Outrage followed Salman Khan's comments on a Pakistani channel about the 26/11 Mumbai attacks gaining more significance than other horrific attacks in bazaars, trains and small towns, because they targeted the rich.
Outrage followed Salman Khan's comments on a Pakistani channel about the 26/11 Mumbai attacks gaining more significance than other horrific attacks in bazaars, trains and small towns, because they targeted the rich.
Carried away, he exonerated Pakistan; a silly, unproveable thing to say, but that was not his main point. Kaabil dost Ujjawal Nikam declared actors unfit to speak about stuff that matters. "Terrorists," said he, "do not strike after differentiating rich from the poor nor do they differentiate a village from a city." Pakka?
Going by the material and symbolic success of many attacks, I'd say terrorists take special and systematic note of these differences. Quite unlike many fine folk, who, post the attacks, fell over themselves to extol the Taj's iconic status as part of that fuzzy, inclusive, cosmopolitan Bambai spirit.
What makes the Taj iconic? Historically, the story is that it was built by visionary entrepreneur Jamshedji Tata, as a grand rejoinder when he was denied entry into a hotel because he was Indian. Over time it became symbolic of a city of aspirations and dreams ufffd a city where commerce is a leveller, giving anyone a shot if they try, for coffee and cake at the Taj.
But a lot has happened here. Not least the withering away of Bombay's big industries, which provided working class jobs, violent slum demolitions, the erosion of affordable housing and public transport. Suddenly, symbols like the local train or the cinema hall lose their power, feel like cheap clich ufffds because they do not resonate a powerful reality. In this context, the Taj feels more like a symbol of the rather decadent self-interest and cruel disparity of our society; the divide which is a daily terror we do unto our own. To ignore this is as callous as to de-value the death of people in the attacks just because they were rich.
After the attacks, I often wondered if the Taj's symbolism problem was fixable. I developed a little fantasy. What if when the Taj was restored, part of its sea-fronted ground floor became a public tea-room where all sorts of people could come in and afford the price of the tea. A place that they could keep as clean and lovely, if not as plush, as the rest of the hotel. Perhaps that might have said ufffdu00a0 we acknowledge that Bombay's wealth is made as much by workers as by industrialists. After all why should only the cabbies, commuters and dabbawalas have the onus of maintaining this Bombay spirit? Let Mr Tata also do something sentimental, na. Sure it would have just been symbolic ufffd but at times symbolic gestures are needed. They are meaningful as much when they are not made, as when they are.
Why else would Dalit leader Mayawati want an extravagant birthday cake? And why else would everyone feel they have to go on about its arrogance and waste? Especially when they aren't going on about Shabana Azmi's birthday sweeties ufffd a slum-shaped cake for a slum saviour? If her cake is just a joke, then Mayawati's is just a cake.
Unlike those who are willfully blind, terrorists see clearly the nature of what divides and matters to our societies ufffd and choose their symbolic attacks cannily. If we refuse to acknowledge these truths, what does that make us? I don't know ufffd and don't care ufffdu00a0 if Dabangg proves Salman Khan is a man of the people or not. But for being one of the few powerful people in showbiz who recognises and speaks of this country's divides and inequalities, he admits something people like Mr Nikam choose not to. That makes him da man, for the moment.
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. She runs Devi Pictures production company. Reach her at www.parodevi.com
