Saturday, December 23, 2006

Plot Outline for - A week in the life of a rioter.

This is something I've never tried before. I mean, trying to write something that is not a movie parody, a Hariteman story or even a movie review. It's something that I hope will turn out to be a biting social satire, something along the lines of what a Joseph Heller might produce.
Its basically a short little story about a guy called Tatya who's a professional rioter.

Hmm. Now what is a professional rioter. It's a guy who is a regular at all sorts of protests starting from a protest rally against Aishwarya's costumes in Dhoom 2 which denigrate Indian culture, to a riot because the statue of a famous Dalit leader was desecrated.
He's a guy you call whenever you want to stage a rally which will have enough carnage to attract the attention of the media vultures, the guy who will have the loudest voice and who can by-heart any slogan that you want him to with a few minutes.
He is a highly paid fellow because he also leads a small coterie of like-minded peers to these rallies.

Why am I thinking of writing this - It's because I'm pretty much frustrated with the state of affairs in India today where everything is considered sacred and no one seems to have a sense of humour. I don't know whether this is a recent development with us Indians or were we always born with such a lack of tolerance. Whatever be the answer, one thing's for sure. This surge of 'Protest Rallyism' has been fuelled by the media revolution that has taken place.

The story mostly will be about how Tatya goes about his business, how he is very professional about it all, and how much armchair angst I feel about India.
Most of all I hope people who read it don't ridicule it as quickly as they would ridicule a Sohail Khan movie.
Finally I hope that I am capable of writing something intelligent!

Man! I need to cut down on the self-deprecation!

1 comment:

Prateek said...

Rallying is a way of life for many idiots here. Completely agree with you. Infact just few days back i was having a discussion with my friend lendl abt the riot scene. How intolerant people have become.

Eagerly waiting for the story...