Let's put the record straight right at start: Aamir Khan's latest flick Laal Singh Chaddha has run the "long distance" to be on the right side of the wrong dispensation in Delhi.
It's been blessed by none other than a man of dubious credentials, Jay Shah, who also happens to be the exalted son of a certain exalted strongman and the country's home minister; it's been produced by Mukesh Ambani's Viacom 18; provided with infrastructure backup by the Indian Army, and police forces across several states.
And as if that's not all...
Laal Singh paints entire communities as monsters with the sole exception of us, Hindus, whom he, for a change, relegates to an irrelevant sideshow, the proverbial also rans, in his cross country marathon.
Laal Singh's story unfolds by branding one of the two-and-a-half Christian characters as a "Love Crusader" (remember Islamic love jihad) who marries an innocent Sikh woman only to betray her as a drunkard and wife killer; he reduces Muslims to scoundrels, pimps, Bollywood black marketeers and underworld dons (lifting the Abu Salem-Monica Bedi story in entirety); showcases Gulf sheikhs as best buddies of drug dealers and smugglers (transplanting the Dawood-Dubai nexus); and makes Pakistanis look like what they are - transborder aggressors who, when humiliated, beaten, crippled and rehabilited, undergo a "heart transplant" in India, and return to their watan to educate otherwise ordinary madrasa-destined kids as modern world citizens and the country's future hope, much like ours.
What's more, he repeatedly calls Mohammad, pa'aji (perhaps, no pun intended when you drop the apostrophe).
Laal Singh is also politically correct.
During his criss-cross run from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, Laal makes a pilgrimage to Benares (reminiscent of the kanwar yatris on our highways) where he sprints across the holy ghats right under the nose of who else, but NaMo, staring down from a garish mural on a nation of 1.4 billion citizens (did someone say we will surpass China's population next year, 25 years ahead of projection) with his famous two-liner: ab ki bar Modi sarkar.
Laal also goes on to point a finger at the ancien régime, the Congress, for the anti-Sikh progrom in Delhi, and the rest of the country, 40 years ago.
And as if this heady cocktail wasn't enough, he offers golgappas as an employment and consumption opportunity (remember Jay Shah's papa kehte hain bara naam karega, inspiring the nation's "demographic dividend" to pursue careers as golgappa and pakora vendors).
And he bets on chaddhi-manufacturing (underwear stitching) as India's most lucrative corporate enterprise in 75 years.
Why then are the chaddhi dharis (kicker wearers) so angry with Laal, oops! Aamir, that they have victoriously ranted his mega blockbuster into a box office disaster, invoking the swadeshi (jagran manch)-era boycott of "cultural imperialism" during azadi ka amrit mahotsav?
That's the quintessential paradox that will forever beg an answer.
For a country drowning in its make-belief glory of yesterday's losers worshipped as today's heroes, setting cash registers ringing at the box office with mindless mediocrity in the name of patriotism, Laal Singh comes as a refreshing tonic for a nation's soul that's lately lost its mooring. For, Laal celebrates the extraordinary in the less-than-ordinary. It makes a winner out of the loser we love to pelt with stones in our daily race for survival.
It genuinely offers us Hope.
For a country trapped in the hopelessness of hatred (and where everybody stands naked), that's a much needed inspiration to leave our baggage behind in our long trudge for freedom of our collective mind as a nation.
But that's easier said than done in a society caught up in the pursuit of self aggrandisement, without an understanding of humour, without a sense of the sensitive, without an appreciation of finesse, without the anchors of goodness and benevolence.
In this dog-eat-dog world that we have been busy erecting for ourselves, it's time to spare a moment for the simple joy of compassion.
Laal is an intelligent remaking of a borrowed 1994 Hollywood story (Forrest Gump) in a nation where the intelligence quotient of its citizens is on rapid decline.
Above all, it's also an act of subversion using the stereotype props of "othering ", to deliver an evocative message, while kowtowing to the powers that be.
And that's a good enough reason to head for the theatre, ignoring the absurd, on this, our 75th Independence Day.
Go, watch Laal Singh Chaddha.
It's well worth your money.
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