Why the Salman saga is also about the sidewalk and roads that everybody deserves to share, irrespective of his net-worth or stardom
The top-of-the-mind issue this week has to be Salman Khan. Parliament can pass or block LBA or GST bills, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul, even Narendra Modi can make stirring interventions. Nothing can even remotely match the oomph of a Salman being sentenced to jail for five years. He is the story of the week, sweeping away in his stride the limelight from the Badal family and Kumar Vishwas for the Moga bus affair and AAP non-affair, respectively.
But what can a columnist say on Salman that hasn’t already been said? So I lean on the wisdom of my old strategic studies professor, Stephen Cohen (currently at Brookings Institution in Washington). He has this favourite story about an aspiring young novelist who goes about asking successful publishers for the most saleable subjects to write his novel on. One says Abraham Lincoln, another says doctors, and yet another says dogs. So our budding novelist spins a plot on Abraham Lincoln’s doctor’s dog. Let’s apply this Cohen Doctrine to the Salman story.
This is about a drunken superstar, SUV, the pavement and some squatters using it as their temporary abode for the night. So let’s simply say that this week’s argument is about Salman Khan’s SUV, pavement and some poor fellows sleeping on it. And no, I won’t use even sarcastically the description used for them by singer Abhijeet. My family and I adore dogs too much to dignify Abhijeet even in contempt or ridicule for him.
Salman Khan. Actually, he spoke well. So did Farah Ali Khan, Sanjay Khan’s daughter, Feroz Khan’s niece, Hrithik Roshan’s former sister-in-law, celebrity DJ Aqeel’s wife and a star jewellery designer in her own right with a Twitter following of more than half a million. You can quibble with their choice of words to describe the “stupid, suicidal” people (my words, in sarcasm, let me add to idiot-proof myself on this). One used a more 1970s Salim-Javed-ish “kutte ki maut” (dog’s death), and the other the more prosaic, but realistic Mumbai imagery of the scores that die crossing the rail-tracks unlawfully. But both made the very same, sincere point: why the hell were these illegal squatters sleeping on the sidewalk, or footpath, as we prefer to say in India, particularly when a Salman Khan could be needing more than the narrow lane the municipality laid out decades before the SUV was invented? As they’d say in Mumbai, thoda toh margin chhodne ka hai na, bhai ke liye. Marna hai toh uskey raaste mein kaye-ku aane ka? (Leave space for me along the roads. If you wish to die, must you do so by getting in my way?)
In their callous stupidity, Bollywood has reminded us of an issue we thought we had put behind us. Who do the roads, sidewalks, empty spaces in front of our homes or buildings belong to?
The Cohen Doctrine apart, the oldest trick in my business is, a sharp opinion is like a knife that once you stick in, you turn slowly, even in times when the longest unit to measure opinion-time is 140 characters. Let me therefore stay with the footpath, pavement, sidewalk, whatever you call it. Who does it belong to and why? Do the rich also have the first right of encroachment, a well-deserved right to eminent domain?
This is the central question because it is from this that these reactions of Bollywood elites, which outraged us, originated. You have learnt to expect Bollywood seniors to not speak out about such things. They will go apoplectic over the Delhi bus gang rape, Sanjeev Nanda (BMW) deaths, Jessica Lal murder, yet another drink-driving death in Mumbai (Alistair Pereira), but when it comes to a famous peer from a filmi family, you know what, and oops, top dog doesn’t eat top dog. And for the younger, less powerful ones in this world, even a lesser star like Shiney Ahuja with a rape charge deserves a special dispensation. While top stars kept mum, this middling group sprang to Salman’s defence, employing social media or prime time TV as weapons of self-destruction, maybe presuming he would be out soon enough, on bail eternally, and sprinkle some stardust on them in gratitude.
Truth to tell, I searched for hours, and the only sensible, mature Bollywood comment I found was from wonderful new arthouse talent Nimrat Kaur (The Lunchbox). For the others, the issue was a simple one: roads are meant for motor vehicles, why should people be loitering, or worse, sleeping on them. The most honest comment came from singer Abhijeet who said, footpath, what footpath? You know there are hardly any pavements or footpaths on Indian roads. And even if they are there, these are so low, inadequate, they are indistinguishable from the road. Particularly if you have a bloodstream bursting with testosterone and alcohol. That last sentence is mine, not Abhijeet’s.
In their callous stupidity, Bollywood has reminded us of an issue we thought we had put behind us. Who do the roads, sidewalks, empty spaces in front of our homes or buildings belong to? Do we, because we pay taxes, drive sexy cars, live in fine homes, also have the right to usurp all public spaces? Is there any room to be left for pedestrians, even nightly squatters who have no shelter? It is tempting to say that Bollywood’s entitlement-driven new class (mostly) of dynasts seems to believe so. That unlike most stars of the last century, from Dev Anand, Dharmendra to Bachchan, they never struggled on the pavement. They grew up with SUVs, network of connections, even cash to buy publicity in popular big city supplements. But the rest of us aren’t much better either, hitting puddles at top speed and spraying water on “mere” people on the sidewalks, cursing encroaching kiosks while our own cars take all empty space in front of our homes, without paying a rupee.
Post-Maruti India has had a wonderful automobile boom. But it has also coincided with an increasing contempt for the non-car-owning others. As Abhijeet says, we have no sidewalks, because we are the generation that’s driven door-to-door. Delhi is worse than even Mumbai. We have gifted ourselves a $10-billion Metro but never built simple footpaths so at least those within a mile of the station could walk home. I found out when I took the Metro home in over-enthusiasm one Diwali eve and found what a horrifying steeplechase the 600 metres to my home was: in any self-respecting city it would’ve been a happy five-minute walk.
Pavements are as important to a great city as its skyline. Think about the starry walk in Hollywood. In Mumbai, particularly, they’ve been a part of history, culture and folklore. I remember hosting a TV interview with Amitabh Bachchan and he chose to begin in front of the bench on Marine Drive where he slept his first few nights looking for work in Bombay. Find on YouTube the great, evergreen hit in Mukesh’s voice, ‘Cheen-o-Arab Hamara, Hindustan hamara, rehne ko ghar nahin hai, sara jahan hamara (China, Arabia, all belong to me, and so what if I do not have a roof over my head, the whole universe is mine).’ The universe, in this case, means specifically the pavement, and the song is picturised on its most adorable squatter, Raj Kapoor (Phir Subah Hogi, a 1958 release).
Follow Sahir Ludhianvi’s lyrics as they unfold, and yes, turn the knife: ‘Jitni bhi buildingein theen, sethon ne baant li hain, footpath Bambai ke hain ashiyan hamara (the tycoons have cornered all the buildings, my mansion is the footpath)’.
Pavements are as important to a great city as its skyline. Think about the starry walk in Hollywood. In Mumbai, particularly, they’ve been a part of history, culture and folklore. I remember hosting a TV interview with Amitabh Bachchan and he chose to begin in front of the bench on Marine Drive where he slept his first few nights looking for work in Bombay
What has changed in Mumbai and our cities in general is precisely this. Abhijeet, Farah and the rest of them are right: No human beings should be sleeping on the pavement at night. But if they are, would an SUV have the right of way over their bodies? Even if it is driven by a megastar in high spirits.
This isn’t a povertarian argument. We are not even complaining that in the current phase of its evolution, that I believe began with Dil Chahta Hai (Farhan Akhtar’s debut as director, 2001), and which ‘National Interest’ celebrated as our cinema’s first unapologetic celebration of rich people’s lives, Bollywood is fully embracing India’s heady new urban or, better still, NRI prosperity. The poor are forgotten. That it’s been years since we saw a film about the “rest”. My point is about civic sense, decency and simple, modern city life. All over the developed world, there is a virtuous move to reclaim the roads for pedestrians. We are busy denying them. The Salman saga, therefore, is indeed about his stardom, his SUV, his Bacardi spirit, the unfortunate squatters. But it is also about the sidewalk and roads that everybody deserves to be able to share, irrespective of his net-worth or stardom.
POSTSCRIPT: In the fall of 1993, on a sabbatical from this magazine at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, I was invited by a friend at the Economist to one of their weekly news-meetings. The OJ Simpson story had just broken in the US, so what does an opinionated weekly pronounce on it when, as one of its editors says in resignation, “OJ is so incredibly handsome, so incredibly black, and so incredibly guilty”? Apply that to Salman, just replacing ethnicity with religion. You see the issue then. How can laws written for ordinary people apply to him? What’s the point of wasting him away in jail when it brings nothing to victims’ families? So pay them big bucks, though we had left the concept of blood-money behind with old tribalism. And the other suggestion, community service in lieu of jail for manslaughter, is not available in real life, unless you are a drunk Rajesh Khanna driving a truck in the 1972 superhit Dushman, where the judge “sentences” him to look after the family of the man he has run over, sure enough in luscious Mumtaz’s village.
