There is something very different about
watching a Bollywood film in an American multiplex. And when the film is
Kai Po Che which is not run of the mill
despite adhering to mainstream trappings, the experience acquires many more
hues. The Abhishek Kapoor helmed venture can very well be the
Dil Chahta Hai of the current decade,
with politics aspiring to replace mushy romance in the film.
The work is also a timely reminder about
the injustice literary critics have been heaping on Chetan Bhagat. By dismissing him and his writing. Pardon the
French, but Bhagat is the first Indian novelist in English to have the balls to
write about the Gujarat genocide; while the so called serious literary writers
who often make themselves heard through their opinion pieces in Sunday
supplements rather than through their books, have been busy churning out tripe
about the same jaded middle class protagonist pining for her married lover.
Bhagat may have oversimplified the issue
going by the film that’s based on his book but at least he has tried to say all
the right things, using all the subversive means he has at his disposal as a
writer. I haven’t read the book but I plan to, as soon I get back to India in
June.
I loved Kai Po Che, as much for the
refreshing cast of talented youngsters it has as I lauded it for its clever
screenplay and nifty direction. It is an honest work. The only other recent
Bollywood film that comes close is Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat.
What the film also did for me was take me
back to the two trips I made to Ahmedabad in 2002. The first one commenced before
the Godhra tragedy happened and concluded on the day the state was erupting in
the aftermath of the tragedy.
I had been invited to facilitate a Personal
Growth Lab by a professor who taught in one of the most reputed management
institutes of India. I had a lot of respect for her at that time. The Lab was
to be conducted in a resort in Rann of Kutch, but the group of facilitators
first met in Ahmedabad, and we drove to Kutch from the capital of Gujarat.
The resort was owned by a Muslim family and
the Professor pretended to be great friends with them.
They, on their part, plied her and the rest of us with hospitality and warmth.
But something had already started happening to the mentor and protégé
relationship I had shared with her.
At
one time, I had been full of adulation for her but in that lab, all the chinks
in her armour were suddenly visible. I discovered over one stray incident that
something she had shared with me was a big lie and the lie was not about
something inconsequential, although it did not directly affect me. But there is
something about making heroes out of ordinary mortals. The moment you discover
they have feet of clay, you tend to give up on them. However the big disenchantment
was yet to happen.
We drove back to Ahmedabad after the lab
got over and discovered a very different city from the one we had left behind
only a week ago. The news about Godhra came to us in bits and pieces and afterwards
we also got to hear about the systematic targeting of Muslims that had started
to happen in few localities. The professor dropped her priceless gem- ‘They
should all be burnt alive,’ and as it turned out the mobs in Ahmedabad
proceeded to do just that, with the connivance of the authorities and the
politicians.
I never met the Professor again. Instead I gave fictional personas to all the
process workers I had worked with until then, and created my first novel around
their stupidities. All of them must have recognized themselves in the book and they
stopped talking to me. Which was just as well because after that lab I decided
I didn’t want to be a process worker and began the rewarding journey as a
playwright and a novelist. I met some real intellectuals who were very
different from a bunch of fakes, spouting silly jargons and playing mind games
with gullible participants in their labs.
One Process Worker decided to confront me after
the book was published and challenged me that if I had real courage I should attend a
lab with all those I had unflatteringly fictionalized present and then say all the things I had said about them in my novel.
I burst out laughing and asked him whether
he hadn’t come across the wisdom that the pen is mightier than sword. I also added I may be brave, but not stupid to
walk into a gathering of bigots with my eyes open only to get lynched by them.
They were welcome to visit me in my house singly or in small groups and I would
engage with them with utmost sincerity. None of them took me up on my offer. Thankfully, I have no friends among process
workers anymore and I lead a happier life.
The detail about the process workers is
important because it was a psychological test designed by a process worker for
a leading Design School in India, once again located in Ahmedabad that took me back to the
city in a matter of months. The test was an extremely dubious instrument and despite
being trained to administer and interpret it, those of us who were considered
experts in the area knew that our interpretation was extremely subjective and
there was nothing to tell whether the instrument was actually delivering. But
those were early days of my consulting career and I wasn’t thinking beyond the
prestige of being in the interview panel of this reputed institute.
It was a long assignment running into two
weeks in the month of May. My role in the panel was to ask a few questions to
the candidates based on my interpretation of the test. The riots were supposedly over by then but the
city still had curfew in the evenings in many areas. I was part of a large panel
that comprised mostly of faculty members from the institute. There was just one
outsider other than me in the panel, an alumni of the institute who ran a
highly successful design company in Bangalore. Apart from being smart, she was also
very attractive.
For
me, she held additional interest because she was married to one of the best
known establishment writers of Bangalore. I was just a couple of plays old in
my writing career at that time and
renowned writers and anything to do with them held great charm for me.
As it turned out the Design Professional
from Bangalore was also a story teller. Except she told the same story, whenever
we had a break from the interviews. About how a leading technology organization
had hired her firm to design their logo. Her team had finally come up with
something to please the client but one member of the board did not approve of
it so the logo was dropped. But despite that little setback her firm had been
paid a crore of rupees for designing something that was never used.
The story was somewhat tricky. I did not
know whether I should make clucking noises of sympathy because the logo was
never used or congratulate her as she and her firm got the humongous fees anyway.
Because she was smart and successful and attractive, all of us in that panel
smiled brightly at everything she said. Especially the men.
There was another exciting sideshow to the
panel interviews. It had to do with one particular panel member who had been
her professor when she was studying. I
have never seen a man behave more atrociously. He gazed at her adoringly all
the time and every time she said something, he looked at all of us with barely
concealed amazement, as if he was asking us if we have ever come across anything
so celestial. He was most entertaining and I thought he had been imported
directly from a Charles Dickens novel.
With so much going on, no one in the panel
talked about the riots. Once I heard one of the members complain that a few
areas under longer curfew regimen fell on the way to her house, so she had to
take a more circuitous route. I guess that is how it works. The inconvenience
of the affluent class is always more important than the fear and insecurity of
those living in poorer neighbourhoods.
I was staying in the institute guesthouse
and one night I woke up to the sounds of howling followed by screams of a mob.
At first I thought I had imagined the whole thing but I heard the disturbing
shouts and screams more clearly when I went and stood near the window. The next
morning I brought it up with the caretaker while waiting for my breakfast and
he told me although the riots were supposedly over, there were stray incidents
of individuals from the minority community being hounded and burnt alive. Just as I was trying to digest the news of
someone being burnt alive in the scorching heat of May in Ahmedabad, he added
sagely ‘They have to be taught a proper lesson. Otherwise they will never
learn.’ I got up without eating and decided
I would complain about the caretaker to the panel when I met them.
But when I entered the room, most of the panellists
were already there and the Design Professional had once again started telling
her story of the logo. I gave up and turned listless for the rest of the day.
The Chairman of the panel who I believed to be a very benign and kindly
gentleman noticed my restlessness and asked me if I was alright. I told him I
was missing my family in Bangalore and that was true. When I can’t handle something
and my family is not with me, it just makes it worse.
He invited me to his house for dinner the
next day. Both he and his wife were extremely hospitable. When we were done
with the main course and his wife went into the kitchen to get the dessert, he
asked me once again what was bothering me and I told him about the conversation
with the caretaker.
‘It is not his fault,’ said the genial man.
“In this area, there were only a few of them. But now as you can see, so many
of them have built such large houses. They are getting the money from across
the border for spying on us.’
I couldn’t believe my ears. I thought I had
enough and told him that it was terrible on his part to harbour such communal
feelings. He is an educator and so his views were even more distressing. It
must have been frustration that gave me the courage that evening. I even
refused the dessert his wife got.
I try to be very correct on social
occasions so I was pretty surprised at how stubborn I turned as a guest in
someone else’s house. He dropped me to the guest house soon after that but things turned really
frosty between us on that hot and sultry Ahemdabad evening.
I somehow got through the two remaining days
of the panel interviews and flew back home. They didn’t ask me the following
year and I think the year after that, the new Director of the institute decided
to remove the psychological test altogether from the selection process.
I went to Ahmedabad once again the following
year. But this time, it was with a play I wrote and directed to raise awareness
about Autism. We performed at Natrani a theatre run by Mallika Sarabhai, a
dancer and activist. She had steadfastly opposed the state sponsored violence
against the minority community at the risk of her personal safety and security.
She had lived under constant threats and many of her friends in the city had
deserted her because she had taken on Narendra Modi. I was really happy during
that trip because our theatre group was performing in that secular space. To
date, I consider it to be the best theatre where our group has performed.
Kai Po Che took me back to all those
memories.
