Parzania

Parzania (n.) A fantasy land where castles are made of chocolate and halwa and people never fight.

Well, if Chak De India suggested that the national community is one that has to be constantly worked into being, then here it is where you start from and watch it crumble. Set in the context of the Gujarat riots, the film makes a compelling case of the fragility of goodness in everyday lives. All saccharine and sweet family life of a Parsee family is brutally destroyed by a marauding mob of Hindu fanatics on the hunt for every last drop of Muslim blood.

My point follows from my previous post on Chak De India. Even in this most brutal and unpunished act of genocide committed in recent times, it is not the Indian Muslim who has a chance of becoming the subject of this narrative - just the backdrop, perhaps the excuse, if not the reason, why the plight unleashed by this most inhumane episode can be and must be told. Parzania is a story about the unwitting victims of this inhumanity. It seems impossible even in this supposedly magnanimous tale of disenchantment with the forever failing state that the first and foremost target of Modi's marauding can speak and demand justice from the state and call its flight from responsibility on its face!

There are of course many other things to say about Parzania, but for the moment, and in the light of the last post - let this suffice.