Of teenage moms, mob fury and SRK vs. Darsheel

It’s a weird world. No wait, it just got weirder.

This “weird” piece on DNA India’s website reports about an Argentinean girl who is the mother of seven kids at the age of just, well yes, 16. She had given birth to a boy at the age of 14 and followed that up with two sets of triplets in consecutive years giving doctors something to brainstorm on.

I’d written about my feelings on mob justice in modern India in a previous post. And now we have a second case to reflect on. Two students in Hajipur, Bihar engaged in a fight over a mobile phone which turned ugly when one of them stabbed the other, dragged him onto the streets and was “assisted” in this self-endorsed act of justice by a mob. Our age-old habit of chickening out and turning into mere spectators came good once again. Not just the people, even the police.

If anything improves in the country with time, it is the degree of controversy generated by a syndrome of “we-hate-each-other-so-damn-much” actions complemented by an in-built urge to curb benevolence and go deaf and dumb at malevolence.

The war of words between actor Shahrukh Khan and Union Health minister Anbumani Ramadoss regarding the on-screen smoking controversy reached another level after the minister accused SRK of trying to limit the scope of the word “creative liberty”. Ramadoss directed praise at Aamir Khan and his once-in-many-lifetimes Taare Zameen Par, stating that creativity should be used to improve societal minds and not encourage habits that kill a million Indians every year.

Talking of SRK and Aamir, the country is braced up for a potential Filmfare awards “upset” when SRK takes on the more-deserving Darsheel Safary for the Best Actor accolade. SRK may have produced a decent effort in Chak De India, but no one can rule out the influence that Darsheel and Aamir have had on our lives since Taare Zameen Par and it would be great for him to snap up the honour.

Something right should happen once in a while to continue to keep hope alive. It is on a life-critical support system already.....