35mm HiGhLiGhT rEeL

In 1509, Maharana Sangram Singh (commonly known as Rana Sanga) who belonged to the Sisodia clan of Suryavanshi Rajputs, succeeded his father Rana Raimal as the king of Mewar – the present day south-central Rajasthan comprising of Pratapgarh, Bhilwara, Chittorgarh, Rajsamand and Udaipur districts. During his rule, he fought eighteen battles and sustained eighty-four wounds on his body apart from losing an arm, an eye and being crippled in one leg. It is confirmed by notable historians that he invited Babur, a Muslim conqueror from Farghana (now Uzbekistan) to fight the Afghan ruler of Delhi belonging to Lodhi Dynasty, Ibrahim Lodi. In April 1526, Babur succeeded in dethroning Lodhi in a battle which is marked as the First Battle of Panipat.

As per the agreement between Rana Sanga and Babur, the later was to collect the loot and return back to Kabul after the battle, but it never happened. This point in Indian history laid the foundation of Mughal Dynasty in India. Babur ordered a small cavalry to test the potential of the Rajput pavilion, but was thoroughly disappointed and enraged when the Rana slaughtered the cavalry into pieces. When peace talks between the two did not work out, Rana Sanga led a Rajput force of over 2 lac soldiers to drive Babur out of the country. Though the valiant Rajputs had the initial advantage in the Battle of Khanwa at Fatehpur Sikri, the tides turned against them when Rana got brutally injured.

After his victory, Babur gave the charge of Viceroy to his general Mir Banki. He used terror to enforce Mughal rule over the civil population. In 1528, Mir Banki came to Ayodhya, which is considered as the birthplace of Hindu God Rama. Mir destroyed the Rama temple and built a mosque and named it Babri Masjid after Babur.

412 years later, Indian Muslims renamed it Masjid-I Janmasthan (mosque on Rama’s birthplace) and it was surrounded from all sides by Sita and Hanuman temples. Post Independence, in 1948 the Indian Government locked the site and gave an order to refrain Muslims to come near the site upto 200 yards. Sources claim that the Hindus were still granted access unofficially through a side gate. In 1984, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) began their quest to reclaim this site back to erect a temple of Rama. In 1989, the Allahabad High Court passed an order to unlock the main gate and open the site to Hindus.

On December 6, 1992 almost a lac and a half strong army of karsevaks defied the Indian Supreme Court, barged into the mosque and demolished it. The repercussions spread to other cities in the country like Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. Ten days later a Liberhan Commission was set up to probe into this matter and then notably strong BJP muscles L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi were alleged of being the influential support in the massacre. This caused extreme unrest amongst the Muslim community in the country.

On March 12, 1993 a series of 13 bomb blasts were coordinated in the city of Mumbai at various hotels, banks and other buildings. It is believed that these attacks were a retaliation of the enormous Muslim casualties and widespread damage to the Muslim owned businesses and properties which occurred during the Hindu-Muslim riots in Bombay between December 1992 and January 1993 owing to Babri Masjid demolition. Justice Srikrishna headed The "Srikrishna Commission", which submitted its report in 1998 stated that nine hundred individuals lost their lives and over two thousand were injured, most of them Muslim, in the Babri Masjid riots.

There are numerous contradictory views and evidences on the history of Babri Masjid. According to British sources, Hindus and Muslims used to worship together in the Babri Mosque complex in the 19th century until about 1855. Towards the middle of 20^th Century, Hindus claimed that the mosque was not used by Muslims since 1936 and took over the reigns of the site. Recently on courts orders, Archeological Survey of India found remains of a previous ancient temple that was demolished or modified to create the later Mosque under the rule of Babur.

18 years after this shameful event in the history, which has even impacted the political scenario and power play in the country, the Lucknow bench is gearing up to give the final hearing on September 24, 2010. A week before the final verdict on the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid row, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court on Friday, September 17, 2010 turned down a plea for delaying the verdict and directing an out-of-court settlement of the dispute. The three-judge special bench of Justice S U Khan, Justice Sudhir Agrawal and Justice Dharam Veer Sharma rejected the application by retired bureaucrat Ramesh Chandra Tripathi, who made another attempt to reach a solution to the dispute through reconciliation and deferment of the verdict.

The security around the site is getting tighter and the PM is making request to countrymen to maintain law and order irrespective of the final decision. Even the News Broadcasters Association has set guidelines for electronic media asking them not to speculate about the judgement and not to show the footage of 1992 Babri Masjid demolition. The guidelines have been set to ensure that the telecast of any news around the issue is not sensational, provocative or inflammatory.

In a country where thousands of deities worshipped by people following different religions, come September 24, 2010 only two will take the center stage to tussle on a battleground created by humans. Hardly did Rana Raimal, the King of Mewar knew that April 12, 1484 would not only mark the birth of his son Rana Sanga, but will lay the seeds of an event which will not only govern the fate of the country, but will also have an impact on communities across the globe.

She looked through the window at the pigeons and sparrows playing in the puddle of water. It was a respite from the heat burning their wings through the day. The grass in the lawn was almost dead; unlike the green carpet a few years back. The air was dense and the trees stood still that evening. But there was an air of excitement and celebration inside the house. Her family and grandchildren had gathered under one roof after a long time. The little ones would run down and sit next to her. They would fight to get the closest spot to their grandmother and then would bombard her with a chain of inquisitive questions. But she would happily respond to them with interesting answers. The older members would keep moving in and out of the room to check on her health.

She had been fighting to stand tall against her sickness in the declining stage of her life. But since morning her heart felt quite numb and at peace. There was a high contrast in the decibel levels inside the house and the garden outside. The birds began retreating to their comfort zones at higher altitudes. The apartment in the neighborhood was their favourite brooding spot. Her eyes fell on one pigeon which laid immobile next to the puddle. The sharp strings of the kites flying in the sky had badly wounded its wings. There were stains of blood merging the shades of blue and grey on its feathers. It was helpless enough to move a few inches and wash them off.

She looked at the pigeon with pity. Her state was quite similar too. Her daughter called out for the kids to move to the dining table. They immediately rushed out of the room while she asked her mother too. She wasn’t too hungry since morning as opposed to the other days, when she wouldn’t skip her meals. There was a sudden rise in the sound of birds chirping outside on the trees. It was not the regular noise they generated; this was an alarm. The sparrows began maneuvering the bushes on the other end of the garden. She bent closer to the window, strained her focus and saw a pair of yellow eyes advancing from the bushes.

She suddenly felt an excruciating pain in her chest. She pressed it with her right palm and wanted to call for help; for her and for the pigeon lying in the lawn. But she felt as helpless as the meager bird watching her end advance towards her from a distance. She tried to yell, but her voice would go past her diaphragm. The cat began advancing at a faster pace and birds watching this couldn’t do anything more than just cry out loud. The pigeon began fluttering its feathers with all its might only to figure out that it wouldn’t help. The lady, with all her strength and courage, pushed herself from the chair to stand up but ended up striking her hand on the glass jar.

The glass jar fell crashing on the ground and the loud noise alerted the cat. But it wouldn’t stop; instead it began the final sprint across the garden to secure her supremacy in the food cycle. Her daughter immediately rushed from the kitchen towards her room. Without disrupting her pace, the cat swiftly dug the sharp teeth into the pigeon’s throat. The lady skipped her beat in an attempt to cry out loud without realising it was her last. She collapsed on the ground while the cat ran back towards her safe zone to relish her accomplishment. There was an utter silence that engulfed the entire moment.

In the seconds to follow, there were loud cries inside the house.

Amitabh was the angry young man of the 80’s, but soon the slot was snatched away by Sunny Deol: the carnivores’ man with pounds of heavy muskels with no cuts and fuzzy hair. He made a place for himself in the cinema which later saw competition from drooping eye, hunch back, sleepy giraffe Sanjay Dutt. Their unsuccessful successor was homosapien Sunil Shetty. But let’s get back to the adam of this generation. His roles influenced every youngster to walk around with a frown on their face and a needle stuck between their inner thighs. The cutlets with just bones and an inch of flesh fell for the trap and every time they yelled like Deol paaji as a defense mechanism strategy, got terribly bashed.

It was the first day, first show of his much awaited film with his father Dharmendra after the media had uncovered the tussle between them in reality. The crowd was going mad the ticket counter and the law enforcement units were called in to control the situation and shoot the over excited bunch with tranquilizers. Somehow the film began and despite sound proof walls, people outside could hear the audience inside yelling. This was quite an extreme behavior from an unexpected emotional family drama starring Sunny. Just one hour after the film rolls had begun to slide through the projector, people started walking out of the cinema halls with a completely furious expression.

The media waiting to get the snippet of audience review rushed towards the first man walking out. The moment they cornered him, he grabbed his T-shirt collar with both hands and ripped it apart exposing his unshaven chest and pear shaped belly and yelled like a gorilla. The media just took a step back, but he pounced towards the mike and whispered in a squeaking voice “papha”. The media looked bewildered and before they could throw their question, he repeated it again, and with every iteration his pitch increased and so did his aggression. And with a sudden twist, he stopped, glared at the mikes surrounding him. None of the sides made a sound or moved. The frozen moment broke with this lunatic breaking down and howling. He accused Sunny of torturing the audience by saying “papha” over a thousand times in the first hour of the film.

Within hours cities across the country were struck by traumatic victims rushing out of the movie halls creating chaos in the city. Owing to the personal tussle with his son, Dharmendra expressed his anger over the usage of “papha” so many times. He said that this wasn’t disclosed by the producer while reading out the script to him. No brownie points for guessing who the producer was. He filed a complaint along with the human rights commission to take this atrocity to the next level. As a result, a warrant to arrest the wild adam was issued. But no one dared to touch the beast who threw away a bunch of health constables like a hurricane. There was a meeting called by the Home minister to deal with this situation.

After a long discussion, they decided to call me in, the most honorable cops in the STF (Special Task Force). It wasn’t easy handling me either and they looked for every possible option to look for an alternate solution, but couldn’t. They had to choose the safer evil amongst the two of us. By then the news somehow leaked and Adam was on the run. But I had a strong network of funny looking villains who had being doing pathetic job in every Hindi film in Bollywood. Right from Amrish Puri as Chaddha in Damini to Shakti Kapoor in his boxers, they all were undercover agents working only for me. I pulled out chaddha out of his bathtub and he gave me Adam’s whereabouts without jerking his hair falling in front of his eyes.

The home minister thought that this will get sinister and called in for snipers from Uganda and some oriental martial arts experts and ninja from Far East. The stage was set and while everyone needed binoculars to spot him in the crowded market of Chandani Chowk, I could see him with my naked eyes. But his nose was nothing less than that of a dog, he sniffed the policemen in his vicinity and became alert. The ninja’s rushed in to stop him, but he threw them off in random directions. Their samurai swords couldn’t get an inch closer to his flesh. He was swift enough to dodge the snipers, who were finding it impossible to freeze their target.

They all got exhausted and burnt out in their quest to arrest him. By then I had began descending towards him. He looked at me with aggression, all set to tear me into pieces. It dint move my moral and I continued to advance towards him. As I approached, I saw his expressions changing from aggressive to mild to petrified. Soon I was at an arms distance and the entire air around us froze. I gave him one tight slap across his face and he began crying. I caught him by his neck, lifted him in the air and then pulled his ear closer and asked him “Why the hell did torture the citizens of our country by saying papha so many times your film?” To which he gestured requesting me to lower him down to the ground. Then he coughed and cleared his throat. Out of nowhere, he smiled and said “Ye andar ki baat hai”.

I immediately woke up with a jerk to the alarm tone of my cellphone “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of These)” - Annie Lennox ;-)