Gangs of Wasseypur

Aren't you bored out the trite that is passed around as Cinema? Aren't you are tired of the milk chocolate covered, pink candy flavoured, perfectly shaped shit that is thrown in our face on a regular basis. I, for one, craved for an honest-to-God, real, kickass movie so full of badassery that it cannot but be of our own beautifully fucked up corner of the world called Bihar.


So praise be on the land of Balia, where Anurag Kashyap was born. And 40 years later, Gangs of Wasseypur was created.


This cinematic gem's brilliance has many hues.


It has such a cliched story line. Revenge. No-spoiler-alert. It is that simple. And within this simplicity lies its profoundness.


The profoundness that is revealed though the fabulously set backdrop, of Independence, Coal mining and an emerging Socialist/Capitalist economy. It has a subtle existence. Reminiscent of the ocean breeze, when you take a stroll on a star lit night.


And my oh my, is the night star lit! Most of us would not be able to name the many stars that light up GoW. All of them are ablaze with awesomeness. The characters are ferocious. They explode on the screen.


And the words. The sullied and bloody language. The mannerism. The nifty little nuances that delight. Is it real? Is that how it is? Or it was? Yes. Hell bloody yeah. As a true blue Bihari, dharti maiyya ke kasam, that is how it is.


And the promotions. The campaigning. The advertising, that you rarely saw on TV. But everywhere on the Social Network. Micro blog. Macro blog. Tweets and Updates. You tube promos. Dialogue promos. Crazy fans like yours truly blogging about it. And what not. Mind blowing! I have a penchant for Marketing. And I cannot but dream of doing what the GoW Team has done.


For those of you who don't know, I will be embarking on a 16 month long adventure in Phillipines, at Asian Institute of Management (Don't kick me in my lovelies at the last hour SBI) . It is also known as an MBA. I hope it is a Mind Blowing Adventure. And I have a new career goal : I want to be a Marketer/Sales Man for Anurag Kashyap Films Private Limited !


Apart from enthralling me to the hilt, GoW gave me something else. Nostalgia. Heart ache. Occasionally, a painful reminder of how things were or may be still are in the state where I was born and raised. But it also gave me a chance to re-connect to my roots. A reminder of how beautiful and soulful Bihari Culture is. I am talking about the folk songs here and not the swear words. I have never loved Bhojpuri music ever before. And for that matter, Chutney music ( The Hunter Song, which again has a bihari connection). And how lyrical ordinary bihari conversation can be!


"Aaap aaaaa gayyeeee jeee"
"Haaan. Abhiyeeee na aayeee"


Stretch and sing. It is funny. And beautiful at the same time. Even the invectives are delivered in a brutal but sing-song fashion.


Ah. Cinema is a source of abundant joy to me. I have watched the movie three times already.


Remember Sholay? This is my Sholay. Our Wasseypur. It is a lovely shade of dark gray. And the best part ? One half of this delicious movie is still left. August 10, I eagerly await.


p.s. Thank you Yayati Joshi. Your wonderful posts on Cinema inspired me.

Humara Nayak Nitish

Humara Nayak jeet gaya.

Our hero won. I am not sure about this claim of mine, but I think he won like no one has ever before. I , like millions of other Indians, am ecstatic. I say Indians, and not Biharis, for I truly believe that his Victory is not only hailed by the Indians from Bihar, but from all over India. For a change, the right man won, for the right reasons and at the right time [ Don't misinterpret the use of the word right here ;) ] . For me, it is akin to the Victory of Good over Evil,  like the radiant and resplendent Sun dispelling the clouds of darkness and doom. It is as if our Nayak borrowed Shri Ram’s bow, and chopped off not ten, but multi-headed Raavan’s in Bihar. I see the hand of the Divine Mother, blessing our Nayak with her Shakti, to gore all the Mahishasur’s to death. The Raavan’s are still there, fewer in number though, the Mahishasur’s have not been annihilated to oblivion, but the Battle is on, and you know who is gaining. It feels like Holi, Dusshera and Diwali, all rolled into one. You can say that today, I am on cloud nine, with a rainbow around my shoulders.

One might wonder that what is the big deal about Nitish jee’s re-election. He won in 2005 with a good majority, didn’t he? He worked for the development of the State, didn’t he? Logically speaking, he would have won anyways. And that is where being a Bihari, and having lived in the Dark Ages, gives you the insight that how Logic and Reason had been condemned to hell for 15 years. Unless, you have seen it, heard about it, and experienced it from a close range, you cannot imagine the fear that gripped us all. The perpetual state of disarray that we all lived in, the despair and gloom that had become a part of Life, the notion that one had to leave this damned state for a better Life, and the further you went, the better it was. 

When he held the reins in 2005, it was the proverbial sliver lining. But that fear did not go away completely even when he came into Power. Every now and then, the dark thought of his losing in the upcoming elections troubled me. An irrational fear, that nothing good can ever happen in Bihar, that we are doomed forever, that no matter what, the Dark forces will employ diabolical means to usurp power once again. I wonder whether there are others who thought on the same lines, but I had this nagging doubt. It always lurked in my mind, and sent shivers down my spine. Today, his victory has brought with it, the hope and promise for a change that will be lasting and persistent. The landslide is like the proverbial nail in the coffin of the Lords of Misrule. This victory is also a sign of a desperately needed Social change. A change in the mindset of the populace, to rise above caste and religion, to value development and peace over anything else. I do not claim that Biharis are done with caste and religion, or that this change will take place overnight. It a long and arduous process. But with Nitish jee as the Captain, the ship will sail through, and be a shining example of a Nav Bharat.

Our Nayak was not backed by MY or Your people. He was backed by the forward and the backward, by the Hindus and the Muslims, by the hope and trust of the once doomed, who now have a chance to experience Progress for a considerable period.

Today is a great day for India, and for our democratic system. This victory, and the previous one, are in the annals now, and they will be quoted as an example of a turnaround for many years to come. When a state as large and populous as Bihar gets a push in the right direction, it cannot just benefit the people from that state alone. I am no social scientist or a student of economics, but yet, I know and I am so sure of this belief, that the benefits reaped off from the leadership of our Nayak, will affect a lot more people than the 10 crore Biharis.

As Bob Dylan said, the times, they are indeed a changing.

Jai Hind.  


p.s. Did any one of you laugh out loud when the Gandhi clan tried hard to impress the Junta, and claim that there has been no development in Bihar, completely ignoring the fact that it was their beloved ally who was responsible for that?

Riot

The comments (including mine) on this post by Nita sparked off these thoughts. What good does a riot do? Bad for the stability, bad for the economy, bad for the image of the nation. And we bloggers get a new subject to rant about. Group A intends to humiliate or crush the spirit of Group B, they go medieval on them. Well then, after a while some one or the other from Group B will be plotting for revenge, and the whole shebang will start off again. The debate on the post was on Firaaq, an (Pakistani) award winning movie which depicts the suffering of the Muslim community in the Godhra riots. Many, including me, said that the movie is one-sided, and should have included the mention of the train burning incident as well. The others ranted on, how a riot, is not about the faith, but the death of innocent beings. So on and so forth. Read the rest to get a better idea. But then, is a riot, a contest of some sorts? Is it so, that the community which loses more members is to be sympathized with more, or the community to bear the brunt first gets a justification for the brutality with which they descended upon the others. Do we keep a score, and use that to settle the argument? Movies like Firaaq do not justice to tragedies like Godhra. What you need is objectivity. We need to look beyond who started or ended it, the blame game. We need to condemn the action and the reaction equally. A truly great and sensible movie would be one, which showed you everything, told the story in its entirety. It wouldn’t appeal too many, the pseudo-seculars or the minority-bashers, and it won’t get an award from Pakistan for sure, but that would do justice to it. A fellow blogger remarked, “You don’t need to belong to a particular community to speak truth. Nandita Das is a hindu and she bothered to empathize”. But then, if you are empathizing/sympathizing on the basis of religion, then it is not true empathy or sympathy. How different is the grief of a mother whose child was burnt from that of a one, whose child was hacked to pieces? Rioters and the inciters of those riots should be doled the harshest possible punishment, irrespective of the cause and effect; these episodes spread sociological cancer. And if being rational while analyzing such incidents makes me a “dhobi ka kutta” (thank you Indyeah), neither here nor there, then so be it.

Remember the movie, Desh Drohi? How a “North-Indian” comes to Mumbai, gets his ass whopped, how he kicks Marathi ass back, and all that crap. That again, is one hell of a flawed movie, and lame as well. If I were to ever make a movie on that subject, I would start off with the root cause, the non-development of UP/Bihar. How the “great leaders” of UP and Bihar let the states rot. How they are the front runners in the BIMARU group. And then move on to Mumbai and blame the likes of Thackeray. I am a Bihari, but an Indian first and foremost, and in that spirit, it would not be fair to put all the blame on one man and his party. It is not a black and white world. This is not just a Marathi or a Bihari problem, but an Indian one, and it should treated objectively.

People lose their rationality and sense of objectivity when it comes to their own. Their “own” could be their religion, language, caste, colour, city, state or sexual-preference, possibly everything except their nation. For me, India is my own. If not, then how can I claim to be a true Indian?


A poem I wrote as a teen, years ago, after the Godhra aftermath.

A riot broke in my land
Blood flowed and flooded,
through every hand,
Man slaughtered man, and,
in vengeance was butchered by him.
A father and son were amongst those,
One perished, the other vowed revenge.
But when the time to kill came,
He heard the cries of a weeping mother,
All around him were grieving losers,
Their cries pierced the depths of heart,
The tears were many, the anguish same,
His hands froze, the malevolence maimed,
In death, he saw us all as one,
For they had no religion, once they were gone.


p.s. Someday, I will make a movie on the Kashmiri Pandits, and then fast until death if the Pakistani Government refuses to acclaim,accredit and award that movie. I am banking on the fact that :-

1. I will win a lottery to finance the movie, and cast Nandita Das .
2. There will be a few Pandits left by then .
3. The Land-of-Pure would still be on the face of this Earth .

Being a Bihari

I am an Indian. First and Foremost. That is one the of cornerstones of my existence. That is how I perceive myself. I do not know whether it is right or wrong to have a sense of sub-nationalism, but I have a little of it. All my energies reserved for nationalism, patriotism and the occasional jingoism is focused on the motherland, as a whole (including Kashmir). Religion and language are secondary and tertiary. And my caste be damned, I flip the bird and moon at it. In spite of all this, my being born in Bihar, somehow seems more significant, and it casts a shadow. It astounds the hell out of me, that a region which was once the centre of wealth and knowledge is now one of the poorest. Bad Karma?

I am the kind of guy who counts his blessings. So what if I was born a Bihari. I was raised in Patna (it has its shortcomings but is a city), I come from a middle-class background, and I never had to face any caste or religion related issues. But what if I had been on the last rung of the caste ladder? I could have been shot dead by Ranvir Sena. What if I had been a poor Muslim, who migrated to Gujarat? Butchered again. Or just a poor guy with a non-technical degree trying my damndest to get a government job? I could have been killed in Assam, or thrashed within inches of my life in Maharashtra . Quite possibly, I could have committed suicide out of sheer frustration, when nobody in Tamil Nadu would have responded to my queries in my accented Hindi or English. Am I exaggerating? Nope. I don’t think so. There was a time when I, being younger and ignorant, used to equate the status of a Bihari in India with that of a cowboy of Texas, both being the butt of a lot of jokes. What a colossal idiot was I! The only bloody thing that is common is the Cow part. Cowboys indeed, it’s more like cow herds. Cowboys are cool, what’s cool about a cow herd?

The reason why quite a few Bihari students land up in IIT’s: “They drop and drop until they end up at an IIT, plus the fact that Bihari students are good at rote learning. “ The explanation given by a fellow class mate when I started college. I had no idea rote learning could get one a seat in an IIT. If only I had made the acquaintance of his greatness earlier! And this very person was antagonistic for some time as I was a B-boy (a felicitous name coined by him). He also called me and the others like me, NRI’s, because Bihar was not a part of India (his idea of a joke).

A common misconception about Bihari students: He is good for only two things. He can be a good student, religiously toiling away, burning midnight oil and whatnot, score high and ultimately steal white collar jobs from the local population of the city he decides to settle in OR He can be a bloody gunda, eve-teasing, politicizing, intimidating and bullying, rambunctious as hell, the root of all evil.

Sometimes the same person can play both the roles.

But there are people like me as well. Neither here nor there. Decent law-abiding birds, who do not spit, eve-tease or create a ruckus.I am also willing to learn the language of the state I am residing in, even if I can get along easily with the help of Hindi and English. I would do so because there are times when I feel inadequate and guilty . Learning the local language would make me feel good and allow me to belong truly and completely .

An incident which involves my friend while he was studying in Pune: My friend had a friend who had a sister. She was being molested on a regular basis by a Marathi Manoos, who was also a student in the same college. After repeated warnings, when the eve-teasing did not stop a gang of unruly Biharis decided to take the matter in their own hands, and thrashed the Manoos. The Manoos complained to the Police. The Police arrested my pal who was not even there. When asked why the Manoos named my friend, he said that he knew my friends name; he did not know most of the others who actually were involved. Along came the Manoos’s father. Very angry, incensed as hell. When the B-boys complained that his son asked for it, Manoos Sr. said, “What is the big deal? My son teased a (Bihari) girl? So what? Happens every day!” And that is that. Owing to the fine fettle that the great state of Bihar is in, there are no good colleges there. So my brethren and I, mostly depend on other states for our higher studies. Some of us were lucky enough to land in Manipal, which is next to paradise. Long live Manipal and the Kannadigas. Thank You! Till this day, I personally cannot complain. I thank God that I did not have to go to any other state. .

An excerpt from a conversation between two fellow students at MIT, Manipal.

Guy A: This dude B really likes you and all.
Gal C: Yeah, I think he is nice. Where is he from?
Guy A: He is from Patna, but he is not like the others. He is different, you have seen for yourself.
Gal C: (Makes a face) Hmmm. Nah.
I am NOT dude B, I wish I was. At least Gal C was interested in Dude B for a fleeting moment.

Had my friend, dude B, been a Punjabi from Delhi, or just from Delhi, that lady would have had no problems in going out with him. I vividly remember how a few of the students from my state would pretend to be from Delhi to hide the "stigma" of being a Bihari in their valiant attempt to appear cooler. There were a few whose families had migrated to greener pastures; they would vehemently deny the charge of being a Bihari, and would completely disassociate themselves from the state. How pathetic is that ?

An old joke, which reflects what Bihar stands for today.

The ideal solution to Kashmir:
Indian PM to Nawaz Sharif/Bhutto/Zardari/Musharraf/Current Despotic Dumbass of Pakistan: We will give you Kashmir but you get Bihar along with it.
Nawaz Sharif/Bhutto/Zardari/Musharraf/Current Despotic Dumbass of Pakistan: Kashmir be damned. We don’t want it. Truce!

Another joke, of its kind.

Japanese premier to Famous politician of Bihar: Give us Bihar and we will make a Japan out of it in 10 years.
Famous politician of Bihar to Japanese premier: Humko Japan dijiye, usko ek saal mein Bihar bana denge. (Give me Japan, and I will make a Bihar out of it in 1)

Louisiana, USA: Bihar of the US, definitely sure that I read it in the TOI. How? Why?

The name of the virulent disease that is plaguing Mumbai: Bihari. Why? Because Mr. T said so “ Ek bihari sau bimari “ ( A Bihari is synonymous to a hundred diseases , or maybe, a bihari is a carrier of hundred diseases literally , take your pick , or go and ask Mr. Thackeray what exactly did he mean )

The munificent compliments that I receive on account of my being fairly fluent in the English language , or due to the absence of the accent which every Bihari is supposedly born with, or (and this is the best of all) my uncanny un-bihari looks ( what the hell is a bihari supposed to look like ? Dark, emaciated, hair dripping with mustard oil, or what? I mean WTF! ) :-

1. You don’t look like to you are from Bihar – Me: I underwent plastic surgery OR Why is that? Do Biharis have horns on their heads? OR I am a Punjabi who was born in Mumbai; my parents were averse to the rich cosmopolitan culture of that great city, so they relocated.
2. Your English is too good for a Bihari – Me: I am sorry; my parents forced me to go an English medium school, which unfortunately had decent teachers.
3. You don’t sound like a Bihari, you don’t speak with an accent - Me: Speech therapy? Larynx transplant? Accent training? My answer depends on the dumbness of the questioner .
4. The way you cuss and swear, it is not very Bihari - Me: I curse, in my best Bihari.
5. Sir, aap Bihar se hain, lagta nahi hai (Sir, It doesn’t seem that you are from Bihar). This one came from a cook who was hired to cook for my friends and I : Me- An expression of incredulity and bewilderedness on my contorted face, mentally hurling abuses at him , and a really big WTF , when I was alone .
6. Man, you should be the Brand Ambassador of Bihar, given that you are so different from the average bumpkin: Hell Yeah. Why not? Moron!
7. An offshoot of # 2 -A Lady, in a train journey, to me – I am an English professor, have heard a lot of Biharis making a mince out of the Queen’s language, but not you - Me: When I was young my mother burned a Webster, a Wren n Martin and a few of the Classics, dissolved the ashes in the holy water from Thames and made me drink it. This is a tried and tested technique; it has worked for my sister as well. (Do not attempt this at home!)
8. Another offshoot of # 2 - Do they have English schools in Bihar? ( An interviewer to my friend, apparently surprised at his command of the English language ) - Me(Had I been there) : No, I went to Eton for my schooling, and then I came back to India to complete my education , you JACKASS !

Maybe I should blush coyly and express my gratitude the next time somebody says something like the aforementioned.

Yesterday, I read in a blog about some sick and twisted bastard who felt that Bihar got what it deserved. That the havoc wrecked by Kosi was befitting. And I have yet to know how earnestly people from the Rest of the India are helping their poor countrymen. I would like to know whether it is being treated at par with the Gujarat earthquake and the Tsunami or not. I hope my fears are allayed. I hope people discard the contempt they usually reserve for Biharis.

There was a time when I wished I was born elsewhere. I do not anymore. I am a Bihari. I am not ashamed of it. And I will not try to hide it. Even if prospective landlords refuse to accept me as a tenant. Even if I am discriminated against. But I do wonder whether it is a curse or not.

An Angry Indian

It seems as if I am losing my identity as an Indian, and the identity borne out of association with a region of India is being forced upon me. Are there people willing me to accept as an Indian first, by virtue of my being on born here, and then label me as per my “attributes”? The ongoing Maharashtra VS North-India spat has shaken my belief in my concept of India as one nation. I chanced upon a forum called Mutiny.in where people were having a very animated and intense debate over this issue. The issue is indeed a very complicated one. Mumbai IS groaning under the weight of so many people. But the migrant workers just cannot be thrown out of the city. The violence used by MNS cannot be justified. The official death toll is still in single digits, but for how long? A street hawker’s arms were chopped off; a man lost his life to stone-pelting. It is foolish to suggest so, but could all this lead to a civil war? The crux of the situation is the fact that if an Indian is not free to live and work in any part of India, it would imply that the rights of the Indian citizen have been usurped. And on a side note, the Pakistanis and the Chinese must be ecstatic over all this infighting. I do wonder why the media is not focusing on the source, the root cause of all this mayhem. The jackasses who have been ruling UP and Bihar for the past 10-20 years. The railway minister who is being hailed by the media like the financial genius of the century, why do people forget that it was under his regime that the state of Bihar was rotting. When asked about why he couldn’t work the same magic with Bihar, his reply was that the state lacked the potential to do so. I can never ever forget that. These politicians, the public servants, the representatives of the poor and the downtrodden deserver a part of the attention, at least. The media should shed some light on these great leaders as well. What else was the poor worker supposed to do? Not just the worker, people from all the classes moved near and far , to foreign countries, to Delhi,Kolkata,Bangalore,Gujerat,Indore and of course Mumbai. I was born and brought up in Bihar, but I studied in Manipal and I most certainly am going to work outside my home state. God help me if I get posted in Mumbai, the way things are, it seems that I will mauled or murdered for being a Bihari. People in this forum were discussing whose state produced more freedom fighters, and whose contribution was more significant, it was absolutely pathetic and ridiculous! And of course, what the hell is North-Indian? Or a South-Indian? I thought I was an Indian. Coming back to the burning issue, this has become one hell of a political circus where nobody seems to be coming up with a realistic, pragmatic, implementable solution. This is just a part of the picture. Apart from unrest in Kashmir and North-East, and the naxalites and the home-grown jehadis, there is a new kid on the block, the armed Gujjar who wants to be treated as a ST. India must be the only country in the whole wide world, where being a part of a community officially labeled as backward has its privileges. The genius, who came up with the idea of reserving seats in the premier institutions on the basis of caste, and not the economic status of the student, has done his country a great service. He has ensured that half of the graduates of these institutions would be sub-standard. He should be given a Nobel Prize for imbecility, if there was one. Why don’t these profound thinkers work on improving the primary education system, why don’t they reserve the seats for the under-privileged in the better schools so that the need for reservation is eliminated? I bet if I could figure out the why part, the epiphany would be nothing less than orgasmic. How hard is it to understand the repercussions of implementing a system, which ensures the admission of a rich kid from a backward caste but denies it to the poor Brahmin? Poverty has no caste or religion, the pangs of hunger are equally excruciating, so is the agony experienced on being denied an opportunity. And how can I forget about the dragon breathing down our neck, China. I do not understand why we fail to see beyond Pakistan, why is the Indian mentality so Pakistan-centric when it comes to enemies. I remember being told to treat India’s victory over Pakistan in WC 2003 as a win in the finals, that it was as good as winning the world cup. We have a history with Pakistan and there is a reason for the enmity. What reason did China have to invade us in 1962? The 1962 Sino-Indian debacle, thanks to political leadership, makes me writhe in agony and shame. It was a war that could have been won, but was lost. An unpredictable enemy is the most dangerous of all. China keeps bullying us, keeps denying us a chance to get a permanent seat in the UNSC, questions our claim over Arunachal Pradesh, but the government wags its head in unison over the Tibet issue for China. Why Oh Why? What is the government afraid of? Another war? Total annihilation of India by China? I cannot disagree that China is a powerful enemy, but is any country in this world powerful enough to make us dance to their tune? Are we a nation that spineless? I sincerely hope I am wrong. I cannot forget the horrendous incident when BDR killed 15 BSF soldiers, and then mutilated their body beyond recognition. Why the hell did a nation like India tolerate a barbaric act like that? What infuriates, incenses and humiliates me the most is that the perpetrator was a poor, pathetic and weak nation like Bangladesh. We freed those ungrateful bastards and this is what we get back. Bangladesh has now become the new breeding ground for anti-Indian extremists. The political establishment of this country seems to be too bogged down by their vote-bank politics to take concrete measures. The 6^th pay commission was nothing but a slap in the face of the armed forces. If the soldiers defending this country do not come first, who does ? The IAS officers ? Or the old farts polluting the Parliament and the Legislative Assemblies ? There is a dearth of more than 10,000 officers in the armed forces . How is this deficit going to be compensated for ? By reservation , I guess ! God save my motherland !

Raj Thackeray and Chhath Puja

Raj Thackeray, leader of the Maharashtra Navanirman Sena, says that “North” Indians should not celebrate Chhath Puja as it is against the ethos of Marathi culture. Wow! That is all that I can come up with now. Doesn’t that make a proud Indian, oh wait, “North” Indian. His remarks are not only anti-Indian but anti-Hindu as well. Mumbai has people from all over the country. Chhath Puja ,celebrated mainly in Bihar and in parts of UP and MP , is a festival dedicated to the Sun God , who is indubitably a Hindu God and not just a Bihari one . Then how the hell does the celebration of Chhath against Marathi values? Are not Marathi’s Hindus? And going by Mr. Raj Thackeray’s rationale , Tamil’s should not celebrate Pongal , Malayali’s should not celebrate Onam , Sikh’s should not celebrate Baisakhi and so on . I bet all these festivals indigenous to states other than Maharastra also contribute to the poisoning and deterioration of Marathi culture. I guess if Ganpathi Puja is started being celebrated in Bihar with the Mumbaiyya pomp, it will be very much against Bihari values, won’t it? For God’s sake, literally what the hell was he thinking? Does this person even consider himself to be a Hindu? If he does, his act is indeed very blasphemous. I bet our neighbors must be ecstatic over all this in-fighting. And what the hell is North Indian? The word suggest that there is a country called North India. There isn’t. There is only one India, at least on the map. It certainly does not look like “One” to me. We have North Indians and South Indians, and of course Maharashtra. I feel like lashing out when I am called a North Indian. I think that this word should be banned. I was born in a country spanning from Kashmir in the north and Kanyakumari in the south, which goes by the name of India and that makes me an Indian. The British did not just divide the country along the lines of religion. Gone are the good old days when we used to fight just over religion and caste. India has indeed moved ahead in every sense. Now are we fighting over pseudo ethnicity. It makes my blood boil. What’s next ? People being corporally chastised for conversing in languages other than Marathi ? I think that has already happened . May be the time has come to delineate Hinduism on the basis of language and state . God Save My Motherland !