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What would be the fate of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film on Padmavati? Claims and counter-claims galore, a section of the Hindus are enraged about Padmavati meeting Khilji, which they feel is not true. Anurakthi is the world’s first Sanskrit film in 3D that is being showcased in the IFFI at Panaji, Goa. Cancer is caused by sins of the past lives says the Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, shocking one and all. Recently, Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a MoU for the return home of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled to the neighbouring country to escape an army crackdown. This is blatant Human Rights violation. Shail features four news in the week that was, in the regular column, exclusively for Different Truths.
Padmavati Priorities
Rights encroached upon;
the artist deprived of freedom
of expression, of the entitlement
to be creative, imaginative
without ‘hurting the sentiments’
of people concerned,
living or dead,
important or not.
But, what about the layman,
the farmer who dies a dry death
every day, digging his grave
in the fields that fail his expectations?
What about the families that depend
on the pastures for food, for survival?
Would a movie compensate their pain?
Would it bring about any gain
to fill heart gaps within
for no ardent mistake or sin?
Media, artists cry from rooftops
about creative expression molested.
Politicians, the so-called protectors
of tradition, culture chip in
to torment,
to cross lakshman rekhas of decency
their cultural upbringing
has taught them!
Where are the voices
when we need them the most,
to save farmers from burning lives like toast.
Padmavati got her due-
respect from innumerable admirers all over.
At least now, let’s take the cue-
to realize what is important –
Entertainment or life!
Creativity or a poor farmer’s strife!
Let us Talk 3-D Sanskrit
For a language almost dead
in the country of its origin,
an honourable pleasure to hear
world’s first 3D movie to be showcased
in a film festival in Goa.
Sanskrit, spoken in slokas.
Sanskrit, its value being recognized
in nations abroad, outside India
now a picture story with a plot,
a 2000 year old dance form in Kerala.
How much more we can do
to promote the language of the gods-
a language from which originate
so many dialects of the world.
Director Asokan Ponnan, hats off to you,
to the team which enriched the belief
that Sanskrit still syncs with the world.
Cancer Sins
‘Divine justice’ he calls it,
an Assamese Health Minister
consoles the public in his spearhead speech
salt on wound, a hurting leech.
Maybe, he knows not
what it is to suffer sinking symptoms
of a disease that has eaten up lives
of millions across the globe.
Who is he to cast aspersions in his superficial moral robe?
Maybe, it was his past ‘karmic deficiency’
that provoked him to say so
just to make him suffer a bad karmic birth dough.
Insensitivity, a meek word for the assumption
so cruelly, so casually made.
Have people like him never ever prayed?
True or not, wrong or right
who are we to judge sitting upright?
Going Back Home
Houses torched, homes destroyed
Now attempting a comeback
with a deal signed.
Lives uprooted,
a race raised to the ground
now security, nation, law bound.
Will it compensate the harm done
of ethnic cleansing via barrel n’ gun?
Yet, an attempt has been made
albeit a huge price having been paid
for the Rohingya race.
Hope this time the Myanmar government
calls it a truce,
puts common sense, sensitivity to good use.
Rohingyas now returning home
wishing for a house, an identity, not a torture dome.
©Shail Raghuvanshi
Photos from the Internet
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