Once again our Bollywood icon SR Khan was held nay, interrogated at a US airport. It must be a torment for a guy, used to being licked all over in India, but be subjected to a “who you” like treatment in land, where they are numbskull to India’s “phone lagaoon” culture – they actually don’t even let you call.
I did not see an equivalent media outrage, when Obama made a comment about Indians and Chinese consuming more food thereby causing a rise in food prices in the US. I have always argued, the quality of authorship is reflective of the quality of readership, and hence the attitude of the media is not so reprehensible as reflective of the Indian psyche, where, stardom, or VIPism need more preservation than culture or national security.
Try how much I may, I am not able to forget when in 1999 my colleagues, all without exception, were engrossed in some stupid cricket match, while the Indian army struggled in snow to wrest back parts of Kargil-Drass sector where due to a political blunder and bureaucratic inaction, Pakistani rangers had creepingly infiltrated.
Complete misalignment of national priorities has been my favorite theme. But I would not again harp on that here, although I don’t promise to spare you the torture in future.
Ironically in all this, while a lazy Indian diplomatic core scampered to the US embassy to lodge an apologetic and tentative protest at the discomfort of its Bollywood star (we cannot dare haul the USA), the ire of the star himself, who has of late been found posturing in his public appearances more as a muslim than an Indian lay somewhere else. He was a Khan but not a terrorist. It was not so much about his Indian identity as his muslim one. But let us grant him that.
On the flip side, a large section of upwardly mobile echelons of society, dreads if this incident should make them suffer a sequel to My Name is Khan.
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