Revolutionary without a Cause

This morning while having tea and a profound conversation with my boss, he started whispering a song. The song was full of lyric holes, hastily substituted with soft humming and queried looks at me, to which I could only provide immaculate shoulder shrugs. The song was about giving music to people, people who made war, were petty, antisocial or even plain mean. Hoping - scratch that - implying that it would save them. This bangla song is not unlike many many others I have heard through the years mostly by people like Kabir Suman as he is now known.

The thoughts are of revolution but the establishment is missing. The change is pervasive to the point that the point becomes diluted. And as my boss so succintly put it "Biplob! biplob without a cause." People want things to change into a utopia which even they are not sure of. But change they crave.

I remember reading a play which my father had acted in and partially written (back in the days when he knew the communist manifesto cover to cover and had not become a benevolent industrialist). It was a satire on the two forms of theatre prevalent in the late sixties early seventies. One was the revolutionary play, lots of oppression, suffering and tyranny till the proletariat took up the cause, and under red cellophaned spotlights and an aptly chosen slogan/anthem declared revolution. The other was the absurd play, very intellectual and seldom understandable even by intellectuals (which they always covered by saying "its open to interpretation"). The satire was to bring out the futility of both kinds of theatre, showing the meaninglessness of mass revolution and elitist intellectualism in a modern and intricately dysfunctional society. How much the play succeeded in its cause may be judged by the fact that it inspired a young man from Delhi to try out something new. Safdar Hashmi started his troupe "Jana Natya Manch - Janam" and performed street plays about issues, specific issues. The issues were real and the consequences were enacted out in a way that would make you cringe just from the fact that it was so close to the heinous truths you chose to forget.

Seeing Rang De Basanti and all the righteous anger that the youth are supposed to have, I get back to the red spotlight and seem to be waiting for the bugle call. Somehow the cause eludes me. I am unhappy with the way things but clueless about my contribution in the revolution. I want to stand up and fight but whom and how? The movie doesn't answer that nor does a song about giving people music and transforming their lives. They are just nice words and beautiful emotions and in the end just as absurd as Beckett. Ah maybe we are all just "Waiting for safdar"