I am a 30 year old working professional with a family and a child of my own. I would like to believe that I am reasonably well equipped in terms of my mental faculties to live in this world. However, a certain individual by the name of Pahlaj Nihalani wants me to believe otherwise. For the past one year he is time and again trying to tell me that I should not rely on my mental faculties to decide what is right or wrong, good or bad for me. He is trying to tell me that I am not mature enough to do so. He is trying to tell me that I should watch and listen (only on the celluloid though) to only what he thinks is suitable for me. He is trying hard to explain to me that whatever goes on in the world around me can be somehow negated and wished off only if we refuse to give it space on the celluloid screen. He is also telling me that if we committed the grave sin of giving it screen space, we are doomed as a society. It would tear apart our social and moral fabric and render us helpless and susceptible to all the demonic forces of the world. Such is the stuff that I am being forced to believe in, with the hope that repeating it over and over again would somehow legitimize it. Or that I would, some day, give up out of sheer exhaustion of resisting such absurdities, which are not even worth occupying my precious mental space.
Coming to the "Udta Punjab" controversy. The makers of Udta Punjab have been asked to administer 89 cuts to their film, the most absurd being the removal of any reference to Punjab. What is the objective that is trying to be fulfilled here? I am myself a half-Punjabi, and it is heart-wrenching for me to witness the great fall of Punjab from the green revolution to the drug revolution. But the truth is that this is a fact, it is in the public domain and is known to one and all. It is not a secret wrapped up in some closet, that can be safely brushed under the carpet, so that no one comes to know about it. It is being lived by the old, the able and the children alike. Millions are trying to grapple with it daily. Millions are trying to make a sense of their life, gone all topsy-turvy, and trying to understand what went wrong. No ''sarkar'' has ever really honestly intended to end this scourge. It has been allowed to comfortably grow to such proportions, has been fed rather, that it has now turned into a big monster threatening to engulf the entire state and condemn it to a total ruin.
The key point here is that all of the above is widely in the public domain. So what purpose is being served by not allowing it to be depicted on the screen? Or in dressing it up in irrelevant niceties, so that it becomes meaningless drivel? What "public purpose" is being served here? Pahlaj Nihalani, the savior, is trying to save whom here, and from whom?
I think what is expected from us to understand here is that it is perfectly fine that thousands actual real of lives are actually being destroyed by this menace, but there is a big problem if we watch it being depicted on the screen.
Out of all this, I can understand only one thing, that I have seriously overestimated my mental faculties. My sincere apologies for the same! I am sure that I am incapable of ever having the requisite mental faculties to understand these simple things that are being tried to be explained to me. I am sure the fault lies with me, because the "Superman" can never be wrong!
