I just arrived at my blog to realize that it was on the 27th December, 2010 that I last came here to write. Why has a compulsive writer like me, been so cut up with these blank pages which otherwise await, all the time, to be filled up with my emptiness?
I can't for the life of me answer the question.
However, what it is that has really brought me back to write here, after three long months, I know and can tell you.
It is Aruna Shanbag and the debate on Euthanasia, which is a subject bothering me since some time, as a matter of fact, since the day I saw a brilliantly shot film called Guzaarish.
Guzaarish, in which Hrithik Roshan plays a magician begging to be allowed to end his life after an accident which paralyzes him, while a more than beautiful Aishwarya Rai nurses and loves him.
I only wish both the actors had visited KEM hospital along with the director, and seen Aruna to know what vegetating looks like, and also met Kalpana, one of the nurses looking after Aruna, to understand where a woman who has looked after a life in semi conscious state for over 31 years, comes from.
Kalpana was on Times Now in the evening, discussing vehemently why Aruna must live, and Aruna's pictures taken at various times in the last 37 years since she was brutally and sexually assaulted, are all over the electronic, digital and print media.
The debate will go on and on, but the frames of the visuals will remain frozen in the minds of all those who have seen them even once.
The Academy of Motion Pictures may, for whatever reason, want to archive the screenplay of Guzaarish forever, but I would really like to know why?
Is Sanjay Leela Bansali's script going to be archived for students and lovers of cinema to know how not to trivialise an issue of importance, or is it being archived for them to learn what they should do to satisfy Indian film stars, who from time to time, between commercial flops, want the world to see that they are also great performers?
The least they could have done was to see John Badham's, 'Whose life is it anyway?' based on Brian Clarks play by the same name.
I wish they had observed the riveting performance by Richard Dreyfuss, who played the artist, the sculptor, involved in a car accident and paralyzed from his neck and
watched the performance of an actor who suffered his pain so convincingly that he was granted the right to end his life.
Last night while Barkha Dutt, my favorite TV anchor was busy telling a cricket crazy India obsessed with the World Cup and anxiously awaiting the IPL next month, an audience which actually couldn't give a damn about the problems which exist between the borders of Egypt and Tunisia and the civil war which rages between Tripoli and Bengazi, I hooked off to see The Kings Speech.
I returned somewhat satisfied comforted by the fact that there are still people in this world (Tom Hooper) who address problems through their narratives which, ironically, are the real battles that people fight within themselves (Colin Firth as King George VI), and the real wars which they emerge victorious from as they conquer themselves, which is far more important for them than to conquer the throne.
It is the true story of King George VI of Britain and as I left the theater, what struck me was, whose story was Guzaarish anyway?
The saga in which the actors wore costumes designed by Sabhyasachi, and which, unfortunately, was also one of the various USP's of the film, belonged to nobody.
Most certainly not, Aruna.
Moved beyond, as is what usually happens to me after seeing a good/great film, I spent the whole day wrapped in the comfort of knowing that it is a sensibility and sensitivity of some expressionists in this world, that keeps it going despite inane banter about whether Aruna should live or whether Aruna, who doesn't know if she is, should be allowed to die.
Aruna, according to me should be allowed to die only if someone whom she belongs to, takes a decision on her behalf, but the circumstances, as they are, in which there is nobody from her family to take that call, people whom she doesn't belong to, specially those who have been taking impeccable care of her for over 37 years should be applauded and awarded instead of being expected to decide death for her.
They set a rare example in this world driven by a selfishness to care only for those who are your own besides yourself.
Pinky Virani and Bacchi Karkaria and all others should not act on behalf of Aruna whom they don't know from Adams'.
I was horrified to hear Bacchi Karkaria say on Times Now that Aruna has become some sort of trophy for those who look after her.
It made me squirm.
To all those who fight for Aruna to be permitted to die, and who really want to do some good, besides talking endlessly on television debates and tweeting compulsively, there are many others' like Hrithik Roshan in Guzaarish, of sound mind and with the ability to smoke and drink, laugh and cry but are disabled and disfigured beyond healing, who need love and care and those who vote for Euthanasia for Aruna, should reach out to them and look after them. Aruna has plenty of care and love, and she should, henceforth, be left alone to live out her life till the end and die with dignity when she has to, because I really believe that if she lives on and on, it is with a purpose to keep reminding this country about the attrocities that many women have to suffer at the hands of sexually depraved men, and I am saying this on the eve of the International Women's Day, 2011.
The Government of India on the other hand I should think is happy that the entire debate in the media has shifted to Euthanasia and that the remaining space is taken up by Cricket, leaving little room for discussion on the 2G scam, the DMK threat to the weakening coalition and the CWG scam amidst other pressing issues like the Naxal and Maoist problems and Kashmir.
Thank God for small mercies that the PM has taken resposibility for an error of judgement in the appointment of the CVC and that issue, Inshaalah, has been put to rest.
Who cares about all those who are dying without a cause or the living dead in a nation where everyone obsesses a successfully crafted PR exercise by those who want Aruna to be permitted Euthanasia, but don't know her or have never met her, and a brilliantly marketed game of cricket?
Whose life is it anyway?
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