1// AN ANALOGY OF CINEMA AND THE CURRENT PANDEMIC POLITICS//
Whenever I would tell my friends about my favourite films: Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, Kieslowski's Three Colours Trilogy or Antonioni's L'avventura, La Notte or L'eclisse, they would look at me with awe.

2//After all, everyone in India has grown up on a different style of cinema, interspersed with song, dance, melody, rhythm and emotions. Almost every Indian has heard classic dialogues from Sholay, "Kitne aadme the?" (How many men were there?) or "Yeh haath, haath nahin."

3/India is a country where its mainstream cinema (majority) does not constitute grey characters, character-driven plots and where mise-en-scene becomes secondary and even tertiary to the dialogues as well as the performances and the appeal of the actors./

4/The films run as fast-paced narratives, contain abundance of songs and work solely on emotion and their mass appeal. Some films even defy logic and run solely on their entertainment value. Now, here comes the problem.

5/In a country that works on drama (even melodrama) and song and dance, a certain section of the society (upper middle class and upper class) expect PM Modi to make logical & systematic inferences to counter the current COVID-19 pandemic. That is the textbook meaning of elitism.

6/ If you are an elite, you must learn 'disassociation.' Disassociate a pandemic from petty politics. Your hatred of 'CAA' must not reflect in defiance of the imposed curfews. This also goes out to news channel(s) making it about religion and then involving Modi in the mix.

7/Just like my friends would look at me and call me a 'cinema purist' or call my taste 'alien' to them, similarly, if Modi started giving logical and systematic ideas in his public address, no one would even understand him and think he's talking another language

8/It's not that action hasn't been done-he is taking systematic steps to ensure our safety (WHO's 1 mn dollars fund, PM Cares Fund, systematic withdrawal from the lockdown after 14th April, daily conference with state governments, identification of COVID-19 hotspots etc.

9/Remember that India is not just the intellectuals, it is the working class, the farmers, the daily wage labourers. We NEED TO speak in THEIR language. That's why lighting up candles, mobile phone torches and clapping gives a sense of solidarity that everyone is doing their bit.

10/To make people understand, his populism works in this situation. To the villagers and working-class, he needs to look like a Bollywood-hero, more like an Amitabh Bachchan in this situation, saving the world. People in India are wired differently from the West and Modi knows.

11/I would go further in making some analogies—just like Kieslowski’s Dekalog 6-“Thou Shall Not Kill/A Short Film about Killing” was about the government’s decision to execute Jacek after his murder of Waldemar, the taxi driver, the same would apply to those who are not only..

12/endangering themselves but others by defying orders and curfew in these times, and then are subsequently followed by the government’s quarantine/beatings by the police. Who has the right to kill? No one. Who is the victim? The state, the country, the doctors or you, yourself?

13/Everyone is the victim. How to stop yourself from becoming a facilitator of death or a victim? Social distancing.
Stop criticising a person or an individual just because you want to be ungrateful or if you cannot dissociate between a national emergency and your hatred

14/Hatred that is re-directed through an earlier policy. This could only lead to your own harm and the nation’s harm. This is about India, being united, as one, regardless of anything else. And being united as the world.

15/Come together, all income levels, religion, caste, creed, whatever. Stand united in this fight.
And this post/thread is solely meant for the upper middle class and upper class as a reflection of their (and by enlarge, my ignorance.//THE END

16/ #coronavirus #COVID2019 #coronavirusinindia