"Hey Neeraj, can you please get me a ticket.....in black",words of "the dream girl" of our college,Tanya.I was speechless,so to speak,overwhelmed.Neeraj too would have been,had he not been two pegs down.Actually...we(or rather she ) were interacting for the first time.Neeraj in his gregarious tone announced "Its Singh is King , not your streaked hair we've come to watch,that way ma'am",and there was that rickshaw walla standing.
So on that emphatic(at least for me) note we started our sojourn in Singh is King.It started, and we laughed....Neeraj "now 5 pegs down" Sharma hooted.....interval, we again enjoyed ..till the climax, that laugh of mine took shape of a kind of thought. Thought , which ,more often than not, don't come to me.Thought which hooted that ,is this the sardar who is the king ,the zenith of the country's development?. The tribe that derived its identity from the Aryan legions,the punjabies, the sikhs, has Happy Singh a.k.a. Akshay Kumar justified it?. Perhaps,no. films ,after trains the most lively lifeline of our cultural harmony , in general has gifted us the sketch of a sardar who is ....a comedian... agonizes funnily at 12 noon. but while appreciating that sketch , we forget the photograph of Bhagat Singh, the scion of indian aggression come intellect, Milkha Singh,the ,man who epitomizes athletics in India.Manmohan Singh who many a times harboured for India's economic demise.We always say they are the kings , but we fall short to mean there "BARON" standard.
Those bearded,most handsome giants are probably,the innovators of India. The reason is simple enough..right from the Mughal dissection, to the cultural divorce of '47 , to the havoc of '84 , they've seen it all,done it all, and most importantly, came out of it all.That's why a sardar who had a statue shop in the aisles of Chandani Chowk has a complex at Cannought Circus.A surdar who owned a fish counter owns a regallious continental bazaar.So where does the problem comes, why arn't we able to recognize their efforts?. The problem ,moreT than logical, I guess, is social.The social identity of a Sikh in India is a bit mismatched. Our films, our media has taken them, slightly, in a wrong way.We remember their comic nuances( which of course is their "life life king size"ness) but we tend to forget their perseverance, their razor sharp mind which on the cricket field also turns the ball the other way.
Even if we forget their intelligence quotient, let me remind you of their cultural counterpart,impeccable , they , to be frank , know how to live a life , a life which although on their terms is a dedicated one.It was perhaps this impeccable combination which saved Indian women from the Mughal tyranny, guarded India's pride when it was almost raped by the Pakistanis in'47 and to add to facts, became the only region in the whole wide world to wipe of terrorism completely from itself. Right from going to the gallows to trying a hand at bhangra, they are always exubherent,always daring.They are not just the surds in whose tone we always find mindless comedy but they are those,in whose minds we find a vision , a mission. So now ,the film was over .My thought ,though slightly large,was over.Neeraj was vomiting in the toilet and Snoopdog's rap was being shown, and I went out of the exit door, dancing to the tune of snoopdog humming ,"King is singh,King is singh ....har koi jaane........".
VARUN PANT (idofvarun @ gmail.com)
