The Overground - Part I

Since the 26/11 siege of Bombay by ten punks from Pakistan, Bollywood has churned out several movies on the subject. The biggest blockbuster predictably was Sandeep ka Sangharsh - with the martyr major as the protagonist, the movie was a chilling depiction of the attack from inception to execution, ending with a rousing finale, which, albeit somewhat fictionalized, depicted the commandos finally ending the siege in a crescendo of violent firefight.

In most theaters, audience members stood up and burst into spontaneous applause, some singing Vande Mataram, during the scene of the major's supreme sacrifice. The Government declared the movie tax free.

Just kidding.

There was no such movie coming out of Bollywood, as a matter of fact, there was not a single movie that presented a heroic picture. There were dozens of low budget "we bounced back", "we wallow in self-pity" type of movies. The biggest movies so far in fact glorified not the hero cops and commandos but the type of people who perpetrate these crimes. The biggest movies so far romanticized not a legitimate state's struggle against nefarious elements but the fictitious victimhood of those nefarious elements themselves.

These movies showed the attackers as matinee idols, replete with all the regalia that are coveted by youth - money, power, popularity in college campuses and oh yes - a pretty Hindu wife (Maya in New York, and Avantika in Kurbaan). Let's not even go into the specific plot points that tended to validate some of the loonier conspiracy theories, e.g. post 9/11 (yeah, Genocide Suzie, the original one of which 26/11 is just a fake made up copy) the Americans randomly detained and tortured America born and brought up Muslims for no apparent reasons.

This is no accident, this tells us volumes about what we have become. As a matter of fact, this puts a serious question mark in front of the notion of who "we" are.

As far as Vande Mataram goes, instead of encouraging us to sing the song, the good secular people of India have already decided to practically banish it. They made several TV shows on it too.

(.... to be continued)