PUNE, Dec 3: It was curtains for Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das in more ways than one when a ragged cloth sheet was hastily pulled over the Fire hoarding at West End theatre and screening of the film put off under threat from the Patit Pavan Sanghatna, an extreme right wing organisation.The matinee move, that came close on the heels of Shiv Sainiks stopping the film's screening in Mumbai yesterday, took city Shiv Sena workers by surprise, who had after a long meeting this afternoon decided to take out a mahila morcha to stop screening of the film from tomorrow.``We were going to stop the screening tomorrow,'' said a visibly disappointed Nirmala Kendre, district chief of the Sena, on being informed that their cause had already been hijacked. ``Nevertheless, if the theatre tries to start the screeening anytime, we will not allow it. The film is full of obscenity and nudity,'' she was quick to add.Kendre expressed surprise at how the Censor Board had cleared such an ashlil (vulgar) film, which she had not seen herself but had been informed about by some ``Shiv Sena sisters from Mumbai''.Between the filial fights of the sisters and brothers of the Sena for deriving mileage out of what appears to be a `burning' cause, Sandeep Khardekar of the PPS, the man who got ahead, says his fight is against the anti-India sentiments expressed by an actor in the film. According to Khardekar, the man who plays the father of the Japanese hair dresser with whom Javed Jaffri is shown having an affair with, calls India a ``third class country'' with ``no position for minorities'' and ``stupid latrines''.Objections had also been raised against a man servant shown masturbating in the film while watching a pornographic film in the presence of his aging paralytic employer.Khardekar said his organisation also objected to the lesbianism shown in the film but had left it to the sister organisations like the Stree Mukti Sangathana.``Even if two women are indulging in sex they should do it in behind the closed doors of their bedroom, there is no need to bring this into public,'' he said, adding that the movie was being banned to protect ``society and our own daughters, wives and sisters'' from the ``Western concept of lesbianism.'' The PPS had been forced to take on the mantle of ``moral police'' because parents were not taking their responsibility towards children seriously and the film was a corrupting influence, he added.
