A Hard Night's Day

As the sun starts reaching out, feeling around, with its first tentative rays, the empty blue sky stolen off a Renaissance artist's canvas, I am tempted to say with Theoden, "And so it begins." Another night has passed me by and I am still trying to configure the SuSE installed on my computer to perform at its best. And all the work that I have neglected the last couple of days glares at me from a corner, promising, with a malignant smile, headaches for days to come. But it has been nice and I have had fun tweaking my notebook and learning to write shell scripts and other silly things. Not to forget enjoying a special screening of Amadeus at 4am, sparing no thought for the other three poor souls who inhabit my house and, unlike me, sleep during the night.

As a movie, Amadeus is quite a treat. I had seen the second half of the movie before and wanted to see the whole movie. The colour of late 18th century Vienna and the music of Mozart: what more can a movie ask for? The actors have done their parts well too and no wonder the movie won so many Oscars(though Titanic has made the awards largely meaningless). Anyways, good company for 3 hours(nearly) though the version I saw seemed to me edited.

Also spent some time on the Advani controversy. It seems funny to me that there should be an argument at all whether Jinnah was 'communal'. He wanted a Muslim 'quam' and that by definition makes him communal. The word 'communal' has been mauled so badly that it has become a petty gaali now. But Israel is 'communal' and most of the countries in the Middle-East are theocratic and we have no problems maintaining good relations with them. So why does it matter only so close to home? It is an ugly thing and I wouldn't want it sneaking into my home but a foreign state is welcome to do what it wills as long as it doesn't (interfere with)/(tend to affect) my stuff. That, I know everyone knows, is the core principle of sovereignity of nations. And, if you do steal my toothbrush, it doesn't make sense for me to just yell at you,"You lousy St.Patrick's School ruffian". Strong typecasting is useful only in so many scenarios and international relations, I think, is not one of them.

On the other hand, if at all we need to consider Jinnah's career, let us place him on par with the other leaders of the Freedom Struggle, and, for every Chauri Chaura that we excuse, strike off a Lahore or a Punjab on his side. Not to absolve him of his short-sightedness but to understand that he was a man with limitations as was every person who extracted his/her pound of salt. And since the history of our freedom struggle is too close by us to analyse it critically, without bias, let us instead ask other, more important questions regarding our future relations with our estranged cousin Pakistan. A couple of good reads in rediff.com were satisfying but the question lingers. And so the show does go on, it seems, in India. Oh, by the way, it was 'Hindustan' last I heard.

It has been a long, dark tea-time for me, this vacation from reality, this day of darkness, but now that it is getting lighter and brighter, I must sneak back into my coffin, so adios all and auf wiedersehen.