Of Filmy Lines & Politics

It’s Valentine’s Day. Take a deep breath and imagine a moment brimming with romance…and politics and revolution.

Robin of Locksley: You’re King Richard’s cousin. You can get word to him of Nottingham’s plan. He would believe you.

Marian of Dubois: If the Sheriff (of Nottingham) found out, I could lose all that I have.

Robin (appealing to her patriotism): It’s true. But would you do it for your King?

Marian: No!

Robin’s expression – WTF! You unpatriotic cow.

Marian: I’ll do it for you.

Robin’s expression – Damn I love you. Passionate kiss (Kevin Costner as Robin of Locksley and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Marian of Dubois in Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves).

Love sometimes is a bigger motivator than patriotism to serve the country. To do something grand for your people. For love. So someone can say – I love him! I love him for the man he wants to be. And I love him for the man he almost is (Dorothy for Jerry McGuire) or anyone in the Congress for Rahul Gandhi because some people can’t believe in themselves until someone else believes in them first. (Will Hunting in Good Will Hunting). That’s love.

Love – a source of strength, of inspiration that spurs us to greatness. Unless you’re a Thackeray and/or the name of your outfit ends with Sena – Shiv/ Rashtravadi/ Maharashtra Navnirman/ Ram. In which case love inspires you to break things. But today is not for them. Today is for love.

Love is blind. It knows no reason, it sees no flaw. Capital loves opportunity and opportunity adores Narendra Modi. His lovers believe Erich Segal and that – Love means never having to say you’re sorry (Jenny in Love Story). Marilyn Monroe once said, “I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best”. That’s what love demands, it’s what love delivers. Take my worst, get my best. What’re a few thousand lives between lovers? And we love development. But we also love a man who feels. A man who feels is a better man. We all need a better Modi. A woman’s love or a man’s, hell it is 2013, could make him softer, gentler – go forth this day Narendra-bhai and find someone who won’t call you Narendra-bhai but just Narendra or NaMo and look into her/his eyes with your very large (sinister looking) pair, and move your full and luscious lips to utter – You make me want to be a better man (Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets).

Love does that. Makes you more than what you are. Makes you gentle, kind. Makes a poet of an intellectual. A lover of a poet – Pehle To Main Shaayar Tha Aashiq Banaya, Dard-E-Dil Dard-E-Jigar Dil Mein Jagaya Aapne Aapne (Rishi Kapoor as Monty Oberoi in Karz). Ask Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the intellectual, the poet – the statesman. Love teaches you compromise. Compromise is what you need to manage coalitions. Atalji knew that, although he didn’t announce it. It smoulders, the way only love does. You can’t hide it – ishq aur mushq chupaye nahi chupte. Makes you want to scream out  – Kyun dil mein sulagte rahein logo ko bata dein. Haan humko mohabbat hai. Mohabbat hai. Mohabbat hai. Ab dil mein yehi baat idhar bhi hai udhar bhi (Amitabh Bachan as Amit in Silsila). Love gives you heart. And we could all do with a Modi with heart. After all, he is India Inc’s pin-up boy.

Love is a many-splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love (Ewan McGregor as Christian in Moulin Rouge). Love breaks hearts too. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return (Christian in Moulin Rouge). If you are loved in return. The first half of the bargain can hurt. Ask Manmohan Singh. Capital, the fickle mistress who flies to better opportunity. Her loyalty is to crisp investment climate, not to the warmth of an honest embrace. Her laughter sounded like money (Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby).  Manmohan was her darling. Hell, even his silence sounded like money.  His policy from economic to tribal to forest was for capital and her captains of industry. So she/they could be prettier, healthier – lovelier. In their arms with their suits, their sickly sweet colognes and seductive smiles, wheedling him into bed at trade conferences and economic summits, deciding, executing, tempting, smiling, laughing  – That was it. [He’d] never understood it before. It was full of money – that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it… High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl (Nicholas ‘Nick’ Carraway in The Great Gatsby). Liberalisation’s golden goose with a blue turban. Dumped.

And look whose arms they end up in. Not gold, but the saffron Modi. But Manmohan had to play the gamble. In love there is no other way. You must give it all away – rivers forests fabric fibre moral mind jaan imaan – and stand there naked, trusting, bare. You must take that leap of faith and jump and hope you’re held and not dropped because when you love someone, you’ve gotta trust them. There’s no other way. You’ve got to give them the key to everything that’s yours. Otherwise, what’s the point? And for a while, I believed, that’s the kind of love I had. (Robert De Niro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein in Casino and Manmohan Singh in life). Manmohan believed that too.

Love didn’t deliver his happy ever after. Now he watches Modi waltzing into the Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) in a university eager and viscous with drooling affection… for Narendra Modi. Oh! The insult. The humiliation of another running his hands over the familiar curves of a university in a college just across the Delhi School of Economic where the PM spent his best years. Modi now whispering syrupy words into the air that a young Professor Manmohan’s meek lectures once wafted through. Today fertile youth flirting with another over promises of a land with rivers of milk (from Gujarat) and waterfalls of honey. Abandoned by corporate India, but Manmohan had no other constituency to woo. He didn’t have the rustic charm to do a Manoj Kumar or Nitish Kumar-like khet khalihan song-and-dance, or the dimples of Shah Rukh Khan or Rahul Gandhi to use yellow mustard fields for an aesthetic backdrop for romance. All he had was economics, the inexact science. Like love. We all know it makes sense, but can’t make sense of it. His best bet were corporate czars, they were his constituency, who he wanted to dance with forever but – Gal ched di Bhainiawale ne, Par dil wich wasna aunda nahin. Baanh farh ke nachan nu jee karda hai. Kee kariye, nachna aunda nahin (Bhainiavaala from Baan fad ke nachan nu ji karda).

Abandoned, insecure, short of the numbers he will be drawn into the arms of those who can make him whole again – You complete me (Jerry McGuire to Dorothy and Manmohan Singh to Mulayam at the nuclear deal vote and several others).

Wordsworth described the French Revolution with – “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven”. The romance of revolution. Infectious, a very young Indira Nehru and a young Firoz Gandhi would’ve told you that – Kaash aisa ho tere kadmon se chun ke manzil chalein, aur kahin, door kahin. Tum agar saath ho, manzilon ki kami to nahi (Suchitra Sen as Arti Devi in Aandhi). Liberty, idealism, prison, rebellion – make choices for you that don’t seem as comfortable once the rumble of revolution has passed. Quiet heroism or youthful idealism, or both? What do we know? That life without heroism and idealism is not worth living – or that either can be fatal? (Erich Segal, The Class).

That passion was felt more recently at Jantar Mantar and India Gate. India was rising, fighting back with the young and restless. It didn’t go on for years, but this is the Twitter generation. A revolution is as long as a TV news story demands or a weekend allows. This is no French revolution and anyway – The French are glad to die for love. They delight in fighting duels. But I prefer a man who lives, and gives expensive jewels. (Nicole Kidman as Satine in Moulin Rouge). The middle class restless for more has no time for forevers – Nothing to lose if we are wise, We’re not expecting rainbow colored skies. Nothing to lose, it might be fun. No talk of spending lifetimes in the sun. Both you and I have seen what love can do. We’ll only hurt ourselves. If we build dreams that don’t come true (Claudine Longet as Michele Monet in The Party). And so stands the promise of a Lokpal, the possibility of Anna’s corruption-free India, judicial reform, election reform, retribution for 2G, CWG, Coalgate.  Even the distant echoes of Arvind’s challenge to a lethargic corrupt gigantic ruling elite, not quite audible. The first flush of romance now cold. Crowds gone and breathless doting journalists more critical with the impatient irritability of an out of love lover towards one who still believes.

Must not forget the ladies. Love should never be restricted to an age or a phase. It’s love – it makes the world go round.  Here’s hoping Cupid’s arrow finds the several single ladies leading us too – Behan Mayawati, Mamata Didi, Soniaji, Amma Jayalalitha all larger than life with authority and power enough to crush the mightiest but also human enough to say, don’t forget I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her. (Julia Roberts as Anna Scott in Notting Hill). I hope.