Prior to the era of cable TV, doordarshan ruled the Indian television scenario. In those good old days every aspect of entertainment of the regular television watcher was a fixed quantity like the movement of the earth around the sun(back then people dint know nething abt the third rock from the sun and hence we had no question of any collision and subsequent veering from the well established path) . Come 9 am and all the wonderful serials started, Monday meant Reporter with shekar suman and his “life or death ke mamle”, Tuesday was when we spent time with Sam Pereira for some wonderful murder mysteries, Thursday was for alif laila, Friday had a lot more variety with the programs starting as early as 7 with some movie music and top 10 charts. We had the humourous Javed Jaffrey with Bhoot Bungalow imitating Amrish Poori proposing to Juhi Chawla and more such gems calculate to educate and entertain the loyal masses. Im not going into depths about the weekend programs coz they were really varied and would require a post to themselves.
But(I know sentences aren’t supposed to begin with but and here I am starting a paragraph with one.. tch tch.. pathetic) what was really special about DD was the national holidays when they’d play some movies absolutely in keeping with the theme of the day. Now this is obviously a very smart move on the part of the management of DD coz it acted as a reminder to people about what the day really stood for. Now this approach had one slight problem, that the choice of movies was usually very limited as very rarely did movies match up to the level of expectation set by DD for nething they would screen. For one thing the movie should be by maniratnam , and secondly it shdve been released at least 5 years prior to the screening. Now, here its entirely maniratnam’s fault that he brought our very few movies and hence provided DD with no option but to repeat the same movie over and over. No way were they going to compromise on their rules for screening. So invariably year after year, Independence Day meant Roja and children’s day meant Anjali. (A few years later Dil se replaced Roja and as far as I know, its still the movie of choice on independence day with Bombay making it to the Republic day. ) So much so that even the papers stopped printing out the tv schedule for the day, utilising that space for more useful ads about guarantees for cookers that would add to ur prestige but not ur expenses and the like.
Now why am I on such a nostalgic trip to the days of the DD? Coz I just finished watching that classic Roja on KTV today. I really like this movie coz 1)maniratnam rulz 2)arr’s music is awesome and melodious 3)arvindswamy is just tooo cute in it. Of course this is also notable as one of madhubala’s best performances on screen and also for the beautiful picturisation of the Kashmir Valley. The song tamizha tamizha never fails to give me the goosebumps, though ive never understood what it was about the song that was so moving. It is one of the most patriotic scenes in the movie, with arvind swamy trying to put out a fire set to the national flag insensible to his physical pain moved solely by the love for his country. This scene, which has moved so many people to tears, left me with a strangely unpleasant feeling. I found myself thinking that this was a contrived scene and nowhere would u find a sane man (and of course u cant doubt the sanity of someone as cute as arvind swamy) who would do the same.
I have this theory that patriotism is nothing but mob mentality. People gather in throngs and believe it to be cool to be passionate about a geographically limited area of land that they dint choose to come and live in, and with which they are pretty discontented at all other times. Of course there are moments when I convince myself that im proud of belonging to a country which in my opinion is the only truly secular country in the world and the birthplace of Hinduism which is the religion I feel most comfortable (not that im a theist, as opposed to an atheist, I believe god is an equation governing the world) with, it being only a way of life and nothing rigid or tyrannical. But I the logical part of my mind realizes that were I a citizen of some other country I would find something to be proud of about that. It is only a matter of convenience and an expression of the need to feel at home somewhere and also the childish need to be assured that whatever belongs to me is the best. I believe that world is truly a global village and there is only a lot of strife and bad blood caused as a result of misplaced patriotism, which fans into fanaticism. In the name of allegiance to our country, we wage wars against our fellow human beings and call it a noble thing. But if a man were to kill someone for the sake of his home or his family, he s treated as a murderer and forfeits his life. But why this bigotry? Isn’t it more natural for a man to love his immediate home more than the vast area of land he calls his country and with which he is less familiar? The only love im capable of supporting is narcissism. Im currently as far from being patriotic as any other thinking Indian and hence I will not end with Jai Hind!
8 months ago
|