Frankly speaking I have’nt read Salman Rushdie, not because I
belong to the herd of people who believe that some piece of literature written
by a mere mortal can surmount, supercede or surpass the supposed verbatim given
by the supposed omnipotent GOD (not alluding to Arnab Goswami) but purely
because I have a simple rule when it comes to literature – I don’t read
anything whose length surpasses the length of my thumb. You will never find me
having orgasms about Dostoyevsky or the Harry Potter series, the total size
size of which surpasses my whole frame (my initiation into Harry Potter is
through the movies dubbed in Hindi aired religiously every Sunday on POGO
channel and I am still hopeful about seeing Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment
or James Joyce’s Ulysses being made into a movie, dubbed and aired on POGO). So
when She-who-must-be-worshipped stopped He-who-must-not-be-read from entering the
most industrially, agriculturally and culturally kick-ass city in the world,
Kolkata, I was Clark Gabla Da : ”Phranklee my dear, I do not geebh a daamn.”
But at an age when Arnab Goswami is prodding even the newly born to get over the
dented and painted image, you can’t really stick to your cosy world and not be
worked about issues that really matter (issues like why was’nt I or Shahid
Kapoor not invited to Kareena Kapoor’s wedding or is Karan Johar really a
pedophile and his coming out of the closet moment was Student Of The Year or what
is the current status of films made by the Bhatts : Jism 32 or Raaz 15 or Jannat
23.
But lets not get into preachy mode this early (I’ll save it to my
usually didactic last paragraph). Inspite of all the allegations levelled against
She-who-must-be-worshipped of pandering to vote bank politics I seriously think
there’s more to her actions than meets the eye. First of all in a state where
everything is real and tangible : like the huge investments that’s pouring in
from all quarters to the huge industries that is coming up in every place that
used to house a Karl Marx picture, to devote one’s attention to something as
intangible as cinema or literature is something of a historic blunder (no puns
intended). Also cinema or fictional literature being the purest forms of ‘Sajano
Ghotona’ (imaginary or pre-fabricated event) and given the serious aversion
of people of this state have towards Sajana Ghotonas, it is natural for
the Government and all its machineries to strongly oppose someone who makes a
living out of it. Also to give room to any film that does’nt have Dev in it
would be doing grave injustice to the world famous Bengali film industry that
he symbolises. For readers oblivious to the presence of Dev, he is the local
superstar who can shapeshift to Swami Vivekananda to Mother Teresa to
Rabindranath Tagore in a matter of minutes, doing all of this while shaking a
leg to the likes of Challenge nibi na Sala (don’t take challenge
bastard) or Paglu thoda sa karle Romance (you lunatic, lets make love).
Since the driver has somewhat been absolved of the crime all that
remains is the driven to be proved just
a mere mindless pawn in the game. Now being a overtly secular Muslim living in
India it is imperative of me to always remain in super critical mode towards all
my fellow brethrens who sport a beard or a skull cap or march on the streets at
the drop of a hat. It is also my duty to proclaim how wonderfully tolerant my
religion is and it is because of certain fringe elements that the whole
religion is getting a bad name. What is not prescribed in my list of duties is
to actually stand up to these fringe elements when they actually go about vandalizing the social fabric and basic tenets of the religion that they seem
to follow ever so blindly. Every religion at a certain point of time gets
corrupted due to severe misinterpretation of its own guiding texts. It is then
the duty of the so called liberals to stand up to these misinterpretations and
establish what’s truly meant to be followed or re-interpret any obsolete
practice so that it fits in perfectly with today's world. But then again I am
neither learned nor Nana Patekar from Krantiveer, so I’ll do what I am supposed
to do : distance myself from all the fringe elements crying hoarse on the
streets and actually worry about Priyanka Chopra’s thick upper lips. And besides
on a more devious note, people who are actually protesting may have never gone
past their English vocabulary pages let alone Satanic Verses, so imagine their
angst when they actually get to know what’s actually written in that
straight-from-hell-book. So to She-who-must-worshipped, I pray to you that you
devote your resources in educating these fringe elements in satanic languages
like English so that they actually get to read Satanic Verses, it would fuel
their anger which would make the protests more spontaneous than seem like a Sajano
Ghotona.
PS: The author of this blog,oxyMORON, has already started writing a
book named ‘Moronic Verses’ in the hope that the same kind of treatment that
befell Mr. Rushdie follows him too and he gets to live in exile in London and
have girlfriends of the likes of Padma Lakshni and Riya Sen.
