Movies

Lage Raho Munnabhai, Rang De Basanti, Wednesday. Different movies - yet a thread thats common to them all.

Gandhi is known as the father of the nation - admittedly I have always been biased anti Gandhi and see no reason to turn that around at all. However Lage Raho quite lucidly captured the essence of Gandhi - protest peacefully and victory will be yours eventually. If you are slapped on the cheek - offer the other one. Your lack of protest will eventually shame the attacker and he will give in. Yet the movie asks the pertinent question. What do you do if you get slapped on the other cheek too ? And Munnabhai promptly shows us the answer - through slapping him back. Non Gandhian but indeed practical.

And thats where RDB takes off from. Protest peacefully - have candle marches et al. But what when those fail? What do you do when you are pushed constantly. Thats when you snap and react and react forcefully. RDB showed the extreme where a bunch of youngsters could assasinate an incompetent defence minister. Protest violently so it registers!

And Wednesday - spoiler ahead if you havent seen the movie yet - registers a similar idea. You carry on with normal life inspite of all the shit that surrounds you. You are numb to blasts in Kashmir, Blasts in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Surat, Delhi, Mumbai - practically everywhere. You stay at home - wary of visiting public places due to the threat. You put your head down and continue with life. But somewhere sometime the anger boiling inside - albeit slowly - will cross that high limit and then there will be hell to pay.

Maybe that anger will be all too visible now - for the government and the authorities will sense it and act visibly. We might find an operation that strikes at the heart of the likes of SIMI and IM. And then there will yet again be hell to pay. Because if the terrorists dont, the government will at the elections.