T a l k i e s

Since 26\11, everytime Shoba De is on TV, my TV throws up.

But worse than Shoba De (ammayi) is our super moronic, self proclaimed religious bigots who for some reason I cannot figure out seem to dominate national television for the past 8-9 hours. All I try to stay calm and work out a thread for my world classic first novel, without the regular bouts of rantishite blogging, these tricky dicky hypocrites vitiate the air waves and I lose my last remaining ebb of civility (and utter the ‘M’ word some hundred times, no my parents never brought me up this way).

It all started with today morning’s Delhi High Court judgment pronounced by Chief Justice S. Muralidhar, which threw away the primitive clauses in IPC 377  that made Gay sex illegal, thereby ending an “obnoxious colonial-era provision that has absolutely no place in the statute book of a modern democratic and secular state.”

Its almost like the court read yesterday’s The Hindu’s opinion piece which said “Section 377, which punishes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” with imprisonment up to 10 years, is not specifically targeted at homosexuality. But by criminalising any penetrative sex that does not lead to reproduction, it has become a weapon in the hands of the police to harass those who have alternative sexual orientations. It also stands out as a symbol of 19th century intolerance.”

The synopsis of the judgment says (Full Text here)

We declare that Section 377 IPC, insofar it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution. The provisions of Section 377 IPC will continue to govern non-consensual penile non-vaginal sex and penile non-vaginal sex involving minors. By ‘adult’ we mean everyone who is 18 years of age and above. A person below 18 would be presumed not to be able to consent to a sexual act. This clarification will hold till, of course, Parliament chooses to amend the law to effectuate the recommendation of the Law Commission of India in its 172nd Report which we believe removes a great deal of confusion. Secondly, we clarify that our judgment will not result in the re-opening of criminal cases involving Section 377 IPC that have already attained finality. We allow the writ petition in the above terms.

The judgment is without exaggerations is plain rational. And long overdue, and it saved the day for many a spineless legislator in the lower house.

But the buzzing of the thicko bees started within an hour of the judgment, the same, the usual suspects. Papa Bear (the emperor of the Hindu Hearts) has not yet responded and I’m intrigued by the silence in Matoshree.

All the three cattle herds, the intense saffron clad deshbhakts (their hands full of blood after the new wave of violence today in Mysore) who dream of an imbecile Hindu nation marching to the tune of Richard Wagner’s Sama Veda remix, the Deobandesque mullahs (their mind full of porn about the promised 40 odd virgins in heaven) who got their pure (paki) land once and made a model country of it, and my favorites after Papa Bear - the white clad holy merchants (their hands full of money and colleges) who don’t seem to have anything catholic about them but still continue to wash Vatican’s dirty linen long after even Vatican had had some good sense.

The hindu junta should have no problems with the verdict as such, if stories about the naked Naga monks in Prayag and Kashi are anything to go by, and I suspect they are secretly happy thinking “our muslim brothers are gonna be fucking pissed with this one, ha ha”. But they have swarmed national television with arguments ranging from western influence to Indian culture going to the dogs, and the funniest of em all - this verdict goes against vedic culture! Cmon, vedic culture for fucks sake!! Lets not get into the details of how all their ancestors in aryavarta plains destroyed the message of the vedas, underplayed the upanishads and finally took and chained hinduism in the crappy vegetarian masochistic stables of Jainism. But forget them, the hindu fanatic is actually happy today - whatever the BJP says tomorrow. Continue reading 377

Like the leapord, the rest of the city was blanketed inside the heavy showers - sleeping. And I for one found out that Leopards are solitary animals except during mating season. Then again if you sleep for sixteen hours a day, you’ll mostly end up solitary, ha lonely.

Visiting Trivandrum Zoo after close to a decade, I gave one round of appaluse to the Kerala Government for the way they have transformed the zoo. The nameboards speak of a painstaking redesign of the facility over the past decade which seems to have paid off now. Almost every animal (birds, reptiles excluded) is now housed in large open enclosures. The overall design is very impressive and aesthetic, though I didn’t understand why two lion tailed monkeys need almost half an acre of space (that too at Trivandrum Zero).

While the monsoon made the place look a bit intimidating with the tall tall trees and the waters in the lakes, more intimidating was the wait for the animals to emerge and show their un-evolutionised faces to people with tickets. With the new design, the item public, me included, had to wait till the primitive and highly egoistic animals emerged from their caves and other hideouts to catch a glimpse. Overall the place looks just great, and to see it in the monsoon is surely a bonus. More snaps on the stream

Email forwards couldn’t get better Esspecially on a Friday. What a week it was!

Prabhakaran watches the news of his death on TV and reads that news on a tamil newspaper. And as far as National Geographic knows, nowhere in the world have lions won over tigers The legend lives on.

TV Chandran’s latest, “Bhoomi Malayalam” [now in theatres] is a relishing movie, which as per the director, tries to take Malayalam cinema and its audience at least an inch forward – and this time you have to give it to him. TV Chandran (assisted by his son, and my senior in school –Yadu), webs a unique story telling technique that flows smoothly through the lives of seven diverse women in different parts of Kerala at different points in time (1948 – Present). The movie with a run-time of 90 minutes, is one of the shortest Malayalam feature films I’ve seen, and the sheer diversity of portrayals and number of issues dwelled upon makes it a very fast and exciting movie. (Exciting to the extent that Ladoo and I ran back throwing our half smoked anbumaniramdosses after the short interval)

Bhoomi Malayalam – is a movie made strictly for malayalis, and I doubt whether this film will speak intensely to any one else. (yeah there were 10 malayalis in Sree yesterday J , Sathyan selling “the family” with Bhagyadevatha had a full-house next door in Kairali). The movie, though without a pattern, and without the burden of solving every issue in 90 minutes (which many a movie do), turns our attention towards a diverse set of issues ranging from treasury shutdown in Trivandrum to the ubiquitous career-family questions to the endosulfan tragedy in Kasaragod. Though some of these issues are period (endosulfan and treasury shutdown is 2001, not 2009), this movie can serve as a reminder in later years.

Continue reading T.V. Chandran’s Bhoomi Malayalam

Checked out Shankumukham on Easter day, early morning, the boats stay ashore. So to say, its worth checking out Shankumukham early in the morning. Another lesser hyped charms of the city. More photos on the flickr stream

Is the best hindi movie I have ever seen. A Masterpiece. Review coming up, but in the meanwhile do yourselves a favour - GO WATCH IT!

Because very soon the world will be divided into 2 halves- those who watch Anurag Kashyap, and those who don’t.

Amal Neerad’s second movie, Sagar alias Jacky is high on style and low on substance. Mohanlal enacts his part as Underworld kingpin Sagar alias Jacky stylishly and with elan. As far as Amal Neerad is concerned, he repeats himself and the movie neither has the novelty or the freshness of Big B. Essentially Sagar Alias Jacky is a short 130 min tale of revenge crafted with a weak storyline and a script that offers absolutely nothing new. Sagar Alias Jacky, has almost nothing to do with the erstwhile superhit ‘Irupatham Nootandu’.This will not be a Mohanlal movie, even a Mohanlal fan will name after say a year or two. Highly watchable, forgettable.

The movie will be a success for Mohanlal who dons his role with exceptional control and who has produced the movie. With 115 prints and about 500 shows daily , SAJ will be the largest release ever in the history of Malayalam cinema. The movie might just break-even by mid-week. The movie will be a failure for Amal Neerad, who was riding on sky high expectations after the spectacular and original portrayal in Big B. Amal Neerad proves that he is not any ‘Avant Garde’ material we might have mistook him for, but a normal artless director who is going the Shaji Kailas way by copying what worked once and beating it till death. The movie in the meanwhile also spits on our intelligence

Continue reading Mohanlal’s Sagar Alias Jacky: Review

This is an exciting election in Trivandrum. There is an UNPRECEDENTED 6 way contest (which probably will be a national record) and each of the candidates is a ‘Big Gun’ in different ways and could poll upwards of 50,000 votes in a constituency where an average of 6-7 lakh votes are cast. But when we look back on 2009 Elections, I guess we’ll remember it by whether Shashi Tharoor won or lost. The situation is fast emerging and changing at a break-neck speed. Last week, Ajay and me were wondering about Tharoor’s margin, but this week it seems almost given that Tharoor may not make it after all. Without a miracle.

When one looks at Shashi Tharoor’s candidature, these are the questions that pop-up

Is he the better candidate?

Why should he win?

What do I need from my MP?

Can he win?

I have a feeling that this one is going to be long.

I was in Picador the other day reading reviews of Naomi Klein’s new book. Curiously, a very balanced review in Washington Post was written by the man who could be our new MP. Just another reason to so adore this man who was one of my favourite authors of fiction and non-fiction when I was in school. Then again I have graduated from school and politics is another game altogether.

The Trivandrum Lok Sabha constituency has returned bigger guns to Lok Sabha (including M N Govindan Nair, PK Vasudevan Nair and K Karunakaran), but Shashi Tharoor has an international repute and a spectacular resume that comes a close second to our one time MP and Defense Minister who delivered the longest speech in the United Nations. Then again, resumes don’t explain the political aftermath (or the math) because Trivandrum defeated ONV Kurup when he contested against the ‘universally accepted useless’ A Charles.

Is Tharoor the better candidate?

I am not sure. But he is a different kind of candidate who comes very rarely. His personal achievements are things which an average Malayali politician cannot even start to imagine. But is he a better candidate compared to Ramachandran Nair who has spent the last thirty years involved in local issues and participated in people’s movements while personally achieving nothing. Tharoor’s intellect is more than enough to impress me as a netizen and a blogger, but Tharoor’s understanding of local issues I suspect may be influenced a little too far by the internet and the vocal upper middle-class opinion thats pasted around it.

This could be Tharoor’s advantage too. Ramachandran Nair, the CPI candidate, while outlining his vision, seemed to be tied down by the reality that development will only happen in incremental steps (he talked about setting up a night time resting place for homeless and vagabonds as his urgent priority). May be it is his years of bad experiences that prevents Ramachandran Nair from dreaming big, but Tharoor talked about Trivandrum’s growth into a metropolis of global reckoning. His detailed vision is here (I have seen this before, in several other places, Tharoor has compiled it well)

At a personal level, I felt that Tharoor is struggling to connect. But this could be an initial hiccup, and for all he is worth - thats ok. But lovability and approachability of the candidate is important for the real voter (often mentioned incorrectly as ‘average voter’). If by April 16th, the feeling is that ‘hey! I have touched that thing! It speaks in a curious tongue!’ it could mean a few ten thousand votes lost.

Why Tharoor should win?

If Tharoor is serious about this whole thing, if this is not a short-cut for him to the South Delhi Club or the Indian Cabinet, which I am severely suspicious it is, and if he wants to make Trivandrum home and see it move forward - Then I guess he should be given that chance. But a similar choice was made by Trivandrumites when K Karunakaran was returned to Lok Sabha. The argument was the development brought to Mala (his pet constituency), but K Karunakaran proved to be an apathetic representative. (Though Keralalites thanked Trivandrumites for sending Kannoth Karu far away from the state).

Tharoor can dream big, he can give the city a much needed marketing break, doors that will remain closed to Ramachandran Nair or P K Krishnadas will be open to Tharoor. In simpler terms Tharoor can be a mascot, Tharoor can be an effective lobbyist, and Tharoor has the intellect to be bipartisan.

But the suspicion remains that if Tharoor makes it to the real game in Delhi, will he ever come back? May be its just the tiny insecurity of a small town blogger.

What do I need from my MP?

One rare occasion where I loved L K Advani was when he admonished a person in his electoral rally saying that he was running for Lok Sabha and not for local corporation, and it is not his duty to make sure that GandhiNagar had better roads and better sewage. There were other representatives who were responsible for that. A classic case which is often forgotten. An MP is not about Bijli, Sadak and Pani.

India has a Westminster form of Government where the expectation from an MP is that he legislates effectively and raises concerns at a national level about very important (only very important) issues from his constituency.

In that way Shashi Tharoor will be an effective contributor given his grasp of issues and exceptional diplomatic style. But I would also like to know his stands on Disinvestment, private sector reservation (Congress poll plank), Narendra Modi, India’s relationship with Iran, his stand on Palestine, his stand on Special Economic Zones, and most importantly I want to know if he will go on an indefinite hunger strike if the ASEAN trade pact, which will break the backbone of Kerala, goes through.

And then, the toughest of questions.

Can Shashi Tharoor lose?

Candidates are: Ramachandran Nair (CPI), Shashi Tharoor (Congress), PK Krishnadas (BJP - State President), Neelalohitadasan Nadar (BSP), Vijayan Thomas (Congress Rebel) and MP Gangadharan (NCP - former minister)

Continue reading Can Shashi Tharoor lose in Trivandrum?

“If anyone raises a finger towards Hindus or if someone thinks that Hindus are weak and leaderless, if someone thinks that these leaders lick our boots for votes, if anyone raises a finger towards Hindus, then I swear on Gita that I will cut that hand.”  - Times

‘Gau hatya rukwana hai, Varun Gandhi ko jitana hai’ (Cow slaughter must stop, Varun Gandhi must win) and “Varun nahin yeh aandhi hai, doosra Sanjay Gandhi hai (Varun Gandhi is like a storm, he is another Sanjay Gandhi)”. - HT

Says Varun Gandhi of BJP on his campaign trail to make L K Advani the next Prime Minister of India. He is 29. Can you take this? Another nakli Gandhi for like another five decades.

But if there is anyone out there who believes what Varun Gandhi says, like the BJP which might be having gleeful visions of a Saffron Gandhi, they’ll most probably be proven wrong before the 2009 political season ends. Because there is none other more Secular than a Gandhi. It doesn’t matter to a Gandhi if you slaughter a cow, a muslim or a sikh. It doesn’t matter to a Gandhi if you do shilanyas or destroy a mosque or you forcibly castrate a thousand. It doesn’t matter to a Gandhi if you are a tamil terrorist or an Akali radical. Capitalism, socialism or public or private banks don’t matter. Nuclear deal or no deal does not matter. Forcible evictions for a car factory or a Kalawati doesn’t matter. Democracy or Article 356 or Emergency does not matter. All that matters to a Gandhi is the Gandhi’s right to power. In every possible way, a Gandhi is truly secular. Only arguable exception is Mohandas Karamchand asli Gandhi. Then again, even Varun wouldn’t dream of being a doosra Sanjay Gandhi. One reason is India has changed.  But a more persuasive reason is that Sanjay Gandhi’s mother’s name meant ‘India’ at one point in time.

The Gandhis contesting on the Congress ticket at least seem to have come to terms with their mortal nature, given the pre-poll alliances they are building. But some people back home in Kerala seem to be so keenly out of touch with reality (like  nakli Iron Man of India’s website) that they are indeed as Varun nakli Gandhi says ‘raising their middle fingers’ at Hindus.

Like Archbishop Daniel Acharuparambil of the Latin Catholic Church.

The powerful Latin Catholic Church in Kerala has written to Congress president Sonia Gandhi urging the party to consider Hybi Eden, chief of the Congress’ student wing, as party candidate for the Ernakulam Lok Sabha seat. - The Hindu

‘Powerful‘ as in,

Ironically, whenever the church sponsored a Congress candidate, with public statements and pastoral letters, he lost. Edezhath, a close confidant of the high priests, lost by over 70,000 votes to an LDF independent in 2004. - DNA

Here, as I am located, in the heart of the Ernakulam constituency, this stupid letter which claims even the number of votes Acharuparambil has will do no good to the candidate, the Congress party or the larger Catholic interests but will only help consolidate Hindu and Muslim votes in favour of CPM’s arguably weakest candidate in the state - Sindhu Joy. If Hybi is indeed the candidate and if Sindhu defeats him, Acharuparambil Archbishop will have to wear a uniquely malayali ‘thorthu mundu’ over his head while he ventures out of his den in Varapuzha.

Perhaps what Acharuparambil Archbishop should have done was to take a leaf out of Nair Service Society’s (NSS) Narayana Panicker’s Book of Strategics. This is how it goes - tell the media that you’ll defeat 10 candidates (across 20 constituencies), and tell them that the names are secret. After the election, minimum 20 candidates will be defeated, and then, THEN tell the media how effective you were in defeating 10 people and claim how powerful Samsthakerala Nairs are.

P.S: The two parties, CPM and Congress who fight for the torch of Indian Secularism, could may be go through this very simple test to prove their secularism (at least in the next 20 years) - A Christian Candidate in Malappuram or Ponnani; A Hindu Candidate in Eranakulam and a A Muslim Candidate in Kottayam.(how about next 50 years?)

The long and arduous wait got over ten minutes back when the first rains of summer gracefully descended on the Queen of the Arabian Sea. A colleague of mine expressed our collective fear in the evening when he said that the summer rain seemed to be betraying us like the economy. Sitting in the balcony, puffing on my Ramdoss, looking at the flaring KSEB transformer a few hundred feet away, I understand why they call us Keralites a pampered race.

It is three years since I started this blog, sitting by the side of a lake, drinking my cold coffee, biding my time.

After 300 Posts, 3,076 comments (of which 2,584 were approved) and 14,840 curious travails of technology called spam comments, it remains that my blogging pretty much typifies Alice’s ordeal in wonderland.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where –” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. (Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 6).

Naughty naughty cat this one.

But why write, especially blog? Though I am under strict instruction from my lady doctor and my boss to not think for more than 3 seconds, once in a while I hide in my cubicle and think voraciously till my pack is over and I have to go get another. Thinking is banned in public places.

In a recent article, Sachitanandan, the malayalam poet, talks about Vyasan, the authour of Mahabharata. He talks about D D Kosambi’s interpretation of the history of Mahabharata where Kosambi cites perhaps the oldest recovered text of Mahabharata which had about 10,000 slokas compared to the 24,000 sloka and the 100,000 sloka of the arguably future versions. Surprisingly, this text of Mahabharata does not even mention a character called Krishna nor has the Bhagawad Gita embedded. Now the mammoth proportions and the classical tragedy of the Kuru clan notwithstanding, millions of wannabe writers and philosophers over the many millennia, would have sustained an incisive professional jealousy with the man who created the character of Krishna and condensed the Upanishads into the Gita. Sachitanandan at this point reveals the possibility that Vyasa may not be one person. Anyone who added to the Mahabharata could have become a Vyasa. Vyasa as a collective. Historically that might explain the superhuman effort that went into the compilation of Mahabharata, and may be explain the diversity of its ideas and intricacies.

Blogs as a collective. Two thousand years from now, neither you nor I will dispute the ‘fact’ that Blogger wrote this mammoth treatise called blogs. But even today, are we evolving as a super-collective, interlinked, symbiotic, regulating super organism. May be we do not see it when we look at ourselves, but may be the Hubble telescope sees it, the NewyorkTimes sees it, may be the Obamas see it. We don’t know, may be we are like ants - a super organism.

The article gets more interesting. Vyasa had written the epic after the death of Dritharashtra, which is after the war. And Vyasa himself is a regular in Mahabharata. There are several instances where Vyasa tries to prevent the war, but he fails. So may be when he failed, the next best thing for him to do was to chronicle the events as they happened. Sachitanandan says a writer is perhaps a person who fails to intervene.

Do we write because we cannot intervene? Cannot afford to intervene? or we failed in intervening?

As for me, when movies and politics get cluttered and uninspiring, there is always poetry to look forward to,

madira meiN jaane ko ghar se chaltaa hai peenewaala
kis path se jaaooN asmanjas meiN hai wo bhola bhaala
alag alag pathu batalaathi sab paR maiN ye bataata hooN
raah pakaD tu ek chalaa-chal paa jaayega madhushaala

Each passing year, is a time to look back and make a critical introspection. But that never happens. I am good at reading between the lines and categorizing Bloggers with some certainty. While this skill has been sharpened over the years in identifying intellectual-sex-maniacs, hypocrite-fact-devoid-dolls, hypochondriacal-flowery-roys, apolitical-perverts, template-humorists, developmental-rapists, marx’s-daddists, and clueless-rightwing-sitting-ducks, it hasn’t really helped me change any of their attributes which are part of this blog too. While discussing a blog, I went to the extent of claiming that the blogger ‘views history as starting at one place and ending at another’. At least one tenth of such criticism could have resulted in a few better posts in my blog. But like all other bloggers I continue to be critical of the society at large and quite oblivious to my short comings. But I will fight and then kill you with data, not extreme prejudice.

But an anniversary is also an opportunity to drill into the groundwater of yesterday and splash it on the present for a few moments. It could be enlightening and a some time pass. So let me list down a couple of posts (I hope to find 10) which I might re-wind to, mostly random posts.

The 7th Standard Text book controversy

The Kerala Government continues to refuse demands for withdrawal of the 7th Standard Textbook which promotes Atheism and questions God.In completely unrelated news, the Monsoon has literally kept out of Kerala, the state football team failed to reach the Santosh Trophy semi-finals and K Karunakaran turned 90.
The message from up above is clear. God Exists and he is punishing us!

The Indian Babel

Who is condemning Raj Thackeray? Is it the Namma Kannadiga who once and for all destroyed the fabric of Bangalore when Rajkumar died, who destroyed shops in Brigade and MG Road which didn’t have hoardings in Kannada. Remember Bangalore is just 36% Kannadiga. Is it the Tamilian who blocked buses and trains from Kerala in the “National” Highway on a petty Railway Zone issue. Is it the Assamese who is about to kill a couple of Biharis who are building roads in their state. I hear it when Raj Thackeray asks why Bengal needs to erupt when Saurav Ganguly is dropped from the team. Do they gather around their televisions and condemn Raj Thackeray?

US school shootings

Today they had a small prayer meeting where a slain child’s mother prayed with the killer’s mother - maybe they talked to god about those small things only mothers talk about. The clippings on the networks were heart rendering as a small village prepares to bury their little ones. They have forgiven the man who did it all and his family is receiving the forgiveness. It is easier to forgive than to receive it with all the humility and grace - and Carl Robert’s mother is doing exactly the same.

US - The issue of immigration

Do you deport a person who has stayed in the US for decades,paid his taxes,obeyed the laws of the land citing nuances of immigration procedures.Do you separate him from his family because the law is blind.Do you uproot people in flesh and blood,crush there livelihoods and break their lives because your legislations are unchangeable.Will you throw a child out of school citing issues of national security.

Modis - Bigger and small

Modi asked the crowd, ”What should be done to a man who stored illegal arms and ammunition? You tell me what should have been done to Sohrabuddin?”

The crowd replied, ”Kill him, kill him”.

“Well, that is it. Do I have to take Sonia Gandhi’s permission to do this? Hang me if I have done anything wrong,” responded Modi.

Poems from the Dirty Old Man

There’s nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death. They don’t honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can’t hear it. Most people’s deaths are a sham. There’s nothing left to die

The Loveless Tale of Karma

Once,a long time back I left my elder sister. Tonight I do not know her name. I do not know how to talk to her. She stayed there, I moved on. She, the tree, the green grass and me, the animal, the human. Nature selected me or so I say. The pain of separation does not bother me anymore. But why do I feel incomplete when it rains, when I see those blue mountains. Is it that a shroud of forgetfulness clears. A sunbeam enters the stagnant pond. Loud music from the next room, another shroud, another night sets in.

Its been a while since we left our village. Tonight, I take my big roaring machines from the city to my village. Tonight the younger sister will break a twig off her older sister. She will forget everything. The city needs to grow, grow into the villages. Our machines will build highways over the villages, we need to reach places fast. The village was forgotten long back, we need to build our cities faster, we need growth and development. The path to progress, the poison smoke of the factories which build our vehicles and our air-conditioners will be located in the hearts of our villages. Our urban ugliness will be shared, like leprosy, to our elder sister. The loveless tale of Karma.

Kamal’s Dasavatharam - Review

The movie reeks of a fancy dress competition, with Kamal playing 10 characters (a lousy world record for INR 100 crore) AND 5 of the 10 characters : George Bush, Christian Fletcher, Shinghen Narahasi,Kalifullah Mukhtaar and Krishnaveni literally wearing masks. Going by this logic Kamal can get one of those Rs.5 tiger masks from Marina Beach and claim he is playing a tiger in his next movie.

No Country for Old men - Best Picture 2007

“The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it.I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job –- not to be glorious. But I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. You can say it’s my job to fight it but I don’t know what it is anymore.”

M N Vijayan and the CPIM

Our forefathers realized that sacrifice is a very fundamental social reality. There is no higher sacrifice than death. Because your life is the maximum you can give for a cause, and it is a very strong factor in driving a cause. Hence sacrifice becomes the initial capital of an ideology. The idea of unity among the oppressed class leads to the idea of sacrifice for the oppressed class. This is the greatest sacrifice the Party can do for the social human being. The meaning, value and history of KrishnaPillai’s or Bhagat Singh’s sacrifice is that they did not do it for themselves, but for the society. Hence martyrdom constructs ethos. Ethos creates an Organization. And then the Organization develops, expands - it becomes a Miracle, it becomes a Spectacle, it becomes a Mob.