a Wednesday!!

a Wednesday! I had been seeing the promos of it on the television of late. Actors like Nasiruddin Shah and Anupam Kher performing in a same movie and that too, in a movie like this which is based upon the fanatical terrorism in today's India and the narrow and despicable concept of communalism which is given as the reason for this so called "religious war" by those radicals was something I was looking forward to. And then, I saw "a Wednesday".

Shah is shown as a common man. A common man for whom democracy works, industry develops, grains are produced, trains and buses are run. He lives in today's India where a blast in a railway compartment in which he travels daily is not uncommon. He lives in a country where riots blow out of some petty reasons and the rivers of blood flow. He lives in a country where the Khans rule the Bollywood yet the Muslims are regarded as a minority. He lives in a country where media tries to entertain people rather than to educate them. He fears to grow beard or wear a cap as ordered to any disciple of his religion because that very beard can turn a needle of suspicion towards him. He fears death. He sees the law & order of his city as well as the whole country in jeopardy. He hates the system where authority does not have the will and the will does not have the authority. He decides to create his own path. He decides to build a parallel system which functions much quicker than the existent and accepted one.

Kher, on the other hand, plays the police commissioner of Mumbai. He is well aware about the discrimination against the innocent Muslims as well as the humiliation they have to undergo in the society for no fault of theirs. He has the ability to inspire his juniors to function their duties with utmost passion. He, himself, is an avid observer of the society. He sportingly accepts the hard fact a college dropout brings to his attention that most of the machines and gadgets that the cyber cell unit uses to crack cyber crimes are outdated. He lives in a real world. He lives in a partisan world where he has to deal with the issues like majority/minority, jihad/bandh on a daily basis. Kher gets a call on a wednesday from an unknown person who tells him that he is going to bomb the city with 5 bombs planted in a city at different places. He has the will and force but lacks in authority. The weak-kneed chief minister prefers to stand muted in a corner and look on as he handles whole and sole authority to bargain and to compromise with the bomber to Kher. The commissioner is put in awe by that unknown, unseen common man who talks to him with so much conviction, desperation and a definite but shocking idealism in order to secure a peaceful future for our coming generations. He travels all the way alone just to catch a glimpse of that rebellion who has had the guts to walk in the lives of all the city-dwellers and to blow it apart. He decides to let go the common man. He thinks such "common men" are required.

This is not a conflict between majority and minority. This is not a fight between law & order and terror. This is not even a mutiny of people against the government. This is a fight put up by a common man, like you and I, against those cowards who, by the name of religion, weaken the bondages in people and bring about blasts and riots which take hundreds and thousands of innocent lives. This is something what happens when a comman man like you and I, lose prolonged patience. The message is clear: a parallel can always be drawn.

Black or White?

Black and white. Or is it black or white? They share a strange relationship. These two quantities have greater attraction for each other than any other known pair, viz., male and female, north pole and south pole of a magnet, fish and water and so on! The black gets ultimately mixed with the white. Dandruff in black hair is not black but white, eyeballs in white eyes are black and not white, a black chalk is never produced to write on a blackboard or a black rain is never heard of falling from the dark clouds.

But, at the same time, a blackie is always discriminated within a clan of whites, a black suit or a black saree is preferred at the ceremonies than their white counterparts. Hindus and Muslims relate white to mourning while for Christians, it's the black. A student reads "failed" remark in a black on a white and is devastated while a farmer becomes suicidal when he sees white clouds in the sky even after two years of drought.

However, i think that, humans generally tend to exhibit a great bias towards black. Any wrongdoing, any bad thought or action is related to black while white escapes unscratched. Gangsters and Mafias are always shown putting on black robes in movies as if clothes of any other colour aren't available in market. Lawyers are said to be liars wearing a black coat but, one fails to see that within that black coat there is always a white shirt. Politicians are said to live with a sole purpose of earning black money but, one fails to see that they do it wearing white clothes. Not many painters tend to paint a human figure with a black. I often wonder about a black ribbon getting used to blindfold a person in kidnap scenes in the movies whereas, the director can make do with a ribbon of any other colour. On some unwritten terms, black is termed bad. Black is dark. Dark is feared. Fear lives within us.

Though white is the ultimate source of light, represents peace and harmony and is related to cleanliness and sanity; black has its own shine. No other colour represents richness and royalness as good as black does. A white mercedes benz fails to arrest the onlooker's eyes but a black one is a sure eye-catcher. A black jeans is something every individual thinks a must to have in his/her wardrobe, for it can get matched-up with any coloured shirt. The wheel, no matter to which vehicle it's attached to and which symbolizes speed and change is always black in colour. Black has its own unmatched importance. Black is a rock which represents might. Black is a soil which represents fertility. Black is something corporate, black is something disciplinary.

The world is full of colours. All those institute to draw a picture of the world we live in, to make it more beautiful for us. But, we should not forget that every picture lies within a border. And, that border, is often BLACK.