There is, it would appear, a flicker of hope.
A couple of days ago, on a cold winter morning, I opened the door to my home, and bent down blearily to pick up the newspaper. (As an aside, it is this daily routine I am thinking of when I assure my doctor that I do, in fact, do yoga in the morning.) Now, as has been mentioned on these pages before,
I am not at my brightest before caffeine has done its thing, and so I couldn’t be very sure, but there seemed to be a headline that promised good news.
The Supreme Court, it seemed, had decided that playing the national anthem before the movie started in a cinema hall wasn’t all that brilliant an idea after all. Like I said, this was the pre-coffee Kulkarni processing all the details, but still, that did seem to be the gist of it. And wonder of wonders, subsequent perusal did not contradict said assessment.
Now, here’s the thing. I firmly believe that we live in a great country, and that we ought to be proud of it. One can have opinions about how great it is, and how proud we ought to be, and it isn’t stretching reasonableness to say that these opinions may differ.
But if you ask me, personally, listening to the national anthem before settling down to watch, say, Grand Masti 574*, is unlikely to fill me with patriotic zeal.
And I’ve never really wrapped my head around playing the anthem in the cinema hall in any case. I mean why movie halls in particular, my contrarian brain can’t help but ask. I don’t mean to put ideas into enthusiastic heads, but why not have, to give you just one example, all the passengers in a train stand up and listen to the n.a. before the train pulls out of the station at the start of a journey? To all the enthu cutlets out there (that is, I believe, the technical term), I am not suggesting that they do this as well. I am asserting that my suggestion is an equally daft idea. The national anthem sounds splendid on a cold wintry morning, such as, perhaps, on the twenty-sixth day of this month.
It sounds incongruous when succeeded by Tusshar Kapoor and company (note to the editor: did I get the number of s’s in his first name correct? It’s hard to keep up).
There have been the usual howls of protest from expected quarters, but for the most part, the opinion on the street seems to be one of quiet, guarded welcome. And count me, very firmly indeed, as belonging to this group.
In fact, what with booze being served in all restaurants within the city once again, and the Supreme Court also agreeing to take another look at Section 377, it’s almost as if normalcy has been restored at the apex of the judiciary.
Now if only the other branches of government would take note…
*I am fully aware that such a movie does not exist. I also maintain that it is but a matter of time before it will, in fact, exist.
He doesn't expect the paradox to be resolved in his lifetime
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