The Light at the End of the Tunnel.

India, I think, is one country where you can get into or out of trouble because of your name, your occupation or even the color of the T-shirt. This hypothesis of mine is based on one of the incidents that happened with me a year back, which I have already chronicled in this blog (The day when Anthony Hopkins saved my life). What happened with us yesterday, Friday the 12^th only confirmed the above hypothesis.

I along with three of my roomies had gone to watch James Cameron’s visual wonder called Avatar, in one of the best possible ways we could in India at the Imax theatre at Wadala. Since the tickets were cheap and it was a holiday due to Shivaratri we decided to go for the morning show at 9:45. We enjoyed the movie thoroughly and came out of the theatre at around 12:45. We discussed how Cameron had succeeded in weaving a very strong message into a visual spectacular which broke all bounds of human imagination. The visual effects were just an attraction, a vehicle to deliver the message.

We came out discussing as many things as our ‘creativity handicapped’ minds could think of and saw police personnels standing in small groups of fives and tens at the entrance, in front of the mall, in the parking lot and in the street. The mall was virtually empty. We immediately knew it was due to the MNIK versus SS fracas.

Since the past few days I was seeing how the two parties had hijacked every form of media to sell themselves. The political party was getting all the limelight, even though negative all over the news channels and the Internet. The movie was getting all the hype it required to get a big opening and help the producers in fattening their already obese wallets. The people however just don’t seem to understand that it is all a setup. The herd mentality has taken over and we have moved away from all the realities. The government is happy that instead of taking up real agendas like food prices the media is busy making money from a cat fight.

A couple of day’s back I read an article Mao and the motorcycle Dairies on Tehelka.com about the plight of the Adivasis of MP and Chattisgarh. The article claimed that the state government sponsored outfit named Salwa Judum was almost as good as the Maoist naxalites. The Adivasis are shot, hacked and even hanged without even being asked their names. Due to such atrocities the Adivasis are forced to flee, leaving behind their farms (which by the way are quite mineral rich, and which might just have been an inspiration for Mr. Cameron). Men and women young and old walk for more than two days without stopping to rest or to eat so that they could escape into Andhra Pradesh, where they live like refugees, with nothing to eat.

But sadly none of the TV channels ever broadcasts such news. The news of the Jharkhand and West Bengal naxalites are only coming in bits and pieces these days. None of the news channels ever bothered to broadcast a documentary on these people, the realities behind the naxalite outfits and why the Adivasis were forced to pick up guns. Or for that matter as someone on a discussion panel debating MNIK Vs SS issue on a news channel said why we aren’t talking about the 64 farmers who committed suicide in the Vidarbha in the last one week. The number hit me like a bullet in between my eyes. I am not sure if I heard it right but even if he said one month, how many deaths a day does it make, you do the math. So I decided to learn a bit more about Salwa Judum and Googled it. I found a Wikipedia article which was all praise about the outfit. I got confused and remembered one of the clichéd GD topics that I had got during my MBA days “Whether Internet is a boon or a bane to information sharing”; today I think I would have to make a lot of changes in my answers.

As we enter an era of journalism which I would like to call the era of Twitter journalism, where journalists follow and devour every crap that a celebrity tweets, people have started to happily believe that they can save tigers by signing up online on some fancy looking website or me writing this post will change people’s perspective. But that’s not the exact reason I am writing this post I know I digress I just wanted to convey the fact that people today especially those living in Bombay (read Bandra and southwards) have started to believe that only Bombay is India because anything that happens here makes it to the national headlines instantly. And we happily remain oblivious to the plight of greater India. Yeah there that’s the divide I have created it’s the Bombay India Vs the Greater or the rest of India.

Back to the little incident that happened, as we came out of theatre we saw police men all around. We decided to take a cab to Dadar and have lunch there. We came to street just outside the mall and asked a waiting cab to take us to Dadar, he refused and so did another one. By the time the third taxi driver refused to ferry us a constable walked up to my friend and told him in Marathi that he was being called by his sahib. My friend followed him; we saw that the officer was standing under the shade of a lone tree on the other side of the street along with a couple more constables. We followed our friend but the constable asked us to wait. So we waited as we saw the officer talking to our friend. The same constable came back and asked me “tumcha naao kai”, “Vivek Singh”, I said. “Oh Singh”, he said as if certifying me and turned around went back to his officer.

We heard the officer asking my friend my name as he pointed towards me, my friend turned around looked at me and said something to the officer. The officer asked the constable what had I told him my name was, the constable replied. We saw our friend pulling out the movie tickets from the back pocket of his jeans and showed it to the officer. “Aap jaa saktein hain” (you may go now), said the officer. My friend asked something and the officer replied “Nahi nahi routine check hai”. As we came out of Bhakti Park we saw more police men checking the identity cards of people on motorbikes and cars coming into the premises.

We got a cab from the main road, as I slid beside the driver I asked him why there was so much police around, was there some problem in the city and he said “arey nahi saab who filum aayi hai na My… Nyame…” (No its because of the film) he fumbled and stuttered a couple of times before he could say the name of the movie correctly. We discussed how smartly the officer had checked and confirmed our identities without bothering to see any of our credentials. It was good to see the police doing their job and being smart about it.

We knew that movie goers would be safe. But still I thought of the people who really needed this security and died everyday due to the lack of it were neglected and instead some high flying producer’s movie was given more importance because a bunch of goons has taken offence over the comments of a so called “star” about a money fest and betting racket they call Cricket. I knew tomorrow all the movie goers will be declared as national heroes for daring to go to watch the movie in spite of all the threat. But really does watching a movie really make us a hero, or for that matter will saying “all is well” make everything alright. As I saw the road in front of me I hoped that one day this attitude of the police we saw would slowly trickle down to the smallest police station in the country and everyone would be safe. I could see the change beginning to happen; the tunnel was slowly beginning to brighten up at far end.

As we drove on the dusty highway still under construction my friend suddenly exclaimed, “We were stopped because of the color of our t-shirts”. I turned around and for the first time in the day noticed that he was wearing saffron colored T-shirt and I who already looks like a trouble creator was wearing a green T-shirt.