As I start the research for my next documentary, I feel something I had never experienced before. It comes as a shock, ‘the city’ was supposed to be more progressive / homogeneous / accommodating than any other in the country. But, just a little scratch on the surface and the worms start to come out – Ugly, venomous and scathing. The number so huge that I wonder why is it called the ‘Maximum City’.
Is it just a figment of my imagination or a strange co-incidence or something that happens on a daily basis, just that I never noticed it? But whatever it is, suddenly it has helped me remove all my doubts, if I had any for my Documentary (in fact made me believe more strongly in it).
So, being a Muslim or following a certain faith is indeed a reason good enough for suspicion, a reason good enough for hatred, a reason good enough to make one feel like a Rodent.
Friends often ask me to forget the whole ‘God Damn episode(s)’, ‘These people are arse holes, who are nothing but spineless jerks’, they say. But how do I forget them? I guess it would have been easy had the Episodes been in the singular form but what do I do when they just keep on multiplying.
It was only yesterday, when I was coming from a friend’s place in an auto rickshaw, as usual a conversation ensued with the driver. A graduate in Political Science (he claimed) from Benaras, he tried to explain the politics of the state.
The junior Thackeray according to the gentleman is taking the state in the drains, unlike the senior version who at least was doing something worthwhile – ‘building a Nation’. The junior one on the other hand has gone crazy and his hell bent on dividing the country just for his personal interest and greed for power.
And then it struck me, in the rickshaw, at the dead of the night, it wasn’t rocket science but still something which disturbed.
The idea was scary, scarier was the fact that the idea was everywhere. The worms were not only confined to the corporate lobbies but to the narrow roads of the suburb.
I am no moral guardian/watchdog/ preacher of the society (I don’t intend to be one). But for an average guy like me it’s a little unnerving.
I start to ask myself questions, questions which are not easy to answer, questions which are way beyond me and my intelligence. Questions which I feel can be avoided.
Rather should be avoided.
