament or viswanathan anand being crowned as the number one chess player in the world or sachin tendulkar scoring back to back test centuries against bangladesh.. i am writing abt our country literally being on fire among the recent happenings..

firstly there was a bomb blast in the hyderabad mosque, not to forget the timely diffusion of a couple more by the police.. then a few days later, three bomb blasts took place in gorakhpur followed by recovery of bombs & other explosives from the railway stations at faizabad & farukhabad.. the fact that these three cities happen to be in uttar pradesh just make you wonder if this was a mere coincidence or a political plot to tarnish the image (!!), as if they have any, of the recently victorious BSP.. absolutely anything is possible in our land of political, religious & cricket fanatics !!

come to the economic capital "mumbai" and you can't stop wondering what will happen when the power lands in the hands of shiv sena.. recently when a few marathis working in the "big bazaar" chain were fired by their employers because of over-staffing, within hours their "masihas" gathered in big numbers and promptly closed down all the outlets of big bazaar in the city.. obviously there was destruction of property like breaking off the mirrors in nearby parked cars, buses etc, that was quite anticipated.. after all this is maratha land and so nobody has the right to remove marathis from any form of employment.. in fact, some time back the younger thackeray (raj or udbhav, don't remember) voiced his concern over the high proportion of bhaiyyas (those from UP) and biharis among the auto/taxi wallah community in the city, which should ideally belong to the marathis "the original inhabitants of the city".. as you might have correctly guessed, the big bazaar owners gave up and retained the fired marathis, guess they realized that they are losing more as a result of outlet closure then they would by keeping the extra labour :) recently, the sainiks were at their hilarious best when they gathered outside a newly opened restaurant of the "bombay blue" franchise (btw, i simply love their cheese nachos with mexican beans :P) and demanded that the name be changed to more appropriate "mumbai blue" since the city is no longer called "bombay".. this is when there are multiple chains running under the "bombay blue" name for years now, may be they are unaware, in any case please don't inform them, i don't want the one next to my offic closed down :)

moving north again, there is big fight going on in punjab between akali takht and dera sachcha sauda.. frankly, i have no clue abt either of these two communities, came to know of their existence when they showed people fighting with swords openly on the streets across many cities in punjab.. for the uninitiated, the chief of this dera community, a fellow called "ram rahim singh" (wow !! what a secular name) appeared in one of his meetings dressed like sikh guru gobind singh and the akali takht took this as an imitation & insult.. i am sure that he must have been appearing in that kind of dress in the past also, only to go unnoticed by the takht leaders.. anyways so the takht demanded the closure of all "deras" and an apology by baba ram rahim while the other party stood firm that they won't apologize etc etc.. finally after days of pampering, when the dera leader gave in and furnished an apology, it was rejected by the takht leaders as "not graceful in language & spirit".. i am sure this is going down the wires like the battle for top spot between barcelona & real madrid in spanish football league :P

and then the latest one in rajasthan.. thousands from gurjar community blocked the jaipur agra national highway near dausa district demanding the inclusion of their community in scheduled tribe category.. eleven were killed in the ensuing clashes between the gurjars & police in dausa, karauli & bundi.. promptly enough, opposition congress party has demanded a resignation from the ruling BJP :) i was mentioning this to pankaj that ours is probably the only country where people fight to prove themselves backwards !! there is already so much uproar over the reservation bill at the center and pankaj rightly pointed that no political party is opposing the bill.. as always there is a political angle in this issue with the backward classes forming a big chunk of the vote bank, and so by not opposing the bill, the opposition parties are indirectly supporting the bill if not openly.. after all, turning of tables doesn't take much time.. i guess the day is not far when there will be reservation in private jobs too.. let's see..

add to these, the regular killings/disruptions by the members of ulfa & naxal movements and terrorists roaming around freely carrying explosives.. there is so much unrest that i was wondering if there will ever be peace.. or may be there is no point worrying abt the future & better to just live in the moment.. don't know !!

and the award goes to

come february and there is a very high probability that when you switch on the idiot box, you will be watching a movie awards night and will get bored to death hearing this line (title of the post) spoken repeatedly on the show.. you have the golden globe and oscar awards representing hollywood but our very own bollywood beats them hands down when it comes to hosting award shows (at least in the number).. till the 80s (or the early 90s, i am not sure), we had the much revered filmfare awards as the one and only way to recognise & reward the talent in hindi movies.. now we have a plethora of them, looks to me that every entertainment magazine & channel has one award going by its name (after all who wants to lag behind in this world of fierce competition).. so to add to the oldie filmfare, we now have stardust award, zee cine award and very likely sony award, star gold award etc etc..

another dauting task that bollywood has successfully completed is spreading their popularity globally.. so apart from these multitude of award shows hosted in mumbai, we now have the iifa awards hosted in some exotic land outside india (dubai in 2006, yorkshire in 2007).. presence of former miss world aishwarya "sunehri" rai at the cannes film festival also drew the attention of hollywood to the glam quotient (read "vague dressing sense" in her case) of bollywood.. pardon me for digressing here but since this was a golden moment in the history of our country, i would like to inform that aishwarya recently married abhishek bachchan (who got dozens of "gillette mach 3" as wedding gift), if you were not aware of this then it shows that neither you read newspaper nor you watch tv and should kill yourself.. coming back to the topic, how can we ignore the contribution of aamir "ace" khan who did the uphill task of taking bollywood to oscars by earning the best foreign language film nomination for lagaan (a task last achieved by mira nair for the movie Salaam Bombay some 15 years before him).. such was his dedication for bringing glory to bollywood, that an actor who had earlier renounced bollywood awards (declining to receive the best actor award for Raja Hindustani) by saying that they were below standard (or something similar) did everything possible to win the coveted oscar, only to lose the final match to No Man's Land..

but he did show his patriortism for the country by this act (after all there was no personal interest in promoting lagaan on the streets of america..) which he later repeated with all fervour by jumping to the rescue of Narmada Bachao Andolan (complete lack of knowledge over the issue was quite clear from his tv interviews at that time) while painting everything yellow, thanks to his superhit movie Rang De Basanti.. our countrymen, suddenly woken from their slumber by this movie, simply couldn't stop appreciating this "fighting for a cause" attitude of his and forgot to pay any attention to mrs. kavita gadgil (mother of late flight lt. ajay gadgil who died in a MiG crash and was the inspiration behind the character of Madhavan in RDB) who didn't receive the fair credit from the makers of RDB for parting with the story of her son for the movie.. after reading this i felt quite bad for appreciating a movie which has been playing with public emotions in such a way..

i return to the topic under discussion and now try to focus on the quality of the awards.. ok, so these awards are considered to be the battle between the best in the year and so when your pick loses, you feel bad but console yourself that it lost to a better pick.. the kind of emotion you feel when shawshank redemption loses all its 7 nominations to equally good if not better classics like forrest gump.. but here in bollywood, we have hrithik roshan winning the best actor filmfare award for Dhoom-2, you feel disappointed (after initially wondering if hrithik was the hero or the villain of the movie) that the award didn't go to sanjay dutt for munnabhai (if hrithik was hero) or saif ali khan for omkara (if hrithik was villain) but then realize and feel happy that at least hrithik didn't win it for Kkrish.. another saving grace was that aishwarya didn't win the best actress award for dhoom-2, had there been award like best acting in a sporting role she would surely have won it for her basketball dribbling stunts in the movie :)

all this reminds you that indeed these are meant to be popular awards given on the basis of popularity of a particular movie/actor, sometimes bad things can be more popular than the good ones and assuming this you can console your heart that may be dhoom-2 won it for all the wrong reasons.. may be movies like dhoom-2, kkrish, kabhi alvida na kehna were so bad that they overshadowed the better movies of the year by being more popular of the lot and grabbing the majority of trophies.. i also wonder that when they can have critics awards for best movie/actor/actrees primarily to please the egoes of those who failed to win the main award, why can't they introduce more awards to appreciate more realistic cinema like Dor, Khosla Ka Ghosla which were given a blind eye by the juries in the main categories.. may be in a way, we the viewers are also responsible for this, since we flock the multiplexes for utterly meaningless movies thereby making them a commercial hit while giving a pass to the so called low-profile but meaningful cinema..

btw Hrithik did win the best actor award for Kkrish, it was zee cine award !!

disclaimer : author would like to add that the views expressed above are his own and are not intended to hurt the fans of aamir khan, aishwarya rai, hrithik roshan, abhishek bachchan, dhoom-2, kkrish..