Batman Vs. Mahabharata

In the US, anything you say can and will be used against you, although that never stopped anyone from being a loudmouth. In India, anything you say can and will offend someone – again, not that it stops anyone. We Indians tend to get offended very easily, and the fact that we live in an era of political correctness, 24-hour news coverage and social media outrage only highlights that fact more starkly. We’ve been offended by people, books, movies, music videos, tattoos, songs, websites, animals, road signs and just about anything else that you can think of. Until now, though, we were only offended by what someone said or did. Thanks to Bharat Mata Ki Jai, we’ve now found a revolutionary new way that involves being offended even by what you don’t say.

At first, I cursed social media because it seemed to bring out the outrage far more quickly, far more frequently and far more stridently than was the case earlier. From debates on nationalism to celebrity break-ups, everyone was getting offended and expressing outrage all the time. But getting offended isn’t a new phenomenon for us, and it’s just as well that people are venting on social media. It could be worse. A lot worse, in fact.

While there is no historical account of when Indians first started getting offended, my guess is that if we ever did figure out what all those Indus Valley Civilization edicts were trying to say, it would be on the lines of “Must throw stones at neighbour for criticizing my cow.” By the time of the Ramayan or Mahabharat, getting offended was commonplace. Because there was no social media to vent on – you vented by cursing the person who offended you. And no, this wasn’t the swearing “Fuck you, asshole!” kind of cursing, but the prophetic “One day, just when you're happily married and at the peak of your life, you'll suddenly turn into a big ugly frog and lose your kingdom” kind of cursing.

Sure, the Ramayan and Mahabharat had fascinating tales of moral and political dilemmas; a lot of life lessons and an epic good vs. evil battle, but what really struck me were the curses. People were always getting offended and cursing. It was rampant, wanton and utterly out of control. Someone offended you by drinking water from your glass – you turned him into a lizard; someone offended you by looking at you funny – you turned his seventh son into a lizard, and, most crucially – someone offended you by disturbing you while meditating – you turned his entire family into lizards for the next seven generations and made him lose his kingdom and all his wealth.

Almost every story in these epics begins with either a curse or a boon. In fact, one of the kings got cursed for shooting a deer while hunting because, guess what, it turns out that the deer was actually a sage who had taken the form of a deer. How the king was expected to know this is anybody’s guess, as is the question of why the sage was in the form of a deer in the first place. Presumably, it was because he himself had been cursed. A majority of the cursing was done by the sages, although other elders and authority figures also felt free to throw in the odd curse or two. Perhaps that’s why we still have a blind reverence and fear of elders and authority figures.

I’d read somewhere that since America, like, didn’t really have any history or culture, it was the superhero stories that had filled up the mythology-shaped hole in their lives. In which case, I must admit that their mythologies are a lot more commercially viable, if altogether more predictable because the villains are always trying to destroy the world. However, as Batman comes back for yet another instalment in Batman Vs Superman, it takes me back to a question I’ve often pondered over – do the people of poor old Gotham city love Batman or hate him?

Now, the obvious answer would be that they love him because he has saved them so many times from total destruction. Yet, it must be pretty tiring being a citizen of Gotham. Think about it – every three years or so, your city is destroyed to within an inch of its existence. Your stadiums are blown up, your water supply is poisoned, your streets are completely frozen, your trains crash into skyscrapers, and other acts of a similarly colossal scale of destruction befall your city on an alarmingly regular basis. And it isn’t just the destruction – even the villains are different. Not for you the humdrum, everyday villainy of a drug lord or a mafia don – the villains that your city gets are altogether more colourful and sinister – the sort of characters that would make your regular villains look as menacing as a cuddly koala bear or a cute kitten.

Before Batman came along, Gotham city seemed to be doing perfectly ok for itself. Sure, they made it look like the city’s moral compass had gone awry and it was on the brink of destruction. Crime was at an all-time high, the police and judiciary had been bought over by the criminals, the politicians were utterly corrupt and the average citizen felt helpless and unsafe. I mean, come on! By that yardstick, every Indian city has been on the brink of destruction for the last 20 years. There was nothing unusual about Gotham city - it was all very tame and run of the mill. Yet, once Batman was in the picture, along came a dastardly villain with great charisma and an ingenious plan to, at the bare minimum, destroy the city of Gotham. I can imagine the average Gotham citizen, who would’ve been thrilled the first time he got saved, being quite tired of it all by now. Each time he'd see that Bat Signal in the sky, he'd groan to himself and brace for a fresh round of large scale destruction.

And the rest of the world would brace itself for another round of social media battles on whether the Batman franchise had been enhanced or diminished!

PS - Speaking of drug lords, that Mexican fellow that got captured recently thanks to Sean Penn – ‘El Chapo’ – does his name translate to ‘The Chap?’