Is This Why We Wanted Freedom?

Woke up this morning to hear the news that Raj Thackeray has been arrested in the middle of the night from Ratnagiri (why couldn’t they do it in broad daylight, one wonders) and is being brought to Mumbai to be produced in court. This is an event that shouldn’t really affect my life in any significant way, for, other than being the leader of just another political party with a handful of seats in the state assembly, he has absolutely no locus standi and clearly isn’t the guardian of ‘Marathi asmita’ as he’d have us believe. I don’t support his politics, nor endorse his divisive, myopic and wholly opportunistic modus operandi – a mere photocopy of his uncle’s ‘sons of the soil’ propaganda of four decades ago! He’s just another hypocritical Thackeray (funny these followers of Shivaji spell their family name after a famous British novelist of the Victorian era called William Makepeace Thackeray!), who proclaims his righteousness by bullying people while moving around in fancy imported cars, going hunting with the filmi brat pack when not extorting and grabbing property in the city by all means possible and sending his children to a fancy, upper-crust English medium school (no Marathi schools for sons of this Marathi manoos).

Sadly, anything Raj Thackeray does, or anything that’s done to him, tends to disrupt my life. For, this self-styled ‘inheritor’ of Shivaji’s guerrilla warfare tactics has an army of goons who hunt in packs and evidently, carry out their business of sabotage with the blessings of the state government and the police machinery. For the Congress-NCP alliance, Raj is a weapon against the increasingly toothless Shiv Sena. For the Sena, his violent agenda is a provocation that must be met by an equal show of strength. For the media, he’s a constant source of entertainment – hence his every move is chronicled in meticulous detail, which further feeds his purpose. For the common Marathi man, he’s perhaps the guy who will get them the jobs they may or may not deserve and by dint of force if necessary; and for the non-Marathi population, he’s a nuisance and terror that just can't be wished away.

So Mumbai has come to a standstill again today. Some hapless taxi drivers will get beaten up and their vehicles smashed about, a few shops will be stoned and damaged (naturally, nobody except the owners themselves are going to pick up the tab), many schools in the city are closed as a matter of precaution (and in some, like my daughter's school, exams were abandoned midway and children despatched home in panic), while the public will exercise caution in sensitive areas like Dadar and prefer to defer their Diwali shopping. The media will blare sensational headlines all day, panel discussions will speculate on the implications of Raj’s arrest, journalists and members of other parties will spout sagely wisdom on the matter, his own spokesperson will rant about the injustice being meted out to this great Marathi leader and so on.

In a matter of hours, Raj Thackeray will be out on bail, and, emboldened by the attention being showered on him, go on to bigger challenges and cause greater damage.

I am not an authority on politics. Yet, the atmosphere of our vastly polluted democracy is increasingly incensing me. It’s not just the malaise of Raj Thackeray and his ilk that worries me as a citizen of this country. It is the shallow political environment which allows thugs and goons to bully their way around (virtually in every state), where no institution, party or individual is incorruptible. Where development, like secularism, is a dirty word tossed around casually. Where people are mere statistics of castes, communities, religious groups and vote banks, all cleverly pitted against each other. Where neither the judiciary, nor police, nor state can administer justice to those that need it most. Where the large mass called the middle class (of which, I shamefully admit, I too am a member) are too dazzled by their life of comfort and brain-numbing reality television to protest about anything. Where the poor have no choice but to get trampled. Where the rich have no concern for anything except the next cocktail party. Where sacrifice is foolish, principles are redundant and money is god.

Is this really the India we so desperately wanted, an ideal for which scores sacrificed their lives, and many more underwent tremendous untold hardships?

If this be freedom, did we really need to oust the British?

As Sahir Ludhianvi aptly put it half a century ago:

“Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahaan hai?
Kahaan hai? Kahaan hai? Kahaan hai?”


Deepa Deosthalee

The Visitor

How often do you watch a film and wish it wouldn’t end? Rarely, I’d imagine. It’s like someone has led you into an alluring place that seems so right, you can’t think of being anywhere else. It’s just there, where you belong. Of course, a film invoking such feelings can be problematic. It’s bound to end, and is, by its nature, impersonal. Yet the connection is very real, and personal. Like you’ve found a friend who understands who you are, instinctively, and leads you into a world where you’d find your rightful corner, even if everything doesn’t always fit in perfectly.

And if the filmmaker is one gifted with Tom McCarthy’s compassion, you know you’re in safe hands. McCarthy’s worldview is far from simplistic, although it presumes every individual has the potential to change, to instinctively reach out in expected ways and to embrace life in a manner you’d never imagined possible. It’s also an attitude that unflinchingly acknowledges human goodness in an otherwise chaotic, ruthless, senseless world. Why else does an ordinary, listless aging Connecticut college professor like Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins – the kind of actor who’s so unfussy, you almost take his brilliance for granted) suddenly find within himself the kindness to invite complete strangers as Tarek (a fine debut by Haaz Sleiman), Zainab (Danai Gurira) and later Mouna (the stunning Hiam Abbass, last seen in Paradise Now) into his life?

When we first meet Walter, he’s a terribly uninteresting character – a widower who takes unsuccessful piano lessons to preserve his wife’s memory, recycles syllabi and mechanically carries out his professional duties, takes credit for papers he hasn’t written and hides behind the excuse of an impending book to shrug off the responsibility of teaching more classes. He’s forced to travel to New York to present a paper at a conference and lands up at his largely unused apartment to find it occupied by Tarek and Zainab, illegal immigrants from Syria and Senegal respectively, who’ve been rented the place by a conman.

First he politely asks them to leave, then, inexplicably, has an impulse to take them in when he sees them standing out on the road in the middle of the night. Given the suspicious political tone of the modern world, his decision seems incongruous, yet refreshingly innocent. Tarek, the affable musician, expresses his gratitude by introducing Walter to the magic of the Djiembe, an African drum, and this simple gesture forges an unusual camaraderie between the two men. Walter, who seems ripe for shedding his old skin from the start of the film, discovers the joy of ‘finding a rhythm’ and a meaning to his mundane life.

It’s not long before the real world intervenes, Tarek is arrested and sent off to a detention centre. His feisty mother Mouna arrives at Walter’s doorstep to knock down the last of his reserves. There’s no happy ending here, nor any political statement, except that no man-made barriers or laws are strong enough to hold people in separate compartments and that life asserts itself against all odds. McCarthy isn’t being judgmental of the American state’s policy on illegal immigrants. His concern isn’t as much with Tarek’s incarceration (whose spirit rarely sags even when he’s boxed in), as it is with Walter’s bittersweet journey of self-discovery through music, friendship, love and suffering.

People like Tarek, Zainab and Mouna are the disenfranchised, defenseless citizens of the contemporary world – oppressed in their own land and illegal immigrants in the prosperous west - yet it’s Walter the privileged, whose soul needs rescuing. It’s impossible for them to live in harmony for a sustained period, but even a transient brush with each other is enough to enrich them all.

Deepa Deosthalee