Of terror attacks and white bondage

I haven't seen Slumdog Millionnaire and dont plan to.

But the best way to rest this controversy whether it does discredit to India is to ask foreigners if the movie changed their perception of India. Far better than tearing ourselves up over how oh-so backward and narrow-minded some protestors can be, and wearing the veil of sophistication over ignorance.

Many foreigners who have never visited Mumbai have categorically told me they think of India as the land of snake charmers, never mind the Indian euphoria over its IT lot, or the IIT lot. Most haven't heard of either. One of my highly educated cousins, born in the US but an almost annual visitor to Mumbai, is blank about an institution India bleats about all the time - The IIT. There are many things we take for granted such as our modernness which has not only left many in the West and other parts of the Nether World cold but escaped them entirely.

There is no harm in showing the muck and gore of Indian cities or India but the problem is when you show only that. And, when you show that to a milieu that knows no better; in the process, perpetuating a uni-dimensional view, and an extremely unflattering one at that, of a country of contradictions (and an abject lack of self-pride. Sigh!)

Vir Sanghvi (the wine expert of the country, for the uninitiated) is thrilled that we as a nation have grown up. He is going strictly by the feeble protests against the film. But could it be because we have become indifferent? Just the way we don't care if some 50 fanatic Muslims go on a rampage all over Mumbai and kill 200-plus? All par for the course, is it?

All we have managed to do by way of action after the terror attacks is flaunt the DNA of one of them (because the others are either dead or absconding) to show the world he is a Pakistani. Hey, why are we proving anything to anybody? Why can't we simply say you did it, fellas, and you will get it from us. Then, bomb their terror camps. At the very least.

But all one gets to hear since two months is Pranab Mukherjee mumbling, with such shameful lack of anger, that Pak must act (the way he would probably say, I shall be presenting the budget in March). Man, can't YOU act? Has anybody tied your hands, kya? And day after day, TV repeats the tedium without ever getting bored: "Pranab talks tough, Pranab makes some tough noises, Pranab tells Pakistan it wont tolerate any more terrorist acts?" (yeah, actually!)

Really? Wasn't the last one good enough to act on?

70 days later, we still havent gone beyond 'talking tough', which is giving Pak proof after proof for some baffling reason, pleading it to act (which is bizarre in itself, just like asking the accomplice of an intruder in your home to act against the intruder while you sit with arms crossed), pleading it to act without providing any checklist as to what to act on, and eventually being pushed on to the defensive in a surreal twist of fate by the attacking country.

Forget Israel. Look at Sri Lanka. The moment it felt the foreign media coverage of its drive against LTTE was getting uncomfortable, it promptly ticked off CNN and BBC (I cant imagine Sanghvi and his white-worshippers ever condoning such an atyachaar against a free press in India) to buzz off or behave.

If Pranab is mumbling and fumbling, we are no better. Every single media continues to mindlessly regurgitate his non-statements, unfailingly. Without so much as applying a modium of common sense, forget news sense, to pluck something new from it. It doesn't bother to ask him why he is not going beyond this baloney, or why, pray, won't he then shut up.

As for the common man (barring a few who are now seriously stirred up), he watches and reads and flips the channel or page. When someone discusses the attacks, he shakes his head and says profoundly, these politicians will not do anything. Then on, it's business as usual. Till Kasab Part II strikes.

Peaceniks at what price? Or is it new-found maturity, as Sanghvi would probably see it?