The Young India

Kartikey Sehgal

Written first for DNA

Director Shyam Benegal, who has captured myriad expressions of life in his various films, had to free himself from the clutches of the item-number when he was making ‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’.

“He did not want to include songs in the film. He did so on the behest of the producers”, says writer Atul Tiwari who has worked with the director.

In one of the songs, that was probably required to be the item song of the…

Kartikey Sehgal

Discipline is to do with fear. Basically we fear what we should do with our time and so we invent discipline. With discipline there is no fear as to what we have to do with our time. Though I am not fearful, I had decided to use this time for other kinds of writing but I am now writing on fear and discipline

So discipline should come from within. You should be bothered as to what you are going…

 Kartikey Sehgal

I walk to the theatre and think that it’s not too much to ask for any man. Some security and movie-watching with your family.

“Tell me”, says Bhupinder while manoeuvring his auto-rickshaw through the police barricade, “won’t the terrorist simply take the bus?” A set of three policemen, huddled together, ask for the vehicles to slow down; the bus and heavy transport is let through without scrutiny. “The Police simply adds to traffic woes. In the morning they are…

Kartikey Sehgal

Not the camera but the actors move aplenty and intone and tell us about the epic victory of theatre actors over film actors.

You’d imagine that the director had fun making this movie. Then you’d read about his hardships and how he had to mortgage or sell property to obtain some money. Then you’d think that this was a difficult movie to make, full of sacrifices. But let me tell you, the director had fun and so did the actors.…

Kartikey Sehgal

India is losing land to her neighbour. The author says that “it should be no surprise that Indians are getting restless or communal or impatient as is often reported by writers and thinkers in the print and television medium.”

Land is sacred for Indians and it presents one difference between the nationalists and the others. They former love land and land is equal to religion for them; you can pray to the universe or you can pray to the idols…

Kartikey Sehgal

[Fiction]

On 26TH January, 2010, every state of India paraded its best to the nation. Maharashtra presented the much celebrated dubba wallas who travel in sweat and danger on (in, over) local trains. Who ensure that the food reaches the Mumbai residents on time. These men, marked for their punctuality and honesty, live in a state that sees farmers dying in Vidarbha.

Among the celebratory troops of states were men, or at least one, who wondered if the salutes…

Kartikey Sehgal

Read the first part on this page
The respondent is unconcerned about the topic. She is unaware of discussions on casteism and racism in the media. She tells me that there are many like her; they have belief in dharma and don’t bother about what allegations others put on their way of living. Often I have to reconfirm what she says;  “there was lots of bloodshed between the brahmins and kshatriyas” where bloodshed means that the boy’s…

Kartikey Sehgal

I came upon this information during a conversation on casteism. The lady told me, “There has never been much caste problem in my home town [Jammu] )".

She continued:

“We recently discovered that a family belonging to the shudra caste is actually a brahmin family. The ____ (surname) were brahmins at one time and shifted to a lower caste probably to defend themselves.”

Here’s the backdrop; two families in Jammu have been friends for many decades thought they are from…