I'm travelling from Kolkata in the non-AC chair car of a Jan Shatabdi. It's all very Shyam Benegal ufffd a microcosm of India crammed into a filthy dabba with maroon seats and yellow racks
I'mu00a0travelling from Kolkata in the non-AC chair car of a Jan Shatabdi. It's all very Shyam Benegal ufffd a microcosm of India crammed into a filthy dabba with maroon seats and yellow racks. Destitute Jharkhandi villagers, management students planning a return to Kolkata for the Kolkata Knight Riders vs Pune Warriors match, older Bengali couples carrying odd shaped luggage and slim jholas, and a filmmaker whose production department couldn't score an AC chair-car ticket. We are the microcosm of India not in the AC dabba, a complex unity from which some of us might emigrate at the drop of a bribe. The little white topi on top: we're heading to Jamshedpur, that Nehruvian symbol of national growth and modular townships. Outside, fields are a lush neon green, broken up by the alphonso yellow of marigold plots. It's enough to make you forget the terrifyingly dirty loo, the injustices in appropriating tribal lands in the area, and sing Saare Jahan Se Accha.
Therefore, it's both funny and unreal that the boy next to me is wearing a t-shirt with the words of the national anthem. I'm so intrigued such t-shirts exist I forget my dismay at having to sit beside a potential tantrum bomb for four hours. I ask his mum about it. "It's good no, to give child sense of pride in country." I try to look convinced, to feel like a jolly good fellow Indian and not mutter, 'Fine, but what are you doing to ensure the country will feel pride in him?'
Shouldn't have.
Shortly, baby deshbhakt has been coaxed into drinking Frooti, the empty box of which he proceeds to throw out of the window under Ma's soft gaze. I look shocked (ok, exaggerated, to make them feel guilty). Before my expressions passed, the wind has thrown the box gleefully back on my feet. Genuinely outraged I look at box, boy, then mum in virtuoso Kathakali movements. Sonny looks nervous, mommy looks beatifically ahead, the box just lies there. I overact a pantomime of Ravanic eyeblazing, headshaking, loud sniffs, stopping short of 'Is desh ka kya hoga?' No matter. A half-hour later, Sonny-Mommy and the Patriots do an encore with a biscuit wrapper.
When we go to the movies, we must stand for the national anthem. No one questions this mysterious connection between cinema and respecting the flag. All stand with adarsh posture and Bharat Bhushan expression, the air starched with their nobility. These folks usually have deafening ring-tones, which they will loudly answer through the movie, when they aren't busy chucking wrappers on floors or calling service staff "Ai". And they never, ever, wait for the credits. Hey, nice movie, but who the hell cares which jerks spent a year of their lives putting it together, eh? Mera to ho gaya na?
Why are these people who mainline patriotism, unable to extend the notion of respect to anything but the flag and the national anthem and their status? What do these symbols symbolise for them?
u00a0Americans, like Indians, ostentatiously love their flag and anthem. As they celebrate their nation's revenge in killing Osama bin Laden, few pause to consider that hundreds of dead and maimed Afghanis ufffd and Americans ufffd have been part of this revenge. Many Indians are saying we'll be a great nation when we show our strength like this, in quelling others. We never hear them say we'll be great when we make our weakest strong. We can see the point of reprisal, but never how we might have a part in the anger or violence done to us. Well, it's hard to hear over all that singing.
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at www.parodevi.com.
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.
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