The LTTE Comedy Show...

Srilankan army chief has declared the world of the death of LTTE chief "Prabhakaran". But some quarters of Tamil Media and some of the Pro-LTTE websites claim that "Prabhakaran" is not dead and that he is in safe haven. They have released a photograph of "Prabhakaran" viewing the news of death on television.

The comedy of the news war is that the above photograph is well done with todays computer graphic technology. I came across this old photograph of "Prabhakaran" alongwith the late "Anton Balasingham".
Huhaaa... some LTTE supporter has morphed a graphical image of a televsion probably created using "Autodesk 3D Max" software. First, have a look at the Television image in the first picture, created using "3D Max". The final edited image and the date of the photo in that image. The photograph was taken on 25 January 2005.

One can also put some living person in place of the Televsion. In this case this is Tamil film director Mr.Bharathraja. Longlive the King...The king is dead.

The original photo of "Prabhakaran" and "Anton Balasingham" has been morphed by some LTTE supporters to keep their flock together and to continue making money in the name of Tamil Eelam.

Another "MUMBAI" waits

India is likely to face another Mumbai 26/11 type of attack in the near future. That is the assessment of Startfor, a US intelligence think-tank. Really, do we need anyone to tell us that this is something that is inevitable? Or do we naively believe/hope that the US is going to protect us against such attacks with the power of the dole that it is giving to a sinking Pakistan? Or that the Pakistanis have been sufficiently sacred by the shrill "all options are open" war cry and empty threats of surgical strikes that Indian leaders unleashed after Mumbai was attacked?

Nearly five months after India faced its deadliest terror attack, everything is back to normal. Everyone has forgotten about the horror that the country faced for three days. Everyone, almost, is relieved that the 'foolish hawks' who were irresponsibly talking of war with a nuclear Pakistan have become quiet. Also everyone, well not quite, has also heaped praise on the government for the very mature manner in which it has handled the crises and defused tensions.

All that is fine. But, no one is asking the two critical question that need to be asked: What has India done since then to deter state/non-state actors - call them what you like - from Pakistan from launching more such attacks? What is India going to do when, not if, another such attack does take place?

Narendra Modi has been ridiculing the government for running to Obama after the Mumbai attacks rather than doing something tangible to sort Pakistan out. Stratfor is also of the view that the UPA government was too soft and that India is likely to deliver a more forceful response should the BJP come to power after these elections. Is that really so? Yes, the general view is that the UPA has been ignoring the increasing threat of terror that India faces from Pakistan. But, would a BJP government have really responded very differently to Mumbai 26/11, and will it do so if it comes to power?

The response of the government of any sovereign state to an act of war depends mainly on two related and somewhat interdependent factors: its tolerance threshold and the relative combat power of the states involved. While there is certainly a difference between the tolerance threshold of the Congress and the BJP, they both have the same military at their disposal. The weakness of latter is what has made repeated terror attacks on India an almost zero-risk option for Pakistan for decades. As Pakistan knows better than all armchair analysts, that is going to make it virtually impossible for India to exercise a limited military option even in the future. Why? Because should the war escalate into a full blown conventional affair, India's defence forces are not in a position to give an iron-clad guarantee of success. And, failure - even a stalemate - is simply unacceptable for a country that has seven times the population of its adversary and wants to believe that it is about to become a super power.

There is a lot of uninformed talk that the era of wars is over and that it is economics and not military strength that matters in the 21st century. Those who talk on these lines are obviously blind to what the Americans and the Chinese are doing. China is not much larger than India. It has a border dispute only with this country and faces no threat from any of its other neighbours. If the Chinese leaders were Indian, they would probably have taken the Nehruvian route and almost mothballed their defence forces. But, being realists who know history and the role that power will continue to play in shaping it, they have done exactly the opposite. As a result, their military might has grown to a level that even the Americans are beginning to see a real threat to their uni-polar dominance of the world.

India, on the other hand, despite having been invaded and humiliated by the Chinese in 1962, have simply done nothing to match China's military might. And now the asymmetry is so great that whenever the Chinse decide to use force to annex Indian territories claimed by them, as indeed they will at a time of their choosing, it will be an almost no-contest.

Worse is what we have done vis-à-vis a much weaker and smaller Pakistan. We have allowed that country to militarily match up to us to a point where it can deter us from using the military option. India has the economic strength to simply make it a no-race for Pakistan that cannot spend beyond a point on defence. This would have happened on its own had India's sights been fixed on a maintaining a similar balance with China. But our leaders, devoid of any strategic vision, chose to ignore the role and relevance of the military as a key instrument of state policy. As a result, this is the only nation in the world that is happy maintaining an edge over a far smaller neighbour while pretending that a slightly bigger one, who has consciously chosen to become very powerful, does not exist!

It is because of this thinking that rather than India deterring Pakistan from launching and sustaining a proxy war, it is Pakistan which has successfully deterred India from reacting militarily in a manner that puts the cost-benefit ratio indisputably in India's favour. And Mumbai 26/11 was not the first time that India was provoked, almost taunted. Kargil and the attack on Parliament should have woken up a drowsy security establishment to the realisation that Pakistan was going to keep at it as long as it was sure it was going to get away. And how was it going to come to that conclusion? The cowardice of India's leadership, as former ISI chief Hamid Gul called it, coupled with the continuing absence of an unbridgeable military gap. Since India is even now simply not interested in doing anything about it, its tolerance threshold is per force very high. And Pakistan is going to test it to the limit. It knows only too well that the "zero tolerance" to terror that its politicians loosely talk about is just gas.

When there was serious talk of war after 26/11, the realisation hit that India's military was not ready for it. There were critical shortages of combat equipment due to which the military was perhaps weaker than it was at the time of Kargil. No wonder military commanders refused to go to war; you can't fight a real war with words.

Has anything changed nearly five months later? Major shortages of combat aircraft, air defence systems and artillery guns still exist. May be changes and preparations have been made, where they can be within limitations, to give a swift riposte to Pakistan should another attack be launched. But my sense is that the moment Pakistan gets to know through its intelligence network that India has both the political will and the military wherewithal to defeat Pakistan in a limited conventional war below the nuclear threshold, it will change tactics and opt for less spectacular attacks or go in for attacks carried out by Indian citizens only. If Startfor is to be believed, that has clearly not happened.

Narendra Modi might ridicule the Congress; the BJP may arguably display greater political will to retaliate. But the hard fact is that even if there are 10 more Mumbai 26/11s, no government will be able to make Pakistan pay in the only manner that will compel it to abandon its present course. This is the price this nation has paid and will keep paying for the failure of all governments to build and use the military as the cutting tool of coercive diplomacy and deterrence.

So, when the next 26/11 takes place, India will still be found running helplessly to the US, crying "Obama, O ba, O ma", as Modi has been saying to ridicule the Congress. Even if Modi himself is the Defence Minister then.

Political Bankruptcy In India

Its Election Time...who will the common man in India vote for? Congress? BJP? Third Front? Wait and See...Whether the secularits will win or the religious bigot?
The secularist Indian intelligentsia almost unfailingly boasts a Western pedigree and that branding alone assures them greater credibility and gives better access to the media. The political secularists like Laloo Prasad Yadav or a Karunanidhi are of course complete country bumpkins and can be safely consigned to the margins of the intellectual discourse on secularism. Vote bank politics is not a new phenomenon in India. The politics of caste and religion have always existed within the enormous diversity of India, a trait the British exploited ruthlessly to subjugate Indians. In the aftermath of Partition, the Congress Party was able to use its fortuitous credentials as the agent of Indian independence to ensure that disparate vote banks across the country remained largely loyal to it. Until the accession of Indira Gandhi, the Congress Party also contained within it a genuine regional leadership that represented divergent political views. Jawaharlal Nehru was able to reconcile India’s diverse interests by force of personality and his symbolic primacy as Mahatma Gandhi’s chosen successor. As a result, political differences and conflicting aspirations did not lead to a breakdown of the uneasy balance of power between the coalition of interests that comprised the Congress Party. But the subsequent political awakening of India and a much sharper articulation of conflicting regional, caste and religious sentiment was undoubtedly taking shape below the surface of apparent national purpose. The post-Independence ebullience only lasted a couple of decades. The socio-economic and political fissures beneath the surface came out into the open after Indira Gandhi’s bid for political power and the split that it instigated within the Congress party. In the aftermath of her triumph over the powerful old guard Indira Gandhi peremptorily installed loyalists as office bearers and Congress Party leaders across India. She transformed the Congress party from a public corporation, so to speak, into a private family firm, appending her own initial alongside the name of the party as its insignia. Once regional political leaders were turned into family retainers they ceased to articulate effectively the complex mosaic of aspirations of the regions they presided over. The quality of this leadership deteriorated eventually because personal elevation depended on loyalty to Indira Gandhi, without due regard for political consequences. Regional leaders were also hesitant to impress upon her the ground realities in the states they ruled. Her self-serving politics galvanised regional and sectional discontent, strengthening vote banks and on a truly pan-Indian scale. It was a certainty that cynical political entrepreneurs would enter the fray and the fragile sense of national identity potentially in the making after Independence retreated. Every kind of political, caste, social, linguistic and religious division was ensnared as a basis for political mobilisation. A no-holds barred contest for political power came to dominate Indian political life and wider national interests could no longer be apprehended by the political system as a preponderant imperative, except in transient moments of crisis like the Bangladesh war of 1971. But the harsh reality of the neo-Hobbesian struggle for power always resumed when the momentary sense of national purpose passed. Such a situation was guaranteed to result in egregious intellectual dishonesty and personal venality for the sake of political advantage and no political party was unaffected by it. The principle that came to rule was exploitation of every sentiment, however mendacious and to accentuate it to the maximum possible extent to arouse the most potent vote bank loyalty towards those articulating grievances. What worsened India’s descent into the miasma of irrational rivalry, pitting all-against-all (as witness caste politics in Rajasthan today) was the stupid constitutional arrangement Indian leaders, in their vaulting ignorance, had inflicted on the country after Independence and crackpot Nehruvian socialist economics. The consequences of the failure to institute a presidential system of government were disastrous. It could have ensured that one paramount decision-maker was the product of a national vote instead of being the creature of the lowest common denominator of a concatenation of fractured interests. Such a presidential system is imperative in even relatively small countries to create a sense of nationhood by enabling all voters to identify with the major political office of the country. In addition, the espousal of Nehruvian socialist economics created vicious strife to corner a share of the spoils by winning political office and intensifying it further by slowing down the growth that would have otherwise enlarged the economic pie. This remains the essential status quo of contemporary India: every fault line institutionalised, generating embittered competition of brother against brother for power and money with India’s foreign enemies funding many conflicts gleefully, as witness the imported advanced armaments wielded by India’s Naxalites. Significantly, Indian Leftists of all hues have always opposed national unity since that would marginalise them. What kind of future for India’s does its dominant interests desire within this tragic gloom of vote bank politics? The desire to perpetuate the Nehru clan’s ascendancy in Indian political life is apparently their foremost goal. The inviolability of Sonia Gandhi’s influence and the eventual inauguration of Rahul Gandhi as India’s Prime Minister are its inevitable corollaries. Keeping the Hindu communalists out of power and an end to Narendra Modi, howsoever achieved, also seem high on the wish list today. But the first set of goals have primacy and it is perfectly conceivable that the support of supposedly Hindu communal politicians will be sought, if necessary, to preserve the Gandhi clan’s freehold on Indian political life. Indeed a certain political forbearance in favour of it from the relevant quarters is already in evidence, so the alleged communal presence in Indian political life is not a serious issue at all since it already offers succour to the Gandhi family. In the context of vote banks and dynastic politics, increasingly exhibited by every political movement, ideological conviction is a function of competition for office and its intrinsic merits are irrelevant. Secularism, the principal ideological emblem, is merely a term of abuse that obscures a multitude of transgressions being committed by the accusers themselves. As for the rarefied Indian intellectual discourse over secularism, there are serious differences of opinion. Much of it is vacuous if not downright duplicitous because knotty questions fatally injure the secular catechisms put about as sacred. But there is an arrogant mainstream belief that the devout are too stupid to notice the nuances perplexing secular sophisticates. The secularist Indian intelligentsia almost unfailingly boasts a Western pedigree and that branding alone assures them greater credibility and gives better access to the media. The political secularists like Laloo Prasad Yadav or a Karunanidhi are of course complete country bumpkins and can be safely consigned to the margins of the intellectual discourse on secularism. In the end, vote bank politics and the relentless competition for political power dominate all other considerations. The reality that it is reaching a point of no return for the preservation of national integrity is of little concern to the protagonists. And in the dirty waters of Indian politics only those who have immunity despite imbibing it thrive. High moral purpose succumbs to the all-pervasive environment of degradation that has spread its ugly tentacles. No political party is able to resist its grim embrace for long, vindicating the deep initial distaste of the RSS leadership towards the idea of sponsoring participation in conventional politics. The one fragile ray of hope is the urbanisation of India and the painful advance of a resulting national consciousness among those who have left behind their parochial moorings. They seek good governance and are, crucially, less susceptible to the ubiquitous bribery practised by the Indian electoral system. It is these political refugees from vote banks that re-elected Narendra Modi in the recent Gujarat assembly elections.

Why should I Vote?

Its Election time in India. Most of the time I wonder whats the bullshit surrounding the elections. I have never ever voted in my lifetime. . . I dont feel I will ever vote in the near future. Some people advocate that we must be a part and parcel of the democracy. My vision of democracy is something much different than what we see now in India. May be I will vote register my protest vote when the election commisssion provides the option for negative voting. All political parties are the same in character. The political parties change forms and colours according to the situations and their utmost ambition is money and power. All the parties in India have come to power at one time or the other and all of them have proved to be corrupt. There is no alternative politics in India. All political parties belong to the same seed and they just change colours and flags. Personally I have political convictions, political affiliations but in the deepest of my heart I long for the birth of a dictator.

I wish all these political parties are banned forever, all the religious organisations, castiest parties, power broking pimps etc are burned into ashes. In the name of democracy, what we witness is just Election-Thamasha.

India has probably had one it’s worst years in the last 25 years, terrorist attacks, sudden slow down in growth, loss of jobs and an uncertain future for many. The 26/11 attacks in Mumbai made me sad, and worry for friends and family. I am very sad, but not surprised, because the policeman is waiting to see where he can make the next 100 rupees to fund his evening drink, a government official is collecting bribe to buy his wife some extra gold, laptop for his son or a family vacation. Do you think the interest of the country is present in the minds of people who have the responsibility to make it a better place. Does this country or society really care for its people ?
If it takes me 7 months to get a passport, do you think there is any kind of intelligence that is available to detect the next attack. For good security, you need judgement, one needs to be good to the genuine, tough with the suspicious and be “smart enough” to differentiate between the two. Judgement is a complex molecule made up of intelligence, experience, exposure and finally good character.
Sub standard equipment that our police has to deal with is not a bad choice but a greedy choice, because the purchase decision maker has to get his cut and the supplier has to make a profit to survive. I was told recently informed by a farmer who grows potatoes, that all the green or inferior produce is all bought by the army to feed young jawans. Is this what they deserve because they protect the country. It is a known fact, that rations bought by the army is all third grade because the managers of army canteens lack knowledge and character. When you are on a budget and corrupt then quality suffers. From experience, I am pretty sure, when our country buys arms, equipment etc., we put the country at risk.
I have finally concluded, what we lack is character. I was told in school that always tell the truth to your teacher, lawyer and doctor. All I can say today is that these three professions today represent the lowest levels of commitment and character. In the coming days I am going to give many examples from society where lack of character, is gradually poisoning our society to levels far below medicority.

I dont wish to waste my precious time in voting these corrupt politicians. I wish we find some other solution rather than this Election-Thamasha.

If voting is my fundamental right, not voting in protest is also my fundamental right. During election time, all Indians are one-day kings. I dont want to be a one day-king.

Laal Salaam, paint the tower red.

The Song

My body is on the fires of passion

I am now burning in the fires of love,
Oh yes, in fires of love.
I’ve been thirsting for love,
Oh yes, thirsting for love,
Since early evening today.
Tell the romance to bring
From somewhere the months of rains.
I am now burning in fires of love.

I don’t know when the night will end,
I’ll be burning till morning in fires love.
I’m now writhing in convulsions of love,
Please come and embrace me tight
Holding me against your chest,
Oh yes, holding me against your chest,
Easing the fires behind my breasts.

You’ll see me burning--
I swear it by my smile--
In your arms I’ll die burning.
Place you hand upon my heart
To pacify the pulsations of love.

I’ve been thirsting for love
Since early evening today.
My body is now burning
In fires of love,
Oh, yes in fires of love.
Tell the romance to bring
From somewhere the months of rains.
I am now burning in fires of love.

Do not sing
this song of mine,
I’ll sing this myself
before I die!

This song of mine
is darker than the earth,
it’s as old as the sun.
Since many births
I’ve been carrying
the burden of its words.
No one can sing
this song of mine,
it was born with me
with me it will die.

Do not sing
this song of mine,
I’ll sing this myself
before I die!
This song has strange sounds,
It’s full of unbearable pains,
It has sounds of crying cranes
in the distant mountains in the autumn,
it has the clamor of sparrows
in the forest at vestal dawn,
it has the whirr of passing winds
in the darkness of nights in the grass.

Do not sing
this song of mine,
I’ll sing this myself
before I die!

Both my song and I
when we pass away,
those who live behind
will go finding my grave,
in one voice they will say:
“Very few unfortunate
can bear so much pain.”

Do not sing
this song of mine,
I’ll sing this myself
before I die.

Creativity And Sexuality

Sexuality may well be the most rewarding bliss of all possible experiences that life can offer between two people passionately attracted to each other. The union it produces between men and women in love is so close and so complete that two finite individuals can interrelate almost as if they were one indivisible being. It involves not only physical but also psychological, spiritual, and somehow anthropological and social aspects. It is related to reproduction.

But because it does involve reproduction and transfer of genes, society has always tried to grip it under its control, denying any need of its other aspects. Even, anthropological theories are denied by the social gurus. Society or religion (I am unable to differentiate them) articulates its own definition of sex as all sexual activity ought to be potentially reproductive, that marriage must last forever, and that women must be subject to men.

‘Dharma’ in Hinduism is different from the Western concept of religion. It is a code related to moral nature. There is a very negligible difference between this ‘dharma’ and ‘spiritualism’ whereas in the Western concept, ‘religion’ and ‘spiritualism’ are two different concepts. So society or religion always plays a role to suppress the sexuality and as the patriarchal dominance is more on these fields, questions about the morality and the politics of sex are usually considered in isolation from issues about gender and erotic sex.

Hindu spiritualism sexuality is represented as ‘kama’. It is one of the four necessities, four aims of life: Dharma, Artha (material goods), Kama and Moksha (liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth)

Kama is defined as the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the five senses of hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting and smelling, assisted by the mind together with the soul. The ingredient in this is a peculiar contact between the organ of sense and its object, and the consciousness of pleasure which arises from that contact. This is called Kama.

In Hindu spiritualism, Kama is not at all a ‘prohibited’ subject or we don’t find any ‘male dominancy’ there. Taking the lovers’ longing for reunion as a metaphor for the soul's longing for union with the divine makes sexuality more acceptable in ‘Sufism.’ And in a later period, ‘Hindu Bhaktism’ by Sri Chaitanya also adopted this idea easily.

But in Western philosophy, the natural and the universal are sharply divided -- like heaven and earth. The division of tasks between heaven and earth, suffering on earth and happiness beyond, is part and parcel of Western culture and its philosophy, religion and mythology. Westerners tend to see the sensuous world around us as false or illusory and the world 'beyond' as real. But in Hindu spiritualism, when you are in your sexual desire, you might sense complete presence in your sensuous world, a perfect moment which is spiritual, natural and carnal all at once.

Professor David Lee Miller in his book Philosophy of Creativity (Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York, 1990) tries to define creativity as the "feeling" of pure experience vital to a realistic grasp of life with the ‘sensuous world’ (Miller named it ‘as-in-the-whole-Earth’). Plato first refused this ‘sensuous world’ and under Plato’s influence, Western thought has been dominated by a model (paradigm) of neglecting this knowledge and of value in experience. But Miller, in his book, tries to establish that creativity is of the whole Earth (or we can say ‘sensuous world’) rather than being limited to particular aspects.

It is the philosophy of sexuality in Hindu spiritualism that made Kalidas and Jaydev write two great masterpieces: Kumar Sambhav (Kalidas, fourth century B.C.) and Gita Govinda (Jaydev, twelfth century A.D.). These works depict lovers in separation and union; in longing and abandonment, and have been portrayed in thousands of exquisite miniature paintings in India.

Kumar Sambhav , is about the begetting of Kartikeya, the god of war who was the son of Siva and Pārvati, and depicts the monogamous form of sexuality. In contrast, the erotic love of Radha and Krishna in Gita Govinda is not limited to the love of only two persons, but is extended to the 1,600 women known as ‘gopis.’ Unlike in Kumar Sambhav, the love of Radha and Krishna was not at all a monogamous example as Radha never was the wife of Krishna and the ‘gopis’ were also well-connected with the god ‘Lord Krishna’ in sexual desire and lovemaking.

We can say the love of Krishna was polyamorous and was more an evocation and elaboration of passionate love or an attempt to capture the exciting, fleeting moments of the senses. It could also be an evocation of the baffling ways in which love's pleasures and pains were felt before retrospective recollection, trying to regain a lost control over emotional life. This is why this love story grips our imagination every time we encounter the animated expressions, flashing eyes, and sinuous movements of a dancer, who as Radha, expresses her anger at Krishna's infidelities or who as Krishna, begs forgiveness for his irresponsible dalliance.

Gita Govinda was first of its kind to be included in the ritual service of the temple of Lord Jagannath at Puri, one of the four most sacred pilgrimage place of Hinduism. So, as the concept of Brahmacharya (suppression of sexual desire) exists, so also exists the concept of spiritual sexism in every authentic entity in this Eastern religion.
But the fundamentalists always try to prohibit sex though no doubt, we are the product of sexuality and our mind characterizes what it experiences, which has a great influence on how our mind perceives the creative process. This creative process, as an inherent sexuality, is always enhanced when we are in sexual desire or find ourselves in the grip of sexuality.

The writing process is a sexual process. When a writer wants to expose a physical life or an energetic life, a creative tension and a flow of energy is generated in the creative process. This creative tension can be experienced as a sexual tension and the flow of energy creates life or describes a new life.

Religion or society never cares for any artistic sensibility as Plato’s domination and so this inherent sexual influence over creativity has also always been denied by our sexual gurus. So, we find there are descriptions of fetishism, voyeurism, exhibitionism in the writings after the Second World War. We also find our writers/artists/musicians always have an inclination towards their sexual orientation and sexual behaviour and we encounter how much sexual desire they have.

We find Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Willa Cather, Emily Dickinson, Sarah Orne Jewett, A. E. Housman, T. S. Eliot, Federico García Lorca, Charlotte Mew, Viscountess Rhondda, Cicely Hamilton, Elizabeth Robins,Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoire were either homosexual or bisexual. In contrast, very few of Indian writers have had the courage to admit such truth but Amrita Pritam, Maitreyi Pushpa, Kamala Das, Harivanshrai Vachchan, and Rajendra Yadav are among them.

Still, Asian and African writers have not shown any admissible indication to point out their sexual inheritance in their writings, though their culture is more open to nature than Western cultures. This is a peculiar situation of contradiction and one which we cannot pass up.

Jai Ho - The Oscar Comedy...

Its Oscar time in Kerala. AR.Rahman, Gulzar and Rasul Pookutty have become the slum dogs of Oscar academy. Some media celebrated this as the Malayali achievement. Mr. AR Rahman claims himself as a Tamilian but the media in Kerala loves to portrait him as a Malayali. Rasul Pookutty is being celebrated everywhere in Kerala. The government is felicitating him for his achievement. Newspapers and television show him 24 hours a day as if this bearded fellow is a some kind of Hero.
I don't know whether Rupert Murdoch is watching all these . How many media persons in India know that the Oscar Academy is sponsored by Twentieth Century Fox, Metro Goldwin Mayer, and Universal studios. The Oscar for the slum dog, the dullest work of AR Rahman, could have been to boost the revenue collections of the film. Its a marketing gimmick of hollywood film mafias.
We foolish Indians and Indian media never ever realise the truth.
Rupert Murdoch and his company has produced this film " Slum Dog Millionaire". Murdoch knows how to woo the viewers and boost the revenue collection. Mr.Murdoch produces the film and awards his film with Oscar through the academy controlled by him.
Being a neighbour of Rahman for the past 10 years, I pity him. He has many great works to his credit but Slum Dog is not a feather in his cap.
Those media people who talk big against Mr. Murdoch seems to join the celebration of Slum Dog... Its just a comedy show.

The slum kid actors would be back in the slums; its middle class elite actors and some of the crew members who managed to extract their pound of the publicity flesh would be back to the regular grind of hooking new directors, producers and financers. And given the way things happen, we’d be bidding them goodbye for a long time till they decide to dump girlfriends/boyfriends or decide to tie the knot. All news clippings and telecast clips related to Slumdog Millionaire shall be neatly tucked away in some closet as part of one’s portfolio. Thank god, it’s over. The Slumdog hype was no less than the `invest in stock markets b’coz that’s the new god’ hype that afflicted humanity till eight months ago.
Now we in India shall restart our search for some sort of Indian connection in everything and everyone who is successful (and manages to get a few square centimetres in print or a few minutes on TV). Some of us are scoffing at the Brits who are calling Slumdog a British film. We claim it as an Indian film becuase it was shot in Mumbai and had used some Indian people, both, off screen & on-screen. But then, isn’t failure an orphan and success more like a `bastard’, with so many fathers claiming the baby. By that yardstick many of our bollywood films shall qualify to be French, Swiss, Canadian or American films since they are shot in these countries and use local artists, technicians and crew! Worry not. None of these countries are going to lay claim to our films as theirs. Not in the near future at least as they do not suffer from the kind of low self esteem or lack of identity the way we Indians do.
You just have to scan the media carefully and you’d regularly come across some sort of Indian linkage being discovered in every nobel, pulitzer, booker prize winner, every scientist, entrepreneur, corporate honcho and nerd who achieves something. Yes, I agree that so far we have not claimed Dick Cheney as having a Chennai connection and thank heavens for that.
I have a list of WHYs for which I would like to have the answers. Just see if you can chip in as a fellow Indian.
>Why are we like this?
> Why do we have to revere only those things that have `western’ approval??
>Why do Indians manage to succeed only when they kick their motherland to embrace Amrika and Ingland???
> Why does a Ravi Shankar or Zakir Hussain have to wait till he wins a Grammy for us to buy their CDs and listen to them?
> Why does an Arundhati Roy or Arvind Adiga has to wait for a western literary award to be read here?
> Why wasn’t Vikas Swarup’s Q&A a sought after piece of literature before Slumdog ariived on the scene?
> Why do the disabled and marginalised Indians have to wait for some foreigner filmmaker (Smile Pinky & Born in Brothels) to document our own reality and make us think?
> Why do we tend to listen to Amartya Sen only after he wins a Nobel and not heed to his thoughts and views earlier?
> Why can’t we raise the standards of our own film, literary, academic, sports & artistic awards and create a benchmark for the rest of the world to follow? Afterall, India happens to have some of the best brains in the world…isn’t it!
> Why must we discourage and break the spirit of every Indian who wants to move forward in his own country and discreetly force him to seek solace outside our national borders? And having done that, why must we shamelessly try & reclaim him/her once (s)he has made it in life??
I can go on & on about it and so can you but have you ever thought what kind of a rising `superpower’ we are which needs stamps of approval and recognition from white skinned western communities all the time. Would we have been equally proud of Slumdog Millionaire had it won all the awards (the same ones that it has won at Oscars) at an award function hosted by Ethiopian, Middle Eastern, South American or even Japanese film bodies. Simply not! Because right from birth we have been conditioned as someone with `inferior’ qualities compared to those inhabiting Europe, North America & Australia. We have been subtly conditioned not to believe in ourselves and always look for third party approvals to know ourselves. Perhaps it is our education system which was designed by the colonial masters to produce clerks and nothing else. And how many clerks you know have original ideas, thought processes and can function without third party approvals? That’s a tough one, I guess. But the worst part is that we’re still continuing with the very same education system. While we may keep fooling ourselves with all this talk of being the next USA (read superpower), the fact remains that we can not and shall never be a superpower with the kind of self respect we have as a nation.
Let me articulate it this way- WE, IN INDIA DO NOT RESPECT & RECOGNISE TALENT, WE RECOGNISE RECOGNITION FROM THOSE WE REGRET NOT BEING!!
Bahut Na-insaafi hai…Time to say Goodbye till we find our next slumdog moment of pride.