Bombay’s lost itself, Mumbai doesn’t even know where to look

And the annoying part of their rage is that it has but one obsession, but a single point of focus: SEX. They are convinced of the great virtues in the preoccupation of this vice. They know there isn’t a bigger distraction than the intoxication of sex; they are keenly aware that in the luscious folds of its scented embrace, even the most sturdy lose their balance, and they exploit this with great sound and fury. They call for bans of all sorts — on mini-skirts in colleges, and lovers holding hands in parks; on Valentine’s vulgarities, and Television’s adulteries! And the rest of the world, the quieter lot, exhausted from making a living, nods its head in agreement — more to hide the embarrassment and guilt of harbouring private fantasies of their own and less to eradicate wrong and untruth. In this herd-morality we all merrily tell ourselves, “Ah… all’s right with the world… sin’s deadly claws have been clipped… my soul is rich with good health.”

There might have been a greater good done to society had the moral brigade worked towards improving the human “sole” rather than the human soul. At least there would have been fewer spinal problems! But as it stands, we are like the blind saying to the deaf, “I see…” The Mumbai I have known wasn’t ever keen on living in happy delusion. The Mumbai I have been in for over two decades wasn’t shy of being subversive. And most importantly the Mumbai I have loved more than any other city in the world prided itself in not being a victim of its own pretences, was never fooled by its own lies. Now however, it seems like the lines between truth and perception are blurring and we are all developing a kind of voluntary myopia in which what looks good is what grabs attention, and what grabs attention is actually and truly good. Everything that glitters is as good as gold, and everything that sounds like a gem is really and truly a nugget. You are what you can fool the world into believing you are.

There was a time in Hindi films when Zeenat Aman and Parveen Babi, frank and uninhibited in their sensuality on screen, were as respected in the performing arts as, say, Hema Malini and Rekha. Today, however, there’s a clear distinction between an “item girl” and a “heroine” despite the fact that there’s little difference between them on screen. The former is not given her due as an actress, nor is any importance given to her thoughts and ideas by the intelligentsia. A sad and ridiculous narrow-mindedness, this.

Never mind that there are real issues to be grappled with — Mumbai gulping for air underneath torrential rain and pollution and traffic epidemics being just a couple of them. Never mind that over fifty thousand bar-girls have been fired from their jobs with no prior notice, despite the fact that they were for the most part performing the same sexy dance numbers that many a Hindi film features. None of these are big enough to take the soul-cleaners’ minds off sex. Besides, these would require real work, a moral march just wouldn’t suffice. Better to attack the poor bar-girls rather than inflict hefty fines on the clients who visit them, because then you would incur the wrath of a huge faceless but moneyed group of men. Better to ban the show of cigarette smoking in Hindi films rather than attack the powerful tobacco industry, because your fight would be extinguished before you’d be able to wield your first anti-smoking placard. Better to think the depraved world is sex-starved rather than address and deal with the AIDS epidemic.

So let’s all reach for a bottle of Listerine and gargle vigorously. Let’s get ready to shout the next set of slogans against a society that has fallen from grace… blah, blah, blah. The television channels are sure to report it in their daily news bulletins. And we can all go to bed feeling warm and fuzzy with a hard day’s work put in.

I for one, however, will sleep well because as a British actor once said, “They can’t censor the gleam in my eye.”

Tanuja Chandra is a Bombay-based film-maker