Birthdays are a bitch. No this is not a rant about growing old and about the death of idealism —– for that I ask you to refer to my last year’s post where I tried to deal with the monumental milestone of turning thirty.
Birthdays are a bitch because no matter how hard I try not to get misty-eyed, my mind is flooded with memories of other December 30s when our living room would be decked out with ribbons, my uncle would be blowing balloons, my grandmother would be fighting with the Oriya “thakur” (cook) who would insist on adding an inordinate amount of spice to the chicken and I would rubbing my hands gleefully in anticipation of all the gifts I would have at the end of the day.
Sick and tired of the decadent West-inspired perversion (extra-marital affairs, husband swapping, playing basketball in the rain) that is passed off as “acceptable” by today’s Hindi movies , I have to confess I eagerly look forward to Sooraj Barjatya’s clean, sensitive, morally well-grounded movies that smell of gajar ka halwa and Bharatiya sanskiriti if only to convince myself that there is still some good left in this world gone crazy with lust and licentiousness.
The “Chandidas” in the name Sourav Chandidas Ganguly means the slave (devotee) of Ma Chandi also known as Ma Kali to her followers.
When Queen Elizabeth came to India and not only refused to apologize for Jallianwalah Bag (despite apologizing for British excesses during Bloody Sunday in Northern Island) but also dismissed the magnitude of the butchery as “exaggerated” (instead choosing to believe the casualty figures of General Dyer’s son), she defiled the memory of our freedom fighters and inflicted a resounding colonial slap on the face of the nation—a slap that had gone unanswered.
