If god was a robot

Some concerns weigh heavily on the nation this week as I write this on a Thursday. By Sunday, when you read this, most of those would have found some closure.

We are about an hour away from an Ayodhya verdict about a disputed land site. And about an hour away from finding out whether we are now a mature, progressive, secular, economic powerhouse or people who like to set each other on fire for no apparent civilised reason.



The case being heard is a civil case about the origins of a piece of land. Now, in a country where most property papers (including where one lives) are missing or litigated, finding out a leave and licence agreement from 3rd century AD should not be hard, our courts assume. Not to mention, with a Sensex at 20,000, a secular booming economy fueled by 600 million 25 year-olds of all religions, a mostly free, if somewhat, insane press, a billion people of every faith and literacy levels voting (take that, China), what was critical now was not to keep
moving, but to stop. And look for a title deed with Babur's signature.

To do this, courts brought in a crack team of hi-tech specialists known as the Archaeological Survey of India, whose members are often older than the archaeological sites they excavate, and whose last mark on the nation seems to have been to paint every important heritage structure a horrid pink.u00a0

As a friend observed, "What evidence did they actually present? Some terracotta stones? Point is, whether the place in the 11th century was a joint house of worship or a laundry shop or a badminton court, legally it cannot rule in favour of or against any religion --it's impossible to tell."

u00a0Which perhaps explains why this case began in the late 1940s, and most of the original claimants and judges are dead and a second generation is about to retire. The New York Times reported a story that a person in the 1960s was added as a claimant because he used to show up in court and seemed interested --the original claimants stopped showing up in 1959. Today, that bystander, at 90, is the only surviving party of the case.

As a nation however, nobody cares about the actual case or the judgment. The public fear is a simple one. That a judgment will be announced (or as is fashionable now, uploaded), and mobs will misbehave. So, on a Thursday afternoon, the roaring urban Indian economic engine came to a halt. To the liberalised Internet generation that knew of riots as something from history, like Mohenjo-Daro, the afternoon was a DVD-watching holiday and an excuse to get out of work.
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To those older, edgy nerves, hoping for no repetitions. Cynics waited to claim, "I told you 8 per cent growth can't take away the barbarism". To most, a general uncertainty prevailed but larger optimism that the new India was not the lunatic India of painted fanatic faces and fake chariot rides.

Urban India, whose daily life is the one irritated, asks, and sensibly, why now when we've moved so far beyond? The courts have claimed that rule of law must prevail and if the body politic has no maturity to handle a judgment, that's the government's problem, not theirs. There is much talk, in books written about us, that we are a culture of adjustment. In practicality, we are quite the opposite.

Try parking a car in some apartment complex while visiting your friend and they don't let you. Try to explain to an usher instructed to start a show that you were five minutes late in traffic, and he says he's helpless and can't let you in. Hope the highest court in the land might prioritise the citizen's daily life over strict legal
procedure on some archaic case, and it doesn't happen. Nobody adjusts.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0

In these somewhat gloomy hours, there was only one man who could lighten us up, who could take on India and say, I am back.u00a0 A man bigger than our Prime Minister, President, Big B and King Khan's appeal for calm put together. A man who gave no interviews, sold us no products. Someone who did not need the Page 3 culture because he was bigger than it.
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He could stop any riot single-handedly. If he showed up at a disputed site, that's where a temple, mosque, church, synagogue would come up in simultaneous harmony. His answer to Ayodhya was one simple sentence ufffd 'I am Superstar Rajinikanth and I have a new movie.'u00a0I'm not going to get into what Rajinikanth can or can't do (he can do everything), or how Chennai has come to a standstill or the Internet jokes making the rounds (Rajni does not need a watch.
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The time is whatever he says it is. You don't search for Rajinikanth on Google, he finds you etc.) In times of wariness, when we tiptoe around our daily lives to see what is or is not safe to do, I'm not taking lessons about the almighty's home from some Allahabad court, but from the Almighty himself (yes, my God rides a motorcycle blindfolded and backwards, while shooting bad guys and flying a plane).

This slightly paunchy bald 60 year-old botox-free, PR agent free almighty comes into our lives, with the most expensive Indian movie ever made and says, together, we can do anything. (His notion of anything, of course, is a bit different from say, a bank manager. He can make tigers reproduce, run on the side of a moving train, punch someone through the Big Ben and reason with a dragon).

Whatever religion he starts, I'm joining that one because in times like these, maybe you need a Robot to show us that we are human. Anuvab Pal is a Mumbai-based playwright and screenwriter. His plays in Mumbai include Chaos Theory and screenplays for Loins of Punjab Presents (co-written) and The President is Coming. He is currently working on a book on the Bollywood film Disco Dancer for Harper Collins, out later this year.u00a0 Reach him at www.anuvabpal.com