Can a token verdict heal ten years of pain, wishy washy laws and open wounds of the Uphaar tragedy? What must it be like to go on year after year in mourning, to live on without your children or a sibling or a parent who died in a hell hole without an exit?
How does one cope with the fact that the men whose carelessness and apathy brought on the tragedy,  evaded the law for a decade? What must it have been like to live without a sense of closure?
NDTV ran a story some time back to pay tribute to the victims of Uphaar and those who are digging in their heels and still fighting for justice. An old lady broke down while  remembering a granddaughter who went for a movie and never came back.
A couple recounted how after the death of their teenaged son and daughter, conversation has died in the house and only the clock can be heard ticking away the years of unbroken silence.  “They recorded jingles..loved music..sang very well,’’ said the mother.
59 lives were lost  in the asphyxiating confines of Uphaar and yet not one man was held accountable for more than a decade.
The  gangways as we know by now, had been narrowed, emergency lights were on the blink, some exits were even locked and the cinema staff had fled when the fire broke out.
Someone once told me that the human race is the cruelest species on earth. I am tempted to agree after watching how people accused of the worst kind of crimes in this country, refuse the burden of guilt and accountability and get away with murder, rape or more.
Life is what it is but I cannot forgive film makers who create suffering and pass it off as entertainment.  The other day, I decided to put myself  through the uniquely Indian torture of watching what was once known as the 80’s family social. While suffering through the unrelenting  misery of our heroine Kalpana ( played by Rekha) in a weepy called Mehandi Rang Layegi,  I was reminded of family socials of almost every decade and how each one had their  own uniquely dysfunctional dynamics.
The 50 and the 60s had dowry hungry mothers-in-law like Lalita Pawar. Then we  were obsessed with the rich, divisive and snooty daughter-in-law who tore the family apart with her painted talons and jagged tongue in films like Do Raaste. Then it was the turn of the greedy sons to disown parents for ambition and a rich wife in films like Avtaar and the entire Ghar Ek Mandir series. Only somewhere at the meeting point between the 70s and the 80s did we see a totally unexpected central figure  in the celluloid families. It was the unsung but unvanquished woman protagonist who took endless joy in her own  joyless life and fulfilled the ambitions of her family at a great personal cost. She could have been the spinster sister in Tapasya who gave her life’s blood to her largely ungrateful family or the hugely successful doctor of  Mehandi Rang Layegi who always missed the bus when it came to love or the harried bread winner of  Jeevan Dhara or the successful lawyer of Dard who raises her jailed lover’s son all her life, the point was to ensure that the audience and the heroine did not find one moment of respite from heartbreak.
The keynote of these films was Tyag or sacrifice so the moment our heroine found an opportunity  of personal fulfillment, she giftwrapped it and passed it on to someone else. So in Tapasya, Rakhee continues to torture herself and her suitor Parikshit Sahni for decades by refusing to marry him when the two could have jolly well taken care of her orphaned family of young siblings together. In Jeevan Dhara, Rekha discovers the picture of her lover under the pillow of her widowed sister and so emotionally arm twists the poor sod into marrying the sister instead. These films were dispirited, defeatist, miserably soggy and it was almost as if the film makers were telling us, “so what if these woman are self-dependent? They are still going to be kicked around by fate…isn’t that reassuring?’’
The heroine at this point was not the wronged wife or the raped sister or the vacuous girlfriend. She was the man of the house but with a woman’s ability to put herself last. In Mehendi Rang Layegi for instance, Rekha for all her education cannot confess her feelings to the man she loves. She meekly agrees to marry a man she does not know anything about, finds out that he is already married, ensures that the first wife gets her due, divorces him and on the verge of being reunited with her first love, discovers that he is engaged to be married to an emotionally unstable girl. Her last piece of dialogue as she walks out of his life for good, is a gem, “Everyone becomes a Mrs so and so. Iam the only one to have the privilege of remaining a Miss!’’  Someone pass me some laughing gas before I pass out!