Nationalism Misplaced

The nationalists are out in force, demanding a safer India, a stronger India, a more accountable India. The attacks in Mumbai have turned on a fervour that hasn't yet subsided. India is suddenly inflamed and angry, and want results. Our politicians are fair game, and a few heads have already rolled.

But what are our nationalists achieving now that they couldn't have fought for before a bunch of no good, gun toting terrorist pigs decided to attack Mumbai's soft targets? Surprise, surprise! By bringing out their patriotic emotions to the fore, they have given the terrorists exactly the satisfaction they would love to have - the feeling that they are fighting against an entire nation!

Imagine being part of a group that trains to kill and maim, destroy and burn - all in remote hiding places, under the tutelage of shadowy characters with no intellect to understand anything more than violence, and then suddenly being promoted to receive the attention of the world, and the reward of fighting againt a powerful "nation"! That should be a real high in their low lives. What is worse, it will induce them into a delusion of being equal to the task of fighting a nation, and spur them to greater and more spectacular attacks on an enemy that everybody knows is way too powerful, but now seems eligible for attack.

Why nationalist sentiments come out in the wake of a terrorist attack is beyond me. Attack on India? Please! These are rogues and freak murderers on the loose, causing mayhem. Should these elements really call for anything in reaction that is nationalistic? Do they deserve that exalted emotion in reaction to their ugly schemes? I don't think so, and I don't think our fashionable nationalists who woke up in Mumbai and other cities quite realize how many things there are to fight for that will actually make our lives better and make our nation progress faster.

The reason is - this kind of incident is simple enough for a lot of people to come out of their indifferent existences, and easy enough to collect groups to go let off some steam and have some impassioned conversations. The incidents we have on a daily basis that are highly anti-national like bribery, extortion, corruption, pollution, rank incompetence, rape, and murder are definitely more within touching distance of the common Indian and most certainly within the powers of politicians to fix, but these aren't "sexy" enough for our nationalists. We want bombs, fire, media attention, foreigners talking of support, comparisons to other events worldwide - spectacle! Without these, our nationalism is confined to accepting status quo as "normal". The truth is bribery, extortion, corruption, pollution, rank incompetence, rape and murder aren't bloody normal either, but they happen often enough that we have accepted them as such.

The monotony in statements that come out of Mumbai's residents in massive numbers is numbing. Everybody wants to stand united, everybody thinks this is not just an attack on Mumbai, and everybody thinks our politicians are responsible. We all know our politicians have never been responsible. The rest of the world has sung the same tune, that they must stand shoulder to shoulder with India in this hour of crisis. So, we stand shoulder to shoulder and do what? Watch over the dead bodies? Give the terrorists more to cheer about?

The worst insult to Mother India was Sanjay Dutt on TV saying he was angry! Isn't this the son of a thrice born b&^%h who bought weapons from the underworld? And now, suddenly he is a nationalist? I am all for reformation, and I am proud of this rank idiot for shedding some of his stupidity over the years, but has he earned the right to talk for a nation? Come on, India. Surely we can do better than this.

How about the crisis of character that we have all been marinated in? From the fools who ignore no smoking signs, to the politician who sneers and sniggers when cornered with a straight question, from the trader who demands a price well above maximum retail price to the teacher who doesn't know his subject, we know we have failed as a nation and are decaying on the inside faster than we are shining on the outside. Do we really need a tea company telling us to wake up and vote, when we should be lynching the rascals we voted for the last time who haven't delivered anything they were supposed to?

We have been dumbed down, and we are loving it. We are coccooned in the constant barrage of hype and commercialism that tells us we are doing great when we are not. Being sensitive about our country is not a good substitute for being ignorant and indifferent about what we should be doing as citizens. We are being led like sheep by the "system" that allows a few people to take advantage of weaknesses, loopholes, and distractions, all leading to enormous gain, while the welfare of the nation is systematically destroyed.

The "bulletproof" vests supplied to the men in uniform at the Chatrapati Shivaji Station allowed bullets to pass through them. That is how some of our "heroes" died. Further investigation on dummies with the same vests ended up with smashed dummies - categorically showing that these vests did not do the job they were supposed to! Shouldn't this be big on TV? What a symbolic example of how India has been let down for many, many years and exploited and raped and pillaged by our own selfish people. This won't make news because we don't have the conscience to think of this as being important or sexy enough to be nationalistic.

On the ground, the reality is that we have a failure on many fronts. We were not a great nation to start with and we are not getting there in a hurry. A great nation has people who do their duty as citizens, on all fronts, at all times, not just people who wake up when politically attractive. A great nation does not put up with mediocre performance. A great nation has conscientious people, with a highly developed sense of duty and compassion. We do not have any of the above, and most Indians I know would never put the cause of the nation above a cause of personal betterment. A great nation would never have bowed to the will of hijackers and turned over prisoners to secure the release of an aeroplane and its passengers. India did. So, what the bloody hell are we suddenly so nationalistic about? It really took a bunch of terrorists to wake us up? We should be ashamed of that very fact.

Terrified into Stupidity!

Through the last 40 hours, the drama of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai have occupied Indian media focus, but have also served to highlight a dangerous trend - pandering to America's way of doing things, starting with a full subscription to thoughtlessness.

According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, National Spokesperson, BJP, "As you (Barkha Dutt) rightly pointed out this is a replica of Nine Eleven in India". http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/video/video.aspx?id=45516. According to this fool, "It is time that India responded in the same way as America responded"! America responded by attacking the wrong country, pissing away its economic well being, and stands empty handed seven years later, with Osama Bin Laden roaming free and Americans mad about phone tapping and torture that led nowhere. America's image took a beating worldwide and is now on the precipice of a massive economic downturn. Is this the example we want to follow, you bloody jerk? Why can't you set higher standards, and why can't these standards be our own?

Barkha Dutt started this nonsense, despite being a Padma Shri, asking if this is India's Nine Eleven! What a mockery she is making of this prestigious award by being so cluelessly glued to the way America does things! I had enough of this looney bin when she was brimming with emotion for Barack Obama and never got beyond the dumbed down versions of everything she saw and reported on from the east cost of the USA. Now, she is here, canvassing the emotion of the situation instead of presenting the facts in a clear light and causing a mature debate.

Just this afternoon, she asked a gentleman who was tensely waiting for news about a relative stuck inside one of the hotels under siege, "How are you feeling? You probably have no words to describe it"! and immediately stuck a microphone to his face! What a tinhead!

I have been hearing the word "hostages" over and over again on all the news channels, and frankly, how can so many people be hostages if most of them didn't even see the attackers? They were just trapped guests who floundered out somehow. The word "hostage" is defined in the dictionary as "a person seized or held as security for the fulfillment of a condition". Clearly this was never a hostage crisis anymore than a snake dance. But what does it do to the image of India, when we take pride in rescuing 100 or more "hostages" but build this picture in people's minds that security is so lax that 100 or more hostages can be taken in one sweeping move over public exposed areas!? The FACT is that none of the people who came out were hostages but our media loves the sexiness of that term. Multiples of morons.

Now, onto the dance of the diplomats - "We stand strongly behind the people of India" - clearly means we are the ones taking the bullets, while everybody else hides behind us. Can we really see Bush running into the building shooting at terrorists? Can we hear any nation offering to offset the compensation being paid to the victims' families? This has reached a point where the same stupid, meaningless noises are made by leaders of every nation exactly like the noises others made when their assets were attacked. Only the Israelis had the sense to say something truthful like "We have full faith in India's security operations".

"We strongly condemn..." is another one that has done its rounds for a long time and obviously the stupidity tank never runs dry. Where is the condemnation? I wonder if I would have listened to my parents if they had said, "We strongly scold you for your mischief" instead of "Come here you little rascal. You're grounded for a week! Now, apologize!" Oh, this one's richer than a single criticism. If a condemnation wasn't a strong one, wouldn't it automatically be downgraded to a criticism? So, what's up with a strong condemnation? Can we hear something like "These f@#$ing terrorist motherf@#$ers should be roasted on a slow fire!"? Please, so the terrorists may actually get the message their minds can comprehend?

Clearly, terrorism unleashes a lot of people's stupidity. It is amazing how there is still a player who can set a higher standard. BBC. The BBC report has all about going deeper, unemotionally, and finding information that nobody else has paid attention to, like talking about a person who was arrested in London with a connection to an earlier attack in Mumbai and how he is being held by the authorities in London to question about this one. None of the heavy breathing emotional nonsense here. How do they do it? By actually doing it, I would say. Can we stoop a little less and copy them instead of stupid Americans? That might be really hard, yes? Maybe one of these days I will take Barkha Dutt hostage to teach her the ropes or whip her with one.

Making a Suckumentary

Serbjeet Singh's documentary about "The Land Time Forgot" is playing on DD. The only reason I am watching it is because the cricket match has been interrupted due to rain on this channel and might restart any time. Typical of so called documentaries made by Indians, this piece of comedy is full of lofty words in sound bytes describing what we can already see. "This is a lovely spot, you know". "Yeah, the landscape is so exciting" - These are spoken lines for heavens' sake!

He is somewhere in the Himalayas, which a lot of people have a fascination for. But somehow the Himalayas also inspire a lot of untalented, clueless fools into thinking they can go there with a video camera and somehow capture the essence of the great, grand, magnificent, imposing mountains. If the mountains are so commanding, why does the film maker even put himself in the way of me experiencing it? Every time this idiot opens his mouth, he reduces my appreciation of the mountains.

Beyond a point, mountains are mountains. What is the bloody film about? If I see someone there trying to get medical help because his nose has to be drilled open from not having blown it for two years, there's a story I want to see. If one of the yaks goes mad and gores everybody in a village, there's a story I'd really want to see. But who really wants to see this "general" informational crap? Can't I get the same information from the internet if I was that curious?

"This is fantastic, look at the beauty" he announces to another clown hanging out with him. If I couldn't see the beauty of what he got on camera, why is this fool making the film? And if I can see it, why is he talking about it?

If Indian fictional cinema drags for most part, Indian documentaries totally suck. In fact, they have spawned a whole new genre called the Suckumentary and should be sold as comedy. Why would I be interested in being frequently told whether this fool is at eleven thousand feet or thirteen thousand feet, when it is obvious to me that he is pretty high up. Didn't I see his jeep climb and climb? So is he likely to end up being below sea level after all that groaning uphill? Come on! Do we really need to hear his describe "turquoise waters" when we can see it. Or is he afraid that we might be snoring?

One thing our so called documentary film makers need to realize is that without a strong story, a real awakening of the audience to something new, without a new point of view, without any point of view, without an argument, without a reflection on the "human condition" in any theatre of mankind, there is no bloody film! Why do these immature clowns really even think of wasting time, money and resources on simply bringing us video footage and putting them together in the name of making "documentaries"? It is strange that India has had more wildlife than Western countries for thousands of years and yet we haven't produced the kind of quality commonly visible in National Geographic or Discovery.

Then there is the emotional narration, expecting to contaminate us with the deep feelings the film maker has for the subject. For example Valmik Thapar's pathetic heavy breathing announcement - "Just minutes ago, the lord of the jungle, the biggest cat of all, the Bengal Tiger himself was here"! No tiger on screen, just a lead up to a bloody footprint. I wonder if a lump of dung would have been more convincing. It better be the tiger's for Thapar sounded like he was ready to contribute. Where is the bloody tiger now? He never shows up. It takes hard work and the fool hasn't put in the work. That's all there is to it. Our filmmakers, well actually, shotmakers, are trigger happy fools in paradise with a camera. They just shoot and shoot, and often continue to shoot with their mouths and then finally from behind and then get shot right there when it matters.

Simply carrying a camera on a trip does not produce a film. Simply narrating what the people on the trip are going through does not cut it either. Describing gods and goddesses and folklore of those areas still doesn't constitute a story of any sort. This is simply time consuming, boring SHIT. Oh, I was just informed by the voiceover that two statues of gods didn't acknowledge the presence of this film maker by as much as a flicker! Thank you very much. Actually I thought one of them winked at me!

Documentary film makers in India do not have to answer to anyone for being well below par. They can pretend their way to a few screenings, a few interviews, and some celebrity status. It just isn't serious business, and quite deservingly so. If Michael Moore can make "Fahrenheit 911" and have it make $100million in the US box office alone, it is because it was relevant, powerful, never dragged, and took a bold stand in an argument against the president of the country. It takes someone who wants to tell a story to make a good documentary. Indian documentary film makers seem to think they just need a subject! They themselves would make quite an interesting study on how they hope to define themselves without a clue about what they are doing.