Realm of the SCENSCI

On the night of the 27th of October, when Israel first imposed a communications blackout on Gaza, we made our way to an emergency protest near the Binnenhof in Den Haag (the so-called heart of Dutch democracy). I guess we were around fifty to sixty people there. Not many but still impressive for a hastily called, last minute protest. The reasoning behind that short-notice protest was the following: we all feared (rightly it later turned out) that taking advantage of the blackout, Israel planned on unleashing its full monstrous might. We feared that Israel aimed to kill as many people as possible and destroy as many houses, apartment buildings, schools, churches, mosques, and hospitals, as possible. We feared that Israel planned on annihilating basically anything that constitutes life, so as to make Gaza unlivable for the Palestinians, and expedite Israel’s long-held goal of once-and-for-all ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from Palestine.

We proceeded with the usual chants and slogans: “free free Palestine”, “no justice, no peace”, “Israel terrorist” and so on. Then a young Palestinian girl got the loud speaker and started a new chant: “Stop killing children, stop killing children, stop killi…” by the third time, her emotions gave way, and she broke down. She knew and we knew that as she chanted, as we stood there, RIGHT AT THAT MOMENT, Israel was killing more children, more babies, more women, and more men. We knew that Israel would kill, kill and kill some more, and educated people in the western world would bend over backwards to not only explain away its monstrous actions but to in fact applaud it for said actions. What did our slogans then mean? What did our chants accomplish? What of our protests? Wasn’t Thrasymachus right and Socrates hopelessly wrong: the strong do what they can and the weak suffer as they must?

Another girl took over the loudspeaker duties and we carried on the chants. We kept chanting angrily and mournfully. At that moment I believe we were all assailed by a feeling of helplessness and impotence the likes of which we had perhaps never experienced before. And being the film buff that I am, I remembered the following scene from Rang De Basanti, in which Aamir Khan’s character realizes that he is a nobody and nothing he does will get him and his friends justice:

I was reminded of Rang De Basanti again today upon watching the videos of peaceful protestors calling for a ceasefire in Washington DC being brutally attacked and humiliated by the police. All that these people were asking for was an end to the genocide of a hapless, brutalized, occupied, and long-suffering people. They were not protesting for themselves or for anything that would be considered remotely controversial in a sane world. However, they were brutally attacked in order to teach them a lesson. Rang de Basanti had a similar scene.

And the following from real life: peaceful and resolute protestors suddenly and brutally attacked by the police:

However, we are all going to the grave, or as my father once told a media baron when he refused to increase workers wages: “Sahib Pakistan mein ausat umar saath saal hai, kab tak qorma biryani khayain gay” (Sir, the average age in Pakistan is sixty years, how long will you enjoy biryani qorma [so give the workers their due]). And Faiz had taught us: tum apni karni kar guzro, jo hoga dekha jayega. So in line with Faiz’s teaching, Thrasymachus, Israel, the US and the entire western media can all go shove it. We’ll do what we must. And while we are doing it, this black sister is our vibe:

*Habibti is replacing Basanti here from the title of the film. Basanti is the color of spring in the subcontinent which symbolizes revolution.

Endnote: Off-topic but here I must confess that at least I haven’t seen any movie, European, Hollywood or Indie, which has captured the sense of hopelessness that people feel on justice denied and what taking action to overcome that hopelessness, in the absence of any supporting political movement, may look like. And yet being brainwashed, complexed brownies, we will never give our own people the respect they deserve. Our level of inferiority complex is such that even the director of this wonderful movie, Rakesh Omprakash Mehra, himself went to the US to show it to Robert McKee, that third-rate creator of formulaic scripts, to get his approval. Robert McKee in a million years could never write a script half as good as Rang De Basanti but yet…