Kaala : Kya gora kya kaala...sab same hai saala

I haven't seen Kaala. What I have heard about the movie is that it is about don in slums fighting for the rights of land with politicians and land mafia. Its always good to know about different strata of society through movies without actually going into the slums.

My family never intended to watch the movie, thinking it would be typical Rajnikanth movie. What triggered them to go is some whatsapp doing the rounds that it is a movie about dalits. They then immediately related the word Kaala to the colour of the dalits. I am quite fair and get a lot of surprises when I tell them that I am Buddhist and this is from all the communities. So my parents assumed Kaala is all about Dalits. They came disappointed that it was about Mafia. But what they were delighted about is that in some of the slum houses they it was shown that they were dalits through photos of Dr. Ambedkar in their shanties. My parents were very proud about that.

It makes me think that are we still fighting for our identity? What is so proud to be about our people shown in slums. Whereas in reality, I am living in a 3 cr property in one of the plush localities in a decent area. But thats the harsh reality of life, when you have to show poor, you have to show dalit or rather when you show a dalit, it has to be poor. Never in movies you will see a Kapoor or a Khanna to be living in slums or to be fighting for food and shelter. What saddens me is my parents are content with the fact that atleast they are shown some where and not bothered about the way they are shown. Whereas the fact remains that the actual slum person would not go in theatre and watch the movie to acknowledge their identity. It is we who can afford to go to multiplex just to see to be portrayed as slum dwellers.

I am not saying that we should start any revolt for wrong representation of our community. What is truth needs to be accepted. But there is more truth to it which is hardly shown anywhere. It is we who will have to change this perception. How I dont know yet hence to start with, I wrote this article. Just like in Ae dil Hai Mushkil, all the characters were muslim yet quite uber in lifestyle, not typical gaudy green clothes, jewellery and some paintings of mosque, urdu and the likes. Its time now to accept that every religion have started living the life of a normal Indian, with every girl following style of kate middletown and meghan. 

For the creative heads, its still a challenge how to represent sensitive issues without directly pointing on it and at the same time take care of sentiments of everyone. It is actually a challenging task to show all aspects of a character in such a short frame.