Have you watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? Do you remember the opening scene? The one that shows this guy, Walter Mitty, living a parallel life in his head? One where he is, in his head, of course, the hero, performing supernatural acts of heroism and saving the lives of the innocent? Well, were you able to relate to the movie? Don't you think that we all tend to do the same? Don't we have a parallel image of ourselves where we are the ideal that we always aspire to become? Alfred Adler, a Neo-Freudian, termed this as Fictional Finalism (but later claimed that he preferred the term Guiding Self-Ideal. However, I prefer the former. It has a little martyr-ish tone to it, no? After all, it is something that we want ourselves to become but never are able to completely achieve it).
I feel that I am digressing here. I was supposed to talk about the movie, Dangal. Yes, so let us talk about it. Well, 3 quick fact-checks before we get to it.
So, yes. We are in the cinema hall. It is 10 PM on a Saturday evening, on the eve of Christmas. The movie begins with the national anthem being played. This is my first visit to a cinema hall, post the court's ruling. I stand with the audience. There is passionate hollering in the audience, indicating their patriotism for their motherland. Commendable. A guy to my left takes out his phone, turns on the video mode (with the flashlight on) and begins to record the hall in a sweeping motion. At the end of the anthem, there is more hollering. I have mixed feelings of contempt and benevolence. Contempt for the hypocrisy that I assume in them and benevolence for allowing them the space to feel the patriotism that they thought they possessed. The movie begins.
Fast forward to the end of the movie where the protagonist is victorious and wins a medal for India on an international stage. Three people in front of us stand up. I assume that they want to leave. After about 5 seconds, they are still standing and that is when my friend asks them to either leave or sit. One of them coolly turns and says, "it's the national anthem. Stand up." The national anthem isn't yet playing on the screen. Clearly, this is not their first time watching Dangal.
"When the anthem starts, we will stand," my friend replies.
"If it starts what shall I do to you?" comes the immediate threat. By then the national anthem has begun on the screen, in the movie. The protagonist is being awarded the medal. The anthem ends and there is crazy hollering in the audience. Bharat Mata ki Jai, they scream.
In these 30 odd seconds, I do something that gives me the real lesson of the movie. I do not stand for the anthem. I sit in my place. Still. My heart is beating wildly, but the rebel inside me, the moral snob, if you will, is trying to assert its independence over the herd mentality and, at the same time, marking its protest against it. When the anthem ends, nothing happens. I am safe. The videos that had gone viral, of people being targeted for not standing, must have been stray incidents, I tell myself.
Alas.
As the audience is taking its seat, my friend's friend, referring to the three guys in front, says, "what a show-off." The rest unfolds in a blur of incidents. The guy in front immediately turns back and begins to jump from his seat trying to grab hold of the guy who passed the comment. I am still seated, calculating if an intervention is required. And then, suddenly, my friend gets whacked from someone in the back. Two guys march to our seats, from the back and being demanding: Why did I not stand? Why could my friend (who stood) not ask me to show respect and ask me to stand?
Whack!
A palm lands on my left cheek. I think it would be better to say that it landed on the left side of my face because it definitely did not feel like a mere slap. More abuses. More allegations of my traitorship. They speak in the local language and broken English so that we know what they are saying. Since I know the local language, I begin talking to them. I am busy trying to explain that I was following the rules. I am also trying to get my friend and his two friends to not intervene since they do not know the language and that can only get them in trouble. He, nevertheless, tries saying something and
Whack!
Another palm lands on his right side of the face. "Keep your hi-fi English to yourself. You, bloody people, eat the food of this country...(insert the choicest of abuses of your choice)"
This one guy with a fancy hairdo grabs me by my collar and tries to drag me from my seat. At that moment, I have my epiphany. I realise that this could be the moment when I would be done for. It is interesting, in hindsight, obviously, that despite the gravity of my situation, I manage to make a mental note of the fancy hairdo. He is barely able to keep his eyes open. Was he drunk? Doped? I do not know. What I did know, at that moment, was that things were going to get very bad, very soon. That did not stop me from trying to stand my ground, however hopelessly it may have been. To my surprise, things begin to die down just as quickly as they had sparked off. Maybe they have had their fill of showing their patriotism and fighting against the traitors. Maybe me speaking in the local language mellowed them down a bit, or maybe someone from the management intervened. Either way, they begin to push each other off and take control over one another. Not before I have my hair pulled, slapped probably one more time and spat upon (the fancy-haired-drunk/doped-guy. He was so out of his sense that he tried spitting but was not able to get any saliva out. This, too, I made a note of it, in the middle of the action. Weird, you say?).
"Learn to stand up for the anthem. If everybody is doing it, learn to do it," is what I am advised as a parting gift. I see the credits rolling and I realise that I had come to watch a movie and that I missed the ending. The real photographs of the athlete who brought real glory to the country are being shown. There is nobody watching that. Everybody has left. The guy who slapped us included.
The hall empties. The attendant is clearing the underside of the seats. He casually comes and informs us that the movie is over like as if nothing had happened. Maybe this is normal. I slowly bring my attention to the rest of the three people. We all are quiet, dazed by the awareness that was sinking in: It was a miraculous escape. It would have been unfair to say that we were fighting a losing battle. There was no battle in the first place. It was mob justice and we were the criminals. Justice would have been served. But we were let go with a warning.
I spoke about Walter Mitty in the beginning. About how, in his imagination, he is a superhero doing superhero things. What I did not speak about, is that in real life, Walter Mitty is nothing of that sort (at least in the beginning of the movie). He is almost the exact opposite of what he imagines himself to be. And that was our lesson from the movie Dangal. I had these wild emotions of anger surfacing when I had watched the videos of such incidents on the internet. I had imagined myself standing up to the goons. Of defending the defenceless. Of being the hero on the side of the right. Well, that imagination was grabbed by its collar, raised in the air and slammed on the ground just like the way Aamir grabs his daughter and slams her to the ground (oops, spoiler alert).
Would I do things differently? I would like to believe not. I am proud that we stood our ground and we gave a voice to our rights. However, in the light of the evidence of how close I had gotten to real trouble, I am willing to reconsider. I am willing to listen to George Orwell and accept that it is not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. At least, not everywhere.
PS- You should go watch Dangal. Despite a few cliches, you will not be disappointed.
I feel that I am digressing here. I was supposed to talk about the movie, Dangal. Yes, so let us talk about it. Well, 3 quick fact-checks before we get to it.
Fact 1: Dangal released on the 23rd of December, 2016. It is a movie about respect, about passion, about wrestling, about vindication, about girl-power and most importantly, about patriotism.
Fact 2: The supreme court of India recently passed a directive to all the cinema operators to air the national anthem before the beginning of a movie.
Fact 3: The supreme court directive also makes it mandatory for all those present in the hall to respect the national anthem and the national flag and stand for the duration of the anthem. This is in line with the Article 51A(a) of the Constitution. However, section 3 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 (as amended in 2005) does not make any such mandate. It does not specify whether one should be sitting or standing when the anthem is being played or sung, The only criteria is that there is no disrespect that is willfully shown.
So, yes. We are in the cinema hall. It is 10 PM on a Saturday evening, on the eve of Christmas. The movie begins with the national anthem being played. This is my first visit to a cinema hall, post the court's ruling. I stand with the audience. There is passionate hollering in the audience, indicating their patriotism for their motherland. Commendable. A guy to my left takes out his phone, turns on the video mode (with the flashlight on) and begins to record the hall in a sweeping motion. At the end of the anthem, there is more hollering. I have mixed feelings of contempt and benevolence. Contempt for the hypocrisy that I assume in them and benevolence for allowing them the space to feel the patriotism that they thought they possessed. The movie begins.
Fast forward to the end of the movie where the protagonist is victorious and wins a medal for India on an international stage. Three people in front of us stand up. I assume that they want to leave. After about 5 seconds, they are still standing and that is when my friend asks them to either leave or sit. One of them coolly turns and says, "it's the national anthem. Stand up." The national anthem isn't yet playing on the screen. Clearly, this is not their first time watching Dangal.
"When the anthem starts, we will stand," my friend replies.
"If it starts what shall I do to you?" comes the immediate threat. By then the national anthem has begun on the screen, in the movie. The protagonist is being awarded the medal. The anthem ends and there is crazy hollering in the audience. Bharat Mata ki Jai, they scream.
In these 30 odd seconds, I do something that gives me the real lesson of the movie. I do not stand for the anthem. I sit in my place. Still. My heart is beating wildly, but the rebel inside me, the moral snob, if you will, is trying to assert its independence over the herd mentality and, at the same time, marking its protest against it. When the anthem ends, nothing happens. I am safe. The videos that had gone viral, of people being targeted for not standing, must have been stray incidents, I tell myself.
Alas.
As the audience is taking its seat, my friend's friend, referring to the three guys in front, says, "what a show-off." The rest unfolds in a blur of incidents. The guy in front immediately turns back and begins to jump from his seat trying to grab hold of the guy who passed the comment. I am still seated, calculating if an intervention is required. And then, suddenly, my friend gets whacked from someone in the back. Two guys march to our seats, from the back and being demanding: Why did I not stand? Why could my friend (who stood) not ask me to show respect and ask me to stand?
Whack!
A palm lands on my left cheek. I think it would be better to say that it landed on the left side of my face because it definitely did not feel like a mere slap. More abuses. More allegations of my traitorship. They speak in the local language and broken English so that we know what they are saying. Since I know the local language, I begin talking to them. I am busy trying to explain that I was following the rules. I am also trying to get my friend and his two friends to not intervene since they do not know the language and that can only get them in trouble. He, nevertheless, tries saying something and
Whack!
Another palm lands on his right side of the face. "Keep your hi-fi English to yourself. You, bloody people, eat the food of this country...(insert the choicest of abuses of your choice)"
This one guy with a fancy hairdo grabs me by my collar and tries to drag me from my seat. At that moment, I have my epiphany. I realise that this could be the moment when I would be done for. It is interesting, in hindsight, obviously, that despite the gravity of my situation, I manage to make a mental note of the fancy hairdo. He is barely able to keep his eyes open. Was he drunk? Doped? I do not know. What I did know, at that moment, was that things were going to get very bad, very soon. That did not stop me from trying to stand my ground, however hopelessly it may have been. To my surprise, things begin to die down just as quickly as they had sparked off. Maybe they have had their fill of showing their patriotism and fighting against the traitors. Maybe me speaking in the local language mellowed them down a bit, or maybe someone from the management intervened. Either way, they begin to push each other off and take control over one another. Not before I have my hair pulled, slapped probably one more time and spat upon (the fancy-haired-drunk/doped-guy. He was so out of his sense that he tried spitting but was not able to get any saliva out. This, too, I made a note of it, in the middle of the action. Weird, you say?).
"Learn to stand up for the anthem. If everybody is doing it, learn to do it," is what I am advised as a parting gift. I see the credits rolling and I realise that I had come to watch a movie and that I missed the ending. The real photographs of the athlete who brought real glory to the country are being shown. There is nobody watching that. Everybody has left. The guy who slapped us included.
The hall empties. The attendant is clearing the underside of the seats. He casually comes and informs us that the movie is over like as if nothing had happened. Maybe this is normal. I slowly bring my attention to the rest of the three people. We all are quiet, dazed by the awareness that was sinking in: It was a miraculous escape. It would have been unfair to say that we were fighting a losing battle. There was no battle in the first place. It was mob justice and we were the criminals. Justice would have been served. But we were let go with a warning.
I spoke about Walter Mitty in the beginning. About how, in his imagination, he is a superhero doing superhero things. What I did not speak about, is that in real life, Walter Mitty is nothing of that sort (at least in the beginning of the movie). He is almost the exact opposite of what he imagines himself to be. And that was our lesson from the movie Dangal. I had these wild emotions of anger surfacing when I had watched the videos of such incidents on the internet. I had imagined myself standing up to the goons. Of defending the defenceless. Of being the hero on the side of the right. Well, that imagination was grabbed by its collar, raised in the air and slammed on the ground just like the way Aamir grabs his daughter and slams her to the ground (oops, spoiler alert).
Would I do things differently? I would like to believe not. I am proud that we stood our ground and we gave a voice to our rights. However, in the light of the evidence of how close I had gotten to real trouble, I am willing to reconsider. I am willing to listen to George Orwell and accept that it is not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. At least, not everywhere.
PS- You should go watch Dangal. Despite a few cliches, you will not be disappointed.
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