A Vir I can get behind.
While everyone is discussing Vir Das and his kickass, from-the-heart poem, Two Indias (kudos to you, Vir...nice name, btw...did you name yourself?), does it strike you that the same poem could not have been recited by Munawar Faruqui? THAT is what makes it even more important for the Vir Das' of India to make it a point to say it.
All those right-thinking Indians who are, regardless of their religious beliefs, identified as Hindus (whether by name or family or birth or association or whichever way the right-wingers seem to define that word today as per their constantly shifting goalposts) have a duty to say things that we are allowed to say without the threat of being cancelled or jailed or killed, not just so that the non-Hindus amongst us know they are not alone, but for an even higher purpose: to keep alive the very idea of India.
P.S: Vir didn't go far enough though. I'd have preferred if he did. Nevertheless, a great monologue. For the life of me, though, I cannot see why people think it belittles India, and if it does, whether it does so because parts of it are false, or because we are ashamed of the truth.
So powerful! Both Vir and You.
ReplyDeleteFor the first time, I did not feel offended to hear the 'F' word, which Vir uses a lot. And given your surname, I am curious to know why there are some like you who choose the not so right side?
At one point in the video, Vir Das says, "I come from an India where we have maids and drivers and yet want to come to America to do their job."
ReplyDeleteImagine walking out thinking that saying something like this in front of a crowd is appropriate. And he didn't even ad-lib it. He was reading from a script. In his elaborate sermon about the problem with India, he literally pointed out the problem himself with this line.
People like him can preach all they want from the moral high ground that they have been very comfortably occupying. But nothing can change the fact that they are just extremely privileged, mostly unfunny fucks who have said the crassest and most unacceptable things in their movies, shows and tweets while they still could and have made huge amounts of money doing it. And now, since activism has become the easiest prop for making money, they are using every possible way to cash in by lecturing the rest of us about how pathetic we are.
Is Vir Das a very good slam poet? Sure. No wonder that he always finds a very welcoming audience among NRIs, who are notorious for their love of lip-service activism. But should we be treating this as some sort of a pathbreaking act? I don't think so. Perhaps we should ask him to explain his role in "Mastizaade" first.