Back from Home...

I visited my hometown this Diwali, technically I did not visit on Diwali because I spent Diwali in train but it was by and large a Diwali holiday. So this is a mandatory post, my hometown's little blue diary. Almost nothing changes there in a big way but with different events in place, it takes different flavors, like any other small town. This was the election (for Chairman and Ward president) time, which is mixed with Diwali, Eid and a few murders, in short the atmosphere was delightful, full of rumors and heated. At every Gali corner, there were small crowds which discussed the prospects of winning and losing, the weak and the strong grounds, logical voting equations based on caste, power and religion, and of course money, which transcends all evils. There were women discussing the women candidates on the basis of their husband's image, might and power. This is a fun time for children, this vacation they fired crackers and collected pamphlets and party paraphernalia, apart from watching Malaysia in Don (or Don in Malaysia). The old people cursed congress/BJP leaders and doctors/lawyers in the same sentence, they only talked with pride of the relatives who left them for bigger cities or for better countries, in short, those who are well settled, according to them. The atmosphere is filled with songs of two kinds, the religious and the patriotic, both kinds sung by Lata Mangeshkar. This is as high as my hometown can get.

I came back to Delhi on 26th Oct and got to know that the elections were by and large peaceful with couple of murders and few clashes. Also I took the DVD of Children of Heaven with me, most of my relatives loved it. I like that film too but as usual I became a little suspicious of the film when it was unanimously appreciated. I did a promise to my cousin to write about him on the blog. Here it goes: He is 8 years old. While talking about Rang De Basanti with him, I asked him what would have happened if the heroes were not killed towards the end, he replied "phir to film kabhi khatam nahin hoti, teen ghante se jyada koi film nahin hoti". Kill them to end the movie, a closure is required at any cost. It was such a plain verdict. He did even better to describe the cast, "Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan ki behan, aur ek foreigner ladki" !

Apart from this, there are few things that are on the discussion list to avoid the void of 'Aur batiyiye...'. One was Munnabhai and the other was Afzal's hanging, to balance the comic and tragic scales of conversations. I did a secret poll (secret because no one knew it was a poll) and got some astonishingly predictable results. Everyone liked Munnabhai (much better than Rang De Basanti) and everyone wanted Afzal to be hanged asap, some even wanted to execute all of the suspects and even the whole community. Almost all of them are quite sure about their decisions and gave examples from history to support it. As it is evident, there is little coherence between their two decisions, Gandhigiri and Hanging (Actually, one of the person added a twist in the tale by saying that Gandhi supported hanging of Bhagat Singh, he liked Munnabhai for its entertainment value and I think he was advocating hanging for the same purpose too, although big words like terrorism and patriotism sounds better). I don't like to insult my folks but they are much like rest of the world.

Adding few links. Read Arundhati Roy's take on Afzal's Hanging (Its a long one, I haven't read it fully yet) and Bhagat Singh's take on Love.