KaUsHaL ZoNe - NEWS FLASH

This Salaamdog too had his day

Kaushal Kumar on 03/05/2009 at 6:44am (UTC)

Bangalore: The world can’t seem to get enough of Slumdog Millionaire’s child stars, plucked from Mumbai’s slums. Rubina Ali and Azharuddin seem to be living a dream. Feted at the Oscars and Filmfare awards, serenaded by the likes of Shah Rukh Khan and Brad Pitt, you think, like Jamal, they will also ace their fate.
Will they? That’s the million-dollar question. If Shafiq Syed’s life is a precedent, then the gold dust will vanish from their lives pretty fast.
Syed was the star child actor in Mira Nair’s Oscar-nominated ‘Salaam Bombay’. He won the President’s medal for best child artiste and then faded into obscurity — and poverty.
In Bangalore, if you spot an autorickshaw with KA-01-9770 registration, stop and take a close look at the driver. He is ‘Krishna’, the 12-year-old boy who sold paav and tea and stole hearts in the award-winning movie. Today, he makes as little as Rs 150 a day, plying his auto on Bangalore’s streets.
Syed says it was sheer accident and loads of luck that landed him the role of Krishna. ‘‘In 1986, along with a couple of friends, I ran away from home just to see what Mumbai looks like. We did not have a home, we stayed on the footpath near Churchgate,’’ he says.
One day, life changed dramatically. A woman approached them, saying she’d pay Rs 20 per day if they were to join her drama workshop. ‘‘My friends thought it was a game to exploit children and ran away. I followed her. I was very happy to get Rs 20 per day so that I could see movies and eat bhelpuri. There were 120 boys like me in that workshop. They conducted a screen test and I was selected to play the main character in the movie,’’ Syed recalls. ‘Hope Slumdog stars don’t meet the same fate’
Bangalore: Shafiq Syed, who was the star child actor in Mira Nair’s Oscar-nominated ‘Salaam Bombay’, recounts: ‘‘We shot for 52 days and they agreed to pay me Rs 15,000. I was thrilled. After the shooting, I’d go watch movies and relish street food. The movie was a hit and when President took photos with me, it was all a dream.’’
Then, the film crew wound up and dispersed. ‘‘I roamed the streets of Mumbai, knocked on the doors of producers for nearly eight months, but luck did not smile. In 1993, I returned to Bangalore and began life anew,” says Syed, wondering if ‘‘recognition is temporary’’. On the child artistes of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, he says. “I hope they do not meet the same fate as me. Their glory of making India proud must be kept up throughout their lives.” Syed, fluent in English, is scripting his own story. ‘‘During nonpeak hours when there is not much business, I park my vehicle and write. I read English newspapers. I want to make a movie someday. Hopefully, some director will pick up my script.’’

In search of ‘good’ Taliban

Kaushal Kumar on 03/05/2009 at 6:36am (UTC)

New Delhi: Suddenly, there is talk of two kinds of Taliban — the ‘‘good’’ Taliban and the ‘‘bad’’ Taliban. The world knows the Taliban is bad. So, what is ‘‘good’’ Taliban? According to certain strategists, in Pakistan as well as in the US, the Taliban can be broadly drawn into two categories — one, the socially ultra-conservative Islamists, who demand the rule of sharia in areas where they dominate, and, two, the global jihadis. It’s being suggested that the world can do business with the former, if only to isolate and eliminate the latter, the bad ones.
Is this a valid distinction? When General Musharraf suggested that there were ‘‘moderate’’ Talibs, the then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh had called this an ‘‘oxymoron’’ — and most of the world, the West certainly, would have agreed. And yet now, when the Taliban is threatening to overrun Pakistan, there are some who are proffering the ‘‘good’’ Taliban theory as a key foreign policy input for the US.
This is the theory that guided Islamabad to strike a deal last month in Swat with Muhammad Sufi, the same man who sent thousands of Talibs to fight the Americans when they went into Afghanistan after 26/11.
THE DAY AFTER 03/03
Pak investigators sweep areas around attack site at Liberty Circle and detain 24 suspects from hostels and guest houses in Gulberg area. Most between 20 and 30 years of age. Govt releases sketches of 4 suspects
Cops find bloodstained clothes inside hostel in Gulberg. Weapons and explosives seized from 14 locations across Lahore
Punjab government announces Rs 1cr reward for information leading to arrest of terrorists
Punjab governor Salman Taseer admits security lapses, promises action against officials
Nawaz Sharif launches stinging attack on President Zardari. Asks “Is he serving the country or ruining it?” ‘Good or bad, Taliban are dangerous’
He is today being seen as a ‘‘moderate’’ who is not interested in affairs outside Swat, unlike Baitullah Mehsud, the bad Taliban, who heads Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and is waging a war against the state.
US strategists tend to divide the Taliban into three groups: first, based in Afghanistan under leaders like Jalaluddin Haqqani, responsible for the violence in Afghanistan; second, the Pakistan Taliban; and third, the ones led by Mullah Omar of the Quetta Shura, the core of al-Qaida.
Some American strategists believe that by exploiting the divisions among these groups, US could achieve its objectives in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre.
Experts here say there are several reasons why flirtation with any kind of Talibanism is dangerous. They point out that, good or bad, all Talibs who demand the enforcement of sharia invoke a variant of Islam that also calls for Islamic domination by global jihad. Besides, to accept the ‘‘good’’ Taliban theory is to write off the rights of Muslim women, allow public stoning and summary executions.
These experts feel that this romantic project to isolate and eliminate the worst of the worse, is a slippery slope that would amount to conceding ground to Islamic forces that, sooner of later, and at a time of their choice, would seek to impose their ultra conservatism on the world by jihad.

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