wrote sometime back

I have just watched the film Parzania. It is not at all what you expect out of a movie after 5 days in front of your computer. No, it certainly isn’t something that will make you smile with realization that Saturday is here. It is a desperate attempt to awaken that sleeping part of you that has restricted your senses to excels, deadlines, coffee, traffic, plays, movies, concerts, yoga, cricket, sex, cheap comedy, bills and finances. It is what reminds you that what you heard in the news to have had happened a thousand miles away from you day before, and what happened in the neighborhood yesterday and flashed as breaking news, could have very well happened in front of your eyes. The death toll could have easily included you. The movie makes you wonder where our country is headed. No, I am not talking about GDP and double digit growth rates. I am talking about Assam and Gujarat and Bangalore and what next? It makes you ashamed to be living in this country of conscienceless, barbarous, devilish devouts. Is this what evolution was to lead to? First man learns how to protect himself. Then he conquers other so-called inferior animals and develops his world to gain power and control. When the animals in the world are too few to fight with he turns to his own community and starts killing, raping, and eating his own kind. Is the most evolved form of two legged creatures to be cannibals?
Imagine if an armed mob of thousands were to gather outside your homes forcing themselves in and the next very evident step was to be your and your family’s death. Only because the mob thought it their religious right to kill you. Only because you didn't belong to their religion because you hadn’t chosen your birth. Only because your murder proved them more religious. Imagine the helplessness and terror when you are trapped in your own house and you see your death in front of you in the form of a crazy bastardly group of armed religious fanatics. Imagine if your friends and neighbors shut their doors on you because they suddenly realized that they belonged to the same religion as your killers. Imagine men being stripped and cut to pieces after their circumcision gave them away. Imagine women being raped and butchered. Sarika in the movie is talking about the riots and she says, “They were cutting breasts and throwing them in the air”. And another victim states, “They put a knife through my daughter’s private parts and laughed”.
Imagine if such a mob is running after you and your kids when your son suddenly gets left behind and with your daughter in your arms you forget yourself and are torn between continuing to run to save her or turning back to your son. Imagine the terror of your son screaming to you for help when you know you can’t risk going back. When you know you probably will never see him again. Imagine your helplessness when your daughter, terrified that you may turn back, actually frees herself and runs away from you. This is what the movie shows.
Imagine the disgust when you realize that all the bloodshed, all the terror was political. And what about your faith in god and your pride on being an Indian? What about the shame you feel to name your religion when you know it to be the cause of so much bloodshed?
Is this the dream we had for India? When India loses a bloody cricket match there is such a hue and cry in the whole nation. And people killing each other in the name of religion and caste has become so passé that it comes as no surprise.
You know what Parzania means in the movie? It is an innocent child’s ‘utopia’, his version of ‘Peter Pan’s Neverland’. Its where there is no end to happiness, chocolates, sweets, love and all things beautiful. It is his own piece of heaven in his heart. Will children stop dreaming and lose their innocence in this country? Or will they all be either killed or raped in Godhra or Nithari?