Money can buy justice, or at least freedom!

Trial by Fire (2023, Miniseries)
Netflix

A management professor once told a joke about the Indian justice system. An 80-year-old man appeared for a molestation charge. After looking at the charge sheet, the judge queried, "you are accused of molesting a 16-year-old girl. Why? At this age..." The octagenarian replied, "Sir, I was also 16 when it happened!"

That is how long it takes the cogwheel of justice moves. It is not an Indian problem but a worldwide phenomenon. Part of the law school syllabus must be a paper on creative ways to dodge a trial and get away with it.

People enter a movie hall thinking they will be transported to a world of make-believe and forget real life's stresses for the next two hours or so. What audience who flocked to Uphaar cinema hall in Delhi on June 13th 1997, was far from it. They ended up struggling to stay alive when a transformer exploded. 59 people succumbed to smoke inhalation.

The general public patronises various public venues thinking that the licensing bodies and the enforcement units will do their part in ensuring safety for the general public. Victims of the fire also realised the hard way that all the while, the public has been short-changed. The businesses had been trying to maximise profits over safety. The local councils have been sleeping on their jobs as well. The question begs whether they deliberately looked the other way after their palms were greased.

Illegal extensions, indiscriminately increasing seats, and the erection of private viewing terraces only blocked exits. The doors were locked and bolted to discourage illicit entrees into halls, trapping and smoking the desperately trapped patrons to their deaths.

When the push came to the shove, even emergency response teams failed them. Their snail-paced lethargic swing to action was much to desired at a time when the public is aware of their rights is embarrassing.

Even the long arm of the law and cogwheel of the system appears to be dragging its feet. After 25 years, the parents of two teenage fire victims, Neelam and Sekhar Krishnamoorthy, are yet to see justice to be meted out to the owners of the ill-fated cinema hall. They, together with other relatives who had lost their loved ones in the fire, had taken a civil suit against the owners for negligence. They allege that they had neglected the safety of their clients.

The owners, big shots in Delhi, who had a hand in all development projects, are said to be big philanthropists with big community projects under their belts that seem untouchable. They are able to engage big-wig lawyers, and even the judges appear to feed off their hands. Delays and postponements are norms. Even the lawyer assigned to the defence by the Central Bureau of Investigation looked disinterested and needed prodding and feeding of information to proceed with the case.

Neelam and Sekhar, who wrote a book about their whole ordeal, had embarked on extensive TV interviews highlighting fire safety in public places. In one of such interviews, Neelam, out of sheer frustration, had blurted that she should have just taken a gun, shot the cinema owners and claim insanity rather than having faith in the legal system that seem skewed to protect the rich and famous. The rest of the population can just be taken for a ride with the false pretence that justice will prevail. In reality, money can buy justice or at least freedom.

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 

The face behind the mask!

Party (Hindi; 1984)
Director: Govind Nihalani

This film remains relevant even when we have ventured into the 21st century. The issues highlighted in this movie are not only confined to Indian society but can be applicable the world over. In fact, if activism and washing of dirty linen used to be restricted to exclusive cocktail parties those days, now it is party-time anytime. At the tip of the finger, with the clattering of keyboards, people can broadcast their views to the world.

Many things are going on in the lives of the attendees of this private party. The party was held to fete a celebrated playwright, Diwakar, who was recently conferred a national award. The host, Damayanthi, a widow, is rumoured to have an illicit relationship with Diwakar. Divakar's wife, Mohini, is a much younger person than him, an actor who stopped acting after marriage is a frustrated woman. Away from the limelight, she yearns for and reminisces about the centre of attraction she used to be. Others think she was not much of an actress anyway. This is made worse by her current state, a hopeless drunk.

Damayanthi's daughter is a frustrated unwed mother. She has her own issues with her determination not to conform to societal pressures. Amrit, a talented poet, is mentioned in absentia every now and then. He had apparently left the art scene to serve the underprivileged.

As the story unfolds, we, the viewers, are shown the behaviours of some members of that performing artists' circle. Social hypocrisy is apparent. They do not preach what they represent on stage -upholding Indian culture. The demeanour does not imply such. They, as actors, put up a front of having social consciousness, but in reality, it is just the next job that they worried about, not changing the world. Everyone put up a front to maintain an image. They do not say what they mean and certainly do not mean what they say. Portraying their involvement in activism for social justice is an exercise in public relations and image building to remind fans of their existence when they are not working. 

Many of them carry a load of psychological baggage. This popularity contest takes out a lot of juices from its members. Art seems to glorify body image. Time and biology are not kind to these. There is a constant need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant. 

An exciting offering from India's parallel cinema. It is not the usual fare that one associates with an Indian movie.

(P.S. While mainstream cinema seems to portray a seemingly fair view of an issue, in reality, the real message is cryptically hidden and woven to satisfy the demands of their financiers or powers-that-be.) 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

We flock together when the odds are against us.

Sometimes (Sila Samayanggil, Tamil, சில சமயங்கில்; 2018)
Netflix

We consider ourselves one step better than a stranger standing beside us. We gaze at them through our rose-tinted glasses when they are unaware and draw our own conclusions on their moral standards and codify them either 'good' or 'bad'.

All these changes immediately the moment there is an imminent danger or a potentially life-consuming event in the near future. Imagine a group of passengers in a cruise who are stranded in a terrible storm, have lost all radio contacts and just waiting for time to sink if help does not arrive in time. In that scenario, everybody put their prejudices aside, treat each other as equal and try to face the common enemy.

This is the scenario that the filmmakers are trying to create. Seven patients are waiting anxiously in a sparsely populated lobby for their HIV results. Each patient has their own story that brought them to get their blood tested - an ex-girlfriend dying from AIDS, a single contact with a sex worker, a rape victim, someone who helped a road traffic accident victim who later died with HIV and so on. I guess the storyteller decided to stay from a gay or a promiscuous character as he would probably be the focus of the story or take the suspense part out of guessing who would turn HIV+ later. In the midst of all these is a counter clerk at the hospital who has serious money issues. 

The seven patients could not stand the pressure of having to wait until the end of the day to get the results. They try to bribe the clerk to expedite the results, but all she could do was to tell that one of the seven of them got the bad news. The question is which one of them? That creates suspense that lasts throughout the later part of the film.

The whole movie takes place in a single set mostly, and in a single day. A slow-moving but intense drama with enough melodrama to satisfy the appetite of Tamil moviegoers. An AIDS awareness movie. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.