Liquor Money to the rescue of Mahatma's legacy!

Mahatma’s legacy saved – thanks to the liquor money!

What could have been a better anti-climax than the above?

The past few days, another event being tracked as a time-ticking explosive device, is the auctioning of some of Bapu's personal belongings. It all started when one of the news channel aired the news about Bapu’s grandson Thushar Gandhi starting a collection with an intent to buy some of Bapu's personal belongings being put up for auction in the US. Since then, every media channel has been tracking the entire episode so closely.

Soon, we came to know about one Mr. Otis, who supposedly collects these Gandhian memorabilia and all of a sudden decided to auction them for reasons, only he can comprehend. Whatever be the merits of his intentions, to him, this entire episode came as the best possible publicity stunt ever, to be on prime-time television. He, claiming himself to be an astute Gandhian, tried to hold the Indian Government hostage, threw a policy challenge to increase the GDP allocation for the poor to 5%, overnight! I ask, why not more? Or, sponsor his road-shows in some 78 countries (god knows, why 78 and not 79) for the next 10 years, towards promoting non-violence.

If he were a true Gandhian, taking a walk, as Bapu used to do, would have been a better option to spread the message of non-violence.

Enough of spicy masalas on the plate, we soon had a prime-time concoction of debates and exchange of views between the Indian Government, Mr. Otis, historians and few other millionaires offering to buy those items - all in the interest of saving the nation!

What struck me is this?

Have we become so infatuated with a sense of tokenism? Agreed, the iconic spectacles and personal watch, which rather symbolized Bapu himself, are so important, and part of the rich heritage for us to cherish as a nation. Did anyone even care to know the existence of these items put for sale till a month ago? What are we going to do next? Go search for the personal stuff of all our national leaders all over the globe?

We as a nation, have all but lost sight of the very values upon which he based his life on, while we cry amuck about some of his material belongings. If his personal belongings going under the hammer is considered defamatory to Bapu’s stature, so would be the various heinous acts conducted by our politicians and our society, under the very name of the freedom for which he fought his entire life.

Contrary to the simplicity with which the Bapu lead his life, even he would be bemused and amused by the fact that few of his personal belongings could fetch millions of dollars towards whatever nobler cause and by the tale of a liquor baron coming to save his legacy!

Slumdog Part II

The scheme of operation for a prime-time TV channel appears quite straightforward these days. Put your muscle to fan up any issue or event, create a mass hysteria with non-stop nonsensical coverage of an event and then debate about the rationality of the public reaction to it.

Last night, one of the major TV Channel, debated the entire hoopla about how the creators of Slumdog Millionaire exploited the dark side of the Indian reality and had supposedly served it as 'poverty porn' for the western society.

Their claim is that the movie concurred with the majority of the western nations' perception of India as a land of snake charmers. Agreed, that is the sad reality of predominant western xenophobes, who, still a few years back, used to ask me if I had TVs and A/Cs in India. If we consider that opinion as disgraceful ignorance, so should any of the acclaim they shower upon us, like the Oscars or the BAFTAs.

We should be one of the shameful hypocrites in the world!

If Slumdog favored their opinion about the sad state of affairs of a Mumbai slum, that perception to most extent is also the reality. So, while we take pride and celebrate the accomplishments of a Resul Pookutty or ARR, we denigrate the medium that provided them that opportunity.
But, why do we fail to accept that sad reality? Because, we think, it is no one's business to showcase our miseries, while we hide behind the ugly reality of a supposedly shining India?

Contrary to our claims about India as an emerging power, we are (still) living with a vast majority of our society yet to benefit the fruits of the acclaimed economic growth. With lack of basic sanitation, more than 40% of our population still defecates in the open! We are toping the world hunger index and consistently bad in the corruption index. Whatever political reasons we attribute that to, how can we disassociate ourselves from our responsibility to fix that, for we are the ones electing our in-efficient administrators - if they are to be blamed for the grim reality.

Invariably, any success story in India would be a fight against odds, for life here is a winding road in every aspect, which would bring out specks of these ugly realities, be it our slums, corrupt politicians or irresponsible citizens - us.

Instead of pushing the skeletons under a shining carpet, let’s have the tenacity to face the reality – whoever portrays that- and only that can lead us to fix the maladies one day!