Indrani Mukherjea Saga: Reality TV Trumps Soap

Real life has trumped reel, or fact has outwitted fiction in its own game. The Sheena Bora murder mystery is turning out to be far racier than the wildest imagination of Bollywood script writers and TV news channel owners are already feeling giddy and wet dreaming about record-breaking spikes in TRP. 

The fact that the prime characters happen to be a high profile family and the arch villain Indrani Mukherjea, with no wealth or lineage, had reached this social upper crust by using her social climbing skills has added a dash of pizzazz to the tale.
 
However had some Bollywood film maker made a film based on a similar story line before this infamous incident unfolded on our TV screens, it would have been riddled with hurdles. First of all not many producers would have been intrepid enough to finance such a macabre script, with no heroes and easily more than fifty shades of villainy. In the next stage it would have run into trouble with censors, who would have advocated many cuts to make it Bharatiya sanskriti compliant.
 
After release the critics would have made a mincemeat out of it. Probably this is how Rajeev Masand would have reviewed the movie:

It would be gross understatement to say that the movie plot is too convoluted: A second wife of her third husband is charged along with her second husband of killing her daughter from her first husband who was having affair with her third husband's son from his first wife.
 
The plot is riddled with holes and leaves many things unexplained. The third husband has no idea whether the murdered girl is his wife's sister or her daughter. The girl goes missing for two years and everybody in the extended family has readily believed that she had gone to US.
 
The police also come across as bumbling idiots who do not pursue the case after stumbling across a body cut to pieces and packed in a suitcase. Surely the script writer has not done his homework and was way too lazy to tie up such loose ends.
 
A boring feast of gore and deceit. Watch it only at your peril. I would go with half out of five for this tedious mind numbing crime mystery marred by a brain dead script!!
 
But the recent events have proved that truth can be far spicier than fiction! And the harried middle class has found a new 'fix' to escape from their daily drudgery by gawking and tut-tutting at the permissiveness of the amoral rich on their 56-inch LCD screens.

To cash on this sentiment Bollywood scriptwriters may be busy pounding on their laptops, over numerous cups of 'cutting chai' or 'chhotta pegs', to churn out a blockbuster based on this 'true story'. Hopefully critics would take a more considerate view towards the bizarre twists and turns in the plot once these films are released.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Mumbai's Gangland Tales

Reading Dongri to Dubai by S Hussain Zaidi was like going through a guided tour of the evolution of organized crime in Mumbai. However my attempt here is not to do any formal review of the book, but recount some of the interesting nuggets in the bygone era.

When the country became independent it had espoused a brand of Fabian socialism, which later came to be known as Nehruvian socialism. The country was to be developed according to five year plans with emphasis on the public sector. The 'blood sucking' capitalists (some of them actually lived up to that reputation) were to be restricted using licence permit raj.

Another major credo of the Indian Government back then was 'self reliance' and hence goods produced by local manufacturers were to be encouraged and protected using prohibitively high customs duty on imported goods. During the Indira Gandhi era it was succinctly expressed in a slogan 'Be Indian, Buy Indian'. To be fair to them the import duty was there even during the British era, but the Indian government honed it as a potent weapon to earn revenue and keep the native manufacturing units ticking.

Hence the Indian middle class had to make do with electronic goods, vehicles and consumer products manufactured within the shores of the country. As for consumer electronic goods such as radio, record players, cassette tape recorders (both reduced to museum pieces in this pen-drive era) and watches the technology used by domestic manufacturers were quite primitive, when compared with their German and Japanese counterparts. There were also many fly-by-night operators who took customers for a ride by pawning of fake versions of globally famous brands like Phillips and later Sony.

All this only whetted the appetite for 'phoren' products and ripened the prospects of a grey market. Smuggling in independent India started off as means of undercutting the import duty. One of the early pioneers who thought on these lines was Haji Mastan. He felt if he can bring in these goods without paying import duty, he can make a huge profit. As a justification for all this he professed that import duty was relic of British India and hence need not be respected. He went on to capture India's imagination and even acted as muse to many of the Bollywood script writers.

Similarly as part of this austerity mantra the import of gold was restricted. But for Indian household the lure of gold has been second nature and cuts across all class barriers and even eras. Even today it is a major bugbear for finance ministry mandarins battling with the country's runaway import bills. So to satiate this craving the smuggling of gold began and soon it proved many times more lucrative than electronic goods.

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Haji Mastan rose to prominence when the organised crime in Mumbai was at its age of innocence - when there was little khoon kharaba and gang wars meant only fisticuffs and knife fights. Mastan himself was too suave for all this and had outsourced this function to guys like Varadarajan Mudaliar and Karim Lala.

But for his stint in jail around Emergency period, this dock-worker-turned-smuggler was fortunate enough to enjoy the riches he had aspired for (had a Merc and lived in plush South Bombay locality) and even got the luxury of retiring from crime. He later went on to give interviews to mainstream newspapers and magazines like any public figure.

This is something none of his successors could achieve. Their lives remained stuck in the mean streets of Dongri and Byculla (or holed up in places like Dubai and Bangkok) and they often gave up the ghost to the bullets of either rival gangs or the police. These gangland wars got meaner and bloody and reached its gory climax during the infamous shootout at Lokhandwala. They also acquired a communal colour after the Babri Masjid demolition riots.

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The day Dawaood's brother Sabir died in a shootout in 1981 he was romancing with his paramour in a Premier Padmini Fiat. It was the same year when Maruti Suzuki rolled out its first car, which later proved to be a game changer and thoroughly overhauled the carscape on Indian streets. Nowadays apart from some rickety old taxis in Mumbai, Premier Padmini has for all purposes been banished from Indian roads.

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Lastly during my stay at Mumbai I had often heard about the Congress House (located near Grant Road station)  and the notoriety associated with it, though never bothered to know how that place got such a name. It seems the place had seen nobler days in the past. During the days of freedom struggle Congress stalwarts had set up base there. However by 1970s it became a haven for modern day slavery - flesh trade. 

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Delhi Rape: Random Thoughts II

India's Tahirir Square moment seems to have opened a can of worms - the issue of sexual harassmsent, patriarchal values, sex ratio and many other gender centric issues have now become part of public discourse and also caught many political leaders with foot right inside their mouths.

Talking of unparliamentary remarks, I thought the last word was said when Sanjay Nirupam made the 'thumka' remark about Smriti Irani's TV days and questioned her 'charitr'. How wrong I was! Even after that there was a steady flow of statements on same misogynist lines.

But it was Abhijith Mukherjee's remark that really took the cake. To begin with somehow I had hardly heard about him, though he is the son of President Pranab Mukherjee. His comment that only the painted and 'dented' (can't figure out what he mean't) women go for protests against the Delhi gangrape, showed Dilli Durbar's total disconnect with reality. His remarks even managed to divert the brickbats his father was getting for government's ineptitude in dealing with crimes against women.

Even after the woman's death, we had some BJP leader saying girls should not wear skirts. Once again the onus of upholding morality has fallen on the shoulders of girls. What to do boys will be boys - with libidos akin to water cannons, pumped up on a sumptuous diet of Honey Singh lyrics, Sunny Leone videos and a 'haseena maan jayegi' mindset!

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It is also a protest against a crony capitalism where not only wealth but even policing is cornered by a bunch of oligarchs, who have laid siege on Lutyen's Delhi.

Almost 30 per cent of the police force, probably the smarter and fitter among the lot, is tied up for the well being of these VIPs. Most of these policemen may be doing precious little other than buy vegetables for memsahibs and drop their children to school. This is not just the case with Delhi, but with most state capitals.
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Apart from the brutality of the incident, what probably evoked such a groundswell of protest is a feeling of empathy among the common public. The woman had gone for a movie and then taken a bus along with her male friend (thankfully, having a boyfriend no longer raises eyebrows or has been overlooked for now). The time was around 9:30 pm, not an ungodly hour. Somehow unlike earlier instances of such assaults this time there was no she-asked-for-it ring around it.

This particular case did manage to pierce through the iron curtain of public apathy. And the Delhi-centric national media was more than eager to roll in its OB vans and cameras and milk the issue dry for TRPs. 
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It was indeed a heart warming sight to see the agitators withstand the water cannon in a chilly Delhi winter, when people even loath to take hot water baths. It is indeed ironic that the government came out with so much alacrity to quell the agitation, but did not even utilise half of that zeal in making streets safer for women.

But the agitation was not free from its share of controversies. It took a violent turn when some political goons joined the agitators and provoked the police. A more unfortunate fallout was that some of the women agitators themselves were eve-teased by men, who were drunk, and had come to have some 'fun'. What better place than a crowded protest meet where women have turned up in large numbers!
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Hang them, castrate them ... these nostrums were not just mouthed during angry private conversations, but in Parliament, TV debates and message boards of various websites. We had Mohandas Pai, former Infosys HR chief and revered figure of India Inc, come on TV and say that rapists should be castrated. The message board warriors wanted rapists even stoned to death, bobbitised; and in Facebook we had pictures of men hanged in public for rape in Saudi Arabia with numerous 'likes' and 'shares'. All this must have been sweet music to the Saud dynasty, Mullah Omar, Ayman al-Zawahiri and late Osama bin Laden!

But seriously, it shows the disgust the general public has towards the way our police and legal system functions and the pathetic conviction rates, which makes them advocate such drastic measures. And not because they have now fallen in love with such medieval practices.
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Now the Indian media, be it TV or newspaper seems to be on an overdrive to report sexual assault cases. Suddenly incidents happening even in remote parts, which usually used to get buried in inside pages as 'fillers' or 'killed' for more important stories, are getting prime-time slots.
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Came across a really hard hitting video of Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association, which actually covers the whole gamut of the issue. Wish there were English subtitles, so that those who do not understand Hindi could also follow it.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Delhi Rape: Random Thoughts

While watching the horrific saga of the rape of a girl in a bus in Delhi unfold on various TV channels, the sound bites that a reporter managed to get from the parents of one of the culprits left me shell shocked.

The mother of the accused said that after the incident he came home, had food and slept. He did not reveal them anything about it  nor showed any signs of remorse, uneasiness or even a lack of appetite. He behaved like one of those regular youths who come home after socialising with friends. 
Probably he thought the girl and her friend may not live to tell the tale. Even otherwise they would never be caught or if at all caught, they will be easily let off. The level of cockiness (no pun intended) and dehumanisation exhibited by the person was appalling, to say the least.

The guy's parents said that he slept soundly till 10 am and they  could not sense that their son had committed a crime that had caused national outrage. They came to know only when they had police at their doorsteps.

However, to the parent's credit it must be emphasised that they showed courage and forthrightness to face the camera and concede that the crime was unpardonable and their son ought to be punished, if guilty.

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Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit comes before camera and says the permit of the bus used by the rapist has been cancelled! Big deal. The guy will most probably get it revoked in a couple of months.
Yet another foot-in-mouth remark by her. It comes close on heels of her earlier comment that a family of five members can buy monthly grocery for Rs 600.

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One Delhi girl says on camera that while travelling in buses, it is routine to get groped on breasts and thighs. Then she adds, in a relieved tone, that  compared to what happened to this para-medical student, it is nothing! Now such is the level of expectation (as good a nil) of safety while using public transport.

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A tweet by Arvind Kejriwal reveals that in 2012, 635 cases of rape were registered in Delhi, but nobody has been punished so far! No wonder these incidents happen with such impunity.
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Poor Narendra Modi. No one doubts his victory chances, but may  have to share the limelight with this horrific incident.
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Wonder why the head of the accused is often covered using a dark coloured cloth.  Surely they do not deserve any privacy or anonymity, unlike the victim. Their face should be very much visible for all to see. An exception could be made for juvenile criminals.
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Delhi is in a league of its own, when it comes to crimes against women. Remember the Naina Sahani tandoor case? or for that Geeta and Sanjay Chopra kidnap and murder case? The list is sickeningly long.
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TV actress and BJP MP Smriti Irani revealed that while covering this very rape incident, a woman TV journalist  got nearly molested by  some four-five guys who came in a car! She was saved by her alert camera man. Even in this surcharged atmosphere, for some it was business as usual.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat
 

 

 

Guns Come Calling

Yet another shooting took place. No, I am not referring to Connecticut, but our own Connaught Place in Delhi. A guy at a Dhaba was quite pissed off on being served leftover food and after few rounds of heated arguments, took out his gun and fired at the waiter. Probably he was not a good shot, the waiter escaped unhurt and the police were prompt enough to arrive and arrest the quick-gun Pande.

It is not yet clear whether the weapon he used was a licenced one or not, but most probably it might be latter.  Going by the recent events it looks like we are sitting on a huge pile of unlicensed weapons; and they are now making their presence felt in urban centres.

The recent killing of liquor baron Ponty Chadha at a farmhouse near Delhi and the attack on a hospital in Guragon point to the alarming trend of use of illegal firearms and the lack of scrutiny by authorities while issuing licence for firearms. Sukhdev Singh Namdhari - an alleged conspirator behind the murder of Chadha and his brother, obtained arms licence and passport by providing fake residence proof. He even got his arms licence renewed twice without surrendering the original documents.

The landed gentry in villages have always owned guns, ostensibly to guard their farms and for hunting. The gun culture in the badlands of Chambal valley and Bihar enjoyed a wild-West like cult image. The illegal arms factories dotting some of the small towns in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar mainly catered to the dacoits and naxalites in the hinterlands. The end of Phoolan Devi era brought down big-ticket dacoities, which used to hog media headlines.

Now the guns manufactured in these units are finding its way to places such as Delhi, Gurgaon and other urban centres in North India. They are no longer fired just in the air during weddings and other celebrations, but are being used to prove a point. They are brandished during road rages, at toll plazas and other places to prove Mao Zedong's dictum that "power flows from the barrel of the gun".

With wheels of justice in our country hardly proving to be any deterrent, guns are being used with impunity and often in public places like crowded streets and hospitals. It looks like we are heading towards a Kalashnikov culture that has blighted Pakistan since late 1970s.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat