Most mornings bring me this country’s quivering heart on a platter, drenched in faded black and white, and burnished with the glaze of development advertorials. It’s heart is still beating, but the pulse is feeble. For days, now I have been thinking about the controversy around Shah Rukh’s son Aryan, and the added ridiculousness of the #BoycottFabIndia campaign. Our Bhakts haven’t skipped a beat after India lost to Pakistan, and have redirected their ire towards Mohammad Shami. One wonders, who is next?
There is nothing new that I can bring to the table about this whole affair.
Paromita Vohra, in her characteristic witty way, in one of her articles, had highlighted a beautiful line by Shah Rukh Khan from an old interview:
“Shah Rukh spoke at length about his father, “who had not done anything much, but had performed wonders (kamaal)”, as a sort of explanation for himself. “I learnt this idea from him, of mehman nawazi,” said Shah Rukh. He went on to define mehman nawazi not so much as an action, but as an attitude, and one that partially explained his own stardom: “Somehow when I see someone, I just know how to make them happy and I want to make them happy.”
I literally stood up holding my phone, and smiled as I thought of this sentiment. This is it, Shah Rukh’s secret, the peg on which this country hangs its conscience.
This Mehman Nawazi is embodied in that characteristic Shah Rukh pose with one knee slightly bent, his arms thrown open, embracing the world, and that dimple that could melt glaciers. This is the same Mehman Nawazi you will find in Mannat, where he walks out to his balcony every day, waving and smiling for his fans, secure in the knowledge that he is making people happy. This is the Mehman Nawazi of warm hugs, and bade bhai waale jokes. This is also the swag of Miyabhai ki daring, and the surrender of Maula Mere Lele Meri Jaan. This is the confidence and yearning of palat, and the juvenile shamelessly cool style of Naam tho suna Hoga.
This is the warm love of a city that covers your shivering shoulders with a shawl on a cold wintry day, that offers steaming tea, and an awning when it rains.
This is at the very core of everything our culture should stand for. And this is what the fascists want to thwart.
I saw the funny side of it when I read a Subhash Ghai tweet directed to the film fraternity - “Where are you now”, he fumed, “When the person who has stood up for all of you is in trouble? Where is your conscience now?” It was something along those lines, perhaps more intense. Ghai took down the tweet and has been somewhat circumspect in his bytes since. But it was quite something to see the director of Pardes making such ‘anti-national’ calls :)
It sits in language, this terrible lacuna of imagination that is represented by those in power. The majoritarian impulse is lazy and diluted, it is hindered by its own misguided excitement. To break the groping fingers of this blind hatred, sometimes it is better to deploy language. To open the window of love, beauty and the measured silence of truth, on the dark cellars of their ideas.
I was reading, the other day, a poem that will draw you in with its first flourish itself - ‘Making love in Urdu’. Ammar Aziz, the poet and filmmaker from Lahore, had shared it on his social media. This is the second time I had met this poem, and I fell in love with it all over again, and thought how apt it was, as I read it between the barrage of anti-Urdu, anti-Muslim type hashtags.
Tum nahi samjhoge Bhaktjano . Kuch Kuch hota hain.
Note: This poem is part of a sparkling anthology of erotic poetry edited by Srividya Sivakumar and Paresh Tiwari. ‘The Shape of Poem’ can be purchased here.
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Cheers, and dher saara pyaar, as always.