The gravity of perversity

Perversity --> Deliberately (and obstinately) deviating from what is good (courtesy Webster) ; being perversely wicked

We are liable to confuse it with a relatively more known word -perversion.

Perversion --> 1. An aberrant sexual practice that is preferred to normal intercourse
2. The action of perverting something (turning it to a wrong use)
for instance - "it was a perversion of justice" (courtesy Webster)

I recognize that what I am going to say can not be said in prose without making the whole water turbid. Also, it can hardly be defended by arguments or substantiated by ready evidence. The thought is very subtle and its understanding presumes an observant, sensitive and sympathetic mind. Ideally this thought should have been expressed in verse. Only poetry could have carried its butterfly-like fragility with safety and dignity. Only poetry is capable to stir a pond without making the water turbid. But I am not a poet.

I am going to dive in the sea of thought in hope of some gems. Lets see what I come out with. We start with a question.

Have you ever thought of a duel in which the harder you hit, the harder you hurt yourself; the deeper you slash other's breast, the more copious your own heart bleeds?

I am sure all of us have. It can happen when you respect your opponent(whom you wound), when you consider him not exactly separate from yourself, when the distinction between him and yourself is deceptive, unreal and situational; when you can not slay him like 'the other' and sleep peacefully. Our literature is full of such complex conflicts. Remember Mahabharat.

It can happen only when you begin to get a sort of pleasure in pain. This pleasure is black in colour and sinister in nature. It breeds an array of repentant nights. We call it perverse pleasure. It contains the elements of sadomasochism, as a psychologist would perhaps like to say.

But then why would someone indulge in this ghastly business unless he/she is insane? Right, but we see that all of us have insane moments in the age of tired days and restless nights. And so much confusion around us. In those dark, destructive, insane moments we do lash our swords and cut the throats of our own friends. Later we lament over their dead bodies. Oh the futility of sleepless nights and moist pillows!

But we can do better, something less helpless. This post is an attempt to stimulate questions that prompt us to identify a pattern, a pattern of circumstances that are liable to trigger perverse behaviour in a normal person. It is a attempt committed to decode the mechanism and demystify the overpowering power of these insane moments. To defeat your enemy, you must know him.

I have seen this enemy more than once in my life. And I remember some of his prominent features that will help us draw his rough sketch. Whenever you sense his minotory proximity, run away. Or shoot him.

1. Perverse mood - When you secretly *long* for a situation that give you a chance to unleash your unenviable stock of words that sting infernally, you sense that you are in a perverse mood.

Often we actually prepare ourselves for the decisive battle, especially when something irritates us to the limit of our tolerance. Not appals or repels, just irritates. Like a buzz of a gadfly in your ear. Like dripping of water from your bathroom tap. Like bad breath or body odor. You just can not stand it. Nor can you justify the magnitude of your frustration by means of reason. Most of the relationships break not due to differences of opinions on India's foreign policy but due to an incorrigible and irritating habit, for instance, sending those nerve-wrecking forwards that threaten a doom if you don't forward them to your friends! As silly and as unreasonable(for some) as that!

But how you say something is often more important than what you say, especially in personal matters. We must watch our manner. A perverse mood makes us absolutely incapable of keeping any pleasant or even agreeable atmosphere around us. It's sort of mental acidity due to indigestion of some disturbing thoughts. So, when in a perverse mood, the golden rule is - save yourself from conversations and dont let discussions bother you. In short, postpone all the programmes of socialization. Cancel all dates. There are so many things to be done in isolation. When others are in that mode, waiting for an opportunity to trample on your nerves, again do the same. This is time-tested recipe. My experience substitutes for any further rationalization you might ask for.

Also, this mood is contagious in nature. And I have seen that a mistake has its own momentum, and has a snowball effect. It's hard to stop it. Once you are in the game, it's difficult to get out of it. It has a gravity that sucks you within it. Escape is not easy.

2. Shrinkage of egoes - The fission of we into you and I takes place sooner than we come to realize thanks to the perverse discussion. And then their egoes abandon themselves in a wild strife of meaningless recriminations (alternatively ominously invulnerable silence) and knowingly injure each other's precious pride with insensitive cruelty. Followed by vulgar mudwrestling and disgraceful wallowing in the each other's blood. The sad thing is - all this more due to inertia typical of perversity than any resentment!

Result-a wall is created between you and I. Time heals but the wall gets cemented by the pasaage of time. Why? Here come some simple but interesting observations.

a. Guilt: One who feels the pangs of a guilty conscience is more(!) likely to resent the thought of reconciliation. Saying 'sorry' sometime disturbs the political balance inherently and tacitly established in a relationship. Apology is a luxury that can be afforded only by those who are in a position to assume moral superiority. A guilt-ridden person is more prone to blindly recidivate to the easy refuge of biting bitterness and vicious cruelty. It delivers him of the uneasy situation where he has to act what he can not, for long. So he screams 'Let me be!' and flees to the place he belongs to. No one wants to come face to face with his inferiority complex. That requires a big, very big heart.

A sense of guilt rocks the base of one's moral position and clouds the ability to choose the right direction. It's like being left on a strange land without a map. It engenders chaos and panic in a conscientious mind. And then that god damned Murphy's law. Overwhelmed by an unsettling scruple, in order to get rid of the immediate cause of shame and torment, a man does wrong after wrong and each blunder presses him to commit the next. Someone who places an inordinately high value on virginity is very likely to go berserk if somehow stripped of it. Try to understand this point. Puritans think in terms of binary opposites and that's why very hard to handle.

"There are two kinds of men and only two. And that young man is one kind. He is high-minded. He is pure. He's the kind of man the world pretends to look up to, and in fact despises. He is the kind of man who breeds unhappiness, particularly in women. Do you understand?

I think you do. There's another kind. Not high-minded, not pure, but alive. Now, that your tastes at this time should incline towards the juvenile is understandable; but for you to marry that boy would be a disaster. Because there are two kinds of women. There are two kinds of women and you, as we well know, are not the first kind. You, my dear, are a slut." - Komarovski (Doctor Zhivago)

A cruel man is often a pitiably confused man.

b. Pride: I am beginning to realize that maintaining a relationship is an art. It comes naturally to some. Others learn. You must know when and where to stop. You must not forget the inviolable sanctity of territorial boundaries. It is crutial.

There are times when you and I forgive each other in our hearts but do not say so. Why? Because of their egoes. In order to save their faces. Here I assume that our understanding of the concept of 'face' is sound enough. So unless one has something to save his face, he wouldnt come forward to patch up. Even when he comes to you and apologises, you might not be in a position to forgive and make up. Because though it is possible to live alone with bad memories, it is difficult to live together with them. It is embarassing to let the other fellow know that you can live with something that bad too. The fear of his taking you for granted in future precludes the possibilities of restoration of erstwhile chemistry. This is, I think, why girls tend to conceal their true feelings and hesitate to express themselves, in order not to look easy. It's all about the weight of your character, the perception of your social image and its management. It's about face-saving. And the social contract expects us to allow this bit of hypocrisy. But sometimes we deny every possible face-saving excuse, we consciously block every returning road in the heat of conflict. And most of the times we regret it, since many times the moments are insane not the man.

So we see that the perverse behaviour leads to shrinkage and creation of a wall between two individuals. Besides, it leads to a reversal to nature stereotypical to their surroundings. This process is deliberate, obstinate and essentially in reaction to something. Whatever is common is discarded. The bridges that join are blasted off. This is a way to distance oneself from the other and feel (and sometimes flaunt) a freshness of freedom. This pseudo-freedom is also perverse in nature. What is freedom when you are too much aware of it!

This is a complicated subject and offering a solution here would be too ambitious a task for me. So I would refrain from that. This post is by no means meant to be a conclusive article. Rather it is just a beginning to explore the deeper layers of human psychology and to understand our own behaviour in trying circumstances. The whole idea of this exercise is to identify that there is a bottomless abyss called perversity and there are certain signboards around it. Remember these signs to avoid a fall. Keeping this in mind becomes our point of departure.

Quizzing: How long? How far?

What is the difference between man and encyclopedia?

Ah! what a foolish question! This question *presupposes* certain similarities between the two. I hope you understand this argument. You look for differences only between those things that fall under the same category. I would not explain this further by citing examples lest I might end up hurting your ego. I trust your intellect. Lets go ahead.

We were looking for the similarities between man and encyclopedia. Is there any? Let's see.

Wikipedia defines an encyclopedia as 'a compendium of knowledge'. Well, I would say it is rather a compendium of information. This is because I consider knowledge to be a layer above the basic layer that consists of information. Roughly saying, the dead data constitute but the foundation of our cognitive super-structure.

A man is much more than just a compendium of raw data. Rather, a man is a man *only* when he has not only information and knowledge but also has what is essentially humanly, a proper understanding of the world, which enables him to take judicious decisions keeping in sight various possible implications of varying degree and scope.*

A man is useful for himself and for others not because of the gigabytes of data he stores in his mind. He is somebody only when he can afford something that Google or wikipedia can not. Can Google appreciate similarities between two seemingly dissimilar things and detect the subtle differences between two apparantly identical things? Can Wikipedia recognize an interesting pattern in descrete data? Can a software sort and arrange data? Can a computer program distinguish between relevant and irrelevant data? No. Never. But man must be able to do it. You can not mix up all the chemicals in a flask to make a medicine. Can you? You must be able to sense the quantitative as well as qualitative 'weight' of various data to come up with something sensible and valuable. All this can be done only by man, not by any robot, not by any software or search engine. Only man can do complex causal analysis, develope theories and design models, based on previous experiences and observations, in order to fortify the mankind from the treacheries of time.

How do we do that? For that we need to climb the stairs and reach the top floor where alive wisdom exists.

Education helps an individual to bring forth (to educe means to bring forth; look at the beauty here - the assumption is that the ultimate knowledge exists within us! where do we look to see the truth?) the hidden knowledge from the deep recesses of his own mind.

How different this is from loading data into a hard disc! Quizzing is nothing but a mechanism that effects uploading of information in a passive mind. It is a mechanical and a de-humanizing process. It is an act done on mind and not by mind! Technically speaking, your processor remains idle while your hard disc is acted upon. Hope I am being understood.

And may I tell you the most dangerous thing? Quizzing seems to be, oh my God!, a form of education!! What could be farther from reality! But no wonder, at surface they resemble so remarkably that sometimes most of us fail to see their very opposite nature. We fail to see how the persuit of quizzing impedes the very process of meaningful education, how it retards the very growth of higher faculties in a man, how it poisons the very spirit of enquiry. We fail to see that it prevents us from reaching at the top floor.

It detains us at the ground floor by its meretricious charms, by offering us petty success and trifle glory, till we lose our will and energy that is required to climb the stairs. Those who fall for it keep picking pebbles at earth. And they keep doing it forever because the pebbles are infinite in number and ever keep growing. Even a million life is not sufficient to complete the job!

It took me very long to realize the deceptive and dubious nature of success. I have seen that sometimes, more often than we suspect, a bigger failure is hidden in a success. I have articulated my feelings in 'the power of congratulations' also. Sometimes, it is not the failure but the success that is lamentable! It is better for some prayers to go unanswered. It is better for some proposals to be rejected. It hurts for a day or an year but it saves from life-long misery.

Well, I do understand the advantages of quizzing. But the law of diminishing returns can hardly be more suitably applicable to anything else. In school, I believe, the importance of data-collection can hardly be overemphasized. In fact, in schools, the very nature of pedagogy supports, and quite understandably, the introduction of a student to the 'general knowledge' of the world around him, which builds the foundation of his thought structure. And quizes provides a platform to the students to test themselves against one-another and pursue their activity.

But the cardinal question is : What do you do with the data?

But after a particular time, it is desirable for him to start climbing up as it is a necessary condition of attaining adulthood. It requires judgement to decide when to stop collecting pebbles in the bag and rush upwards. It is crutial because the heavier the bag, the harder it becomes to climb up. The ground floor has its own gravity.

After this particular time, I dont respect the blind collection of pebbles. For me, it is just a childish infatuation. And taking a pride in this is nothing but hopeless insanity. And guess what sponsers this insanity? Quiz. What else!

Quizzing, after a certain level, becomes a monster, a Frankestein. It turns into a vampire that sucks the blood of its victims to acquire its strength. The poor victim is seen to be cramming his mind with all types of crap - useless nouns and numbers without any sense of purpose - and sometimes stuffs his mind with something as ridiculous as logos of goddamn companies (pray tell me how does that matter anyway?) and the cast of unknown teleserials that had been telecasted somewhere sometime! And they invade your mind with their infantry of information. Hello boss! I will not let even one cell of my brain be wasted by keeping this shit in it. So spare me! And even you must be sane enough to decide what must be outrightly rejected without even giving a second thought.

I am sure my wise reader will find many such instances. Quizzing after intermediate is like a dangerous disease for people with decent academic background (in accordance to the law of diminishing returns). It becomes a pathological passion, an unhealthy obsession that leads to *indiscriminate* acquisition of data, just for the heck of it! After having known the knowables already, but further pressed by its competetive nature, a quiz-bitten man tries to collect more and more information about more and more. What good does that serve? I fail to understand that. It just delays the process of bringing forth the real character of an individual.

Quizzing becomes like an opium that keeps them away from the real issues of life. The footage and glamor given by media makes it even more irresistible. But it must be resisted. It must be shown its place.

A man must resist to be a quizzer who is nothing but a wanna-be encyclopedia an thus an ordained loser; a bonsai; a semi-human with no independent views and opinion, with no taste and understanding, with no education.

I repeat - Data are like raw material. Raw material is used to make something useful. It can not be treated as an end product. It has no value in itself. Only the necessary(that might be used in the formation of an idea) data should be kept in mind. Rest everything should be immediately jettisoned to keep the ship from sinking, to keep us able to climb up to the top floor.

*Given the nature and scope of Quizes, I will keep my arguments, to study the ill-effects of Quizzing, well within the intellectual domain only.

Remove judge to save justice

06.02.06 Peshawar

Sachin Tendulkar 100*
India 305/4 in 45 overs

The legend has carved yet another history at the timeless walls of time. A milestone has been achieved yet again, 39th time for record's sake. Those who understand the language of numbers have been assured of a well-established truth - the God is NOT dead. The heretics who blasphemously talked about 'the beginning of an end' are once again convinced of their all-rounded ignorance without a word spoken. Leaving the non-believers wallow in the embarrassment of their ignominy, the God gracefully stretches his formidable frame before his awe-struck devotees whose eyes, glued on TV sets, are virtually on a pilgrimage. Oh how would words describe the gigantic tides leaping in the bubbling sea of people surrounding the scene! The incessant noise of screeching trumpets and the relentless cheer of clamoring crowd! The flags and faces painted with the colours of cricket. The drumming hearts, the gawking eyes, the heavy sighs and the unfaithful breaths. The air laden with passion and apprehension. Life in one part of the world has come to a standstill. Art has once again defied time.

The world prepares itself for his post-century innings, though quite differently across the Redcliff line. He stoops to reverse-sweep a tentative delivery from a frustrated hand. The tired ball keeps low, hits the gloves and dies after touching the pad. An appeal, surely better than the bowling, accompanied with a blind cry from the world around. The umpire raises his finger indicating an anti-climactic end of a great and potentially greater inning. The cricket droops its head in utter disappointment. The umpire defeats the spirit of game once again. Sachin, with a grace only he can afford to have, returns to the pavilion.

Later on, the commentary and the repeated replays revealed that he was declared out when he was not. The ball was a no ball. But the decision was irrevocable.

Result: India 328/10 in 49.2 overs and finally loses the match by 7 runs.

What is the meaning of this result? If you conduct the game with arbitrary decisions then how does the result count anyway?

- Come on pal, take it easy. After all it's just a game.
- May be for you. But for many it's not just a game. And you know very-well that you are talking nonsense.
- Ok. What do you want then?
- It hardly matters what I want. What matters is the choice between the genuineness of cricket and the powers of umpire. They can't coexist in the age when sophisticated technology soon shows the replay and exposes the ineptitude of umpire. A human, no matter how much skillful he is, is liable to misjudge and it is therefore absolutely unnecessary to encumber the umpire with this huge and controversial responsibility of ruling a batsman out in the age of ultra-accurate camera.

It's not a once-in-a-lifetime incident. If happens frequently and it used to happen frequently too, but then it was not detected. Now it is detected and condemned. Now when we are in a position to bring about more transparency and more justice to the nature of the game then not doing it seems to me nothing but an absurd nostalgia to an erroneous past and an infatuation of a useless convention. And it seems quite incomprehensible to me how can cricket tolerates someone in the arena who is an obstruction in the enforcement of the rules that define and shape the game. How can law itself entertain the existence of a judge who is a living wall across the road to justice!

The course, if not result, of this match would have been different had the umpire counseled his sense rather than eyes and consulted the third umpire, the only umpire who should have the right to pronounce the 'life' sentence.

Rang De Basanti. A generation awakens?

Director's Note: There are two primary choices in life - to accept conditions as they exist or accept responsibility for changing them. Rang De Basanti is about changing them.

To do or not to do, that's the question.

Let's look at the pleasant colours of the movie.

Story. Rang De Basanti has a story to tell. That alone makes it a considerably superior to the the other contemporary formula movies running in the theatres. This movie draws an interesting parallel between pre-independence India and the India we live in. It also seems to suggest a flattering possibility of the presence of a dormant super-hero in each one of us. O wow! Feels Good!

Performance. A good performance is the least what you expect from Aamir Khan. And he doesn't disappoint you at all. The rest of the cast is also nice. Surprisingly, Rang De Basanti is not an Aamir Khan movie per se. He shares the screen time almost equally with other actors who have done well too. Atul Kulkarni distinguishes himself by his passionate expressions and powerful dialogues delivery. Siddharta looks convincing in his role and Sharman Joshi tickles the audience with his Haryana-accented humor. Soha Ali Khan does better than what I had expected from her. I wish Madhavan had a longer role in the movie. He is always good to watch. And this girl, Sue, is good too. But great actors like Om Puri and Waheeda Rehmaan have been under-utilized and wasted. There is not much for them to do in this movie.

Songs. I get repelled by beats very easily. Rock has always been a noise to my ears. My taste of music is, I admit, anachronistic. But for a change Rehman makes it quite a 'youthful' experience this time. The songs celebrate the spirit of the movie and colours your mood. The title song sung by Daler Mehndi is just too good. The lyrics as well as the timing of Roo-ba-roo in the movie is very nice. Overall a good musical score.

*Akshaya has written a fascinating review of the movie, especially of the music. Read it here.

Theme. It's a nice attempt. Movies, believe it or not, influence our psyche more than anything else. Especially in India where people derive their values (!) from movies, however absurd it might seem to you, any attempt to show something meaningful is welcome. As I am not very unforgiving with the idea of moralizing and preaching, which is the latent fallout of movies based on a socio-political theme, I enjoyed in particular the dialogues and discussions in the movie.

Now I'll talk about what was not so good in the movie.

The treatment of script does justice neither with the spirit of the script nor with the choice of the script. Result: Rang De Basanti paints your mood with eye-dazzling fluorescent colours, which goes down the drain in the first shower you take.

Characters: To start with the characters don't look genuine at all. They look made-up and they behave as if they are acting, as if a camera is watching them, as if they are living for someone's entertainment! They remind me of a 10th class boy, who in order to make himself interesting to the girl he loves, makes a big fool of himself. They try too hard to impress the audience. They look good but they look fake; distastefully, artlessly and hopelessly fake. The Director uses them as puppets. They have a life but they don't have a life of their own. In second half they lose their whatever scanty identity they have had in first half. They are used as mere mouthpieces. They say what they are asked to say; they say things that are incoherent with the portrayal of their character. Very hastily and equally clumsily they are pushed into playing the roles that were ludicrous to their taste. And hence their effect doesnt last long. It dies with the day.

Transformation: Ostensibly the transformation of these fun-loving cool dudes into the worthy successors of our freedom fighters was the soul of the movie. Who says it is impossible? No, it is surely possible.

-to kya karein?

-maar daalo.

-kya???

-haan.maar daalo use.

The bereaved buddy *asks* them to kill the defence minister and lo! kaam ho gaya, madam.

Again, possible! Oh yes it is. But sorry, I am not convinced.

Nonsense is a group activity and most of the group activities are essentially nonsensical in nature. Hardly anything meaningful or productive ever takes place in a group. Even individuals capable of better things talk nothing of any intellectual or even emotional import in groups. Of course I do understand that there are exceptions when people of similar interests come together and make groups to learn and grow together. Even then, I have observed, the mediocrity prevails and ultimately the main purpose gets defeated by petty political conflicts. Or romantic affairs.

Whenever one feels an inner compulsion of doing something he believes in, he goes alone. Each one of us fights his/her own battle. Each one of us chooses his/her own battlefield. This is the greatest burden and the greatest privilege as well. At any rate, one can not do anything of any worth in a group where a high 'hypocricy-quotient' is of utmost necessity, for mere admission in the group. Havent you noticed how the same individual behaves in one-to-one interactions and how utterly differently he behaves in groups? Havent you noticed how you yourself behave in a group?

This is what makes Dil Chahta Hai superior to Rang De Basanti. The latter looks pedestrian in front of the former. The latter is fake and the former was genuine. The transformation, nay metamorphosis, of the whole cool gang at the same time by the same incident in the same way? May be possible. Sue finds all the actors for her dream project in the same gang! Possible. All of them turn out to be having hidden DNAs of great heroes! Possible. The same question assail their minds and they are rescued by the same answer. Possible. So many possibilities in a row? Possible. Okay. But this possibility is not any more possible than the possibility of my liking it. In Dil Chahta Hai, the friends laugh together and dance together but when their destinies call them, they go alone. This is how life is. Nature has its own aesthetic taste.

Stereotypes and Simulacrum: And a particular observation has started getting on my nerves. I wonder why all punjabis have to be alike in nature? Why each one of them has to burst out in a flurry of Bhangra at slightest provocation? Why should one talk more than that is needed and more loudly than that can be tolerated? Why can't one even pretend to be thoughtful, even to look different, even to attract a female, even for God's sake? Why this burden of 24*7 enthusiasm? I am tired of these stereotypical pan-chewing biharis and chak-de-fatte punjabis. The filmmakers portray punjabis as arrant fools capable of nothing better than nonsense dance, as if they have to dance in order to forget the perpetual itch in their arse. God! A man has to die to make them leave the dance floor! And how credulously we have accepted it all though we very-well know that it's far from the world we live in. It seems that these film-makers don't at all respect for our intelligence and our capacity to appreciate the subtleties and various nuances in a character. It's ludicrous that a villain must look like a villain. So much sterotypes and so much kitsch. But kitsch has a power to overshadow the reality. It has done it again. This movie is a triumph of kitsch over everything genuine.

I wonder what would a foreigner, who knows punjabis (or biharis, for that matter) only through popular hindi cinema, say if he/she meets a punjabi who happens to be in pensive mood.

- you said you were punjabi?

- yes.

- but how come you are not dancing?

- ?

I'm sure he/she would take our pensive punjabi as exceptional or abnormal or lesser punjabi. And if our poor chap happens to be not very rich then o my God! What kind of punjabi are you? This is what happens when perception differs widely from reality and separated by a deep ditch of confusion.

Baudrillard's simulacrum and hyper-reality suddenly seemed to have more meaning than I had previously understood. As DJ looks more punjabi than our pensive punjabi. Similarly the gang looks more young than youth itself. I wondered how? And I wondered how ridiculous these guys would look if not backed by this noisy background music? All the effect, all the noisy gaiety and vacuous machoism would vanish in a flash leaving them look like a bunch of jokers with painted-nose in a third-rate fancy-dress show. Their youth was supported by nothing but noise and would die with it. So dance, or die.

This movie pretends as if we have been oblivious of the corruption in our political system. It wants a credit for letting us see the similarity between our former and present rulers. And it claims that a generation awakens. Awakens? To what?

Let me digress a little. We are living in changing times. After independence, this is the time of biggest upheavals. And unlike 1947, this change has affected even the lower middle-class also. Then I don't think things concerning our everyday life changed so drastically. Our constitution remained the same and police continued to be a repressive force in the hands of those few who were in power. The administration continued to second-fiddle the politicians and the judiciary rather deteriorated after independence. Hardly anything changed. Yes, the elite class surely claimed their right to rule and they distributed power and wealth among themselves. Nothing much changed for we, the people.

But this change has much deeper penetration. This post-globalization economic and cultural change has swept the entire nation under its great wings. The big ship has landed into the river and all the boats are rocking by the giant waves thus created. Some are being tossed about and some have been capsized. Either you climb at the big ship or you drown. Everyone is groping for the rope. But it is not easy as your neighbour also wants it. And he can knock you down to get it. So better you knock him down before he does to you.

Our values are left in the boats we had deserted. We dont know what is right and what is wrong? We are culturally confused people. We have lost our memory. Who are we? What do we do? Where do we go? I think these are the questions to be answered. Urgently. The problem in our generation is this ever-widening economic disparity and this sudden realization of poverty (accentuated by the stark difference in lifestyle) in those who have been left behind in their boats rocking precariously in the turbulent river. I wont waste my words and your time anymore on it and will come back to Rang De Basanti.

I disagree to those who blame this movie to have endorsed violent means of political reformation. They must have forgotten the Q&A scene where Karan apologises for what he had done. Rang De Basanti has not recommended violence and it should not be criticized for doing what it has not done. Infact it doesnt offers any solution. It just asks us to do something about the problems around us instead of doing nothing. And I admire the movie for it. The movie has already suffered the nonsense of a dumb animal-lover who finds torture on animals only in movies and nowhere else. How helpless emotion looks in the embrace of sentimentality, especially when it is fake!

In the last, on a lighter note, I have known two types of movie, good movies and bad movies. Then I saw Rang De Basanti.

Go and watch this movie. With all its weaknesses it's worth a watch.