(
Dilip Cherian watches movies infrequently but battles for free speech often.)
There must be a special streak of either insanity or pugnacity in the "fringe elements" who are trying to create trouble for PK. Let's to start with assume that they are not all set up by Amir Khan to raise his already stratospheric billings. Anyone who has seen the movie (and that clearly excludes those gentlemen in the fringes referred to earlier) knows that Amir Khan hasn't focused on any one religion.
He's finessed a spoof of everything religious that can be skewered in the length of time that a movie allows.
Now leave aside the obvious issues of artistic freedom or giving space for free expression to all ideas.
3 question marks hover in the air as the Fringees steam about ripping posters and venting heat.
Question One: Where they asleep for 10 days while PK racked up Rs. 100 crores in sales? Now its just a matter of raising decibel, isn't it?
Question Two: Are they part of a plot to occupy media and Mainstream Maddies (as opposed to Fringees!) while Mr Modi gets Ordinances passed, Bills through and Governments formed?
Question Three: Don't they get the message that Oh My God and PK are all now part of mainstream thinking? Young people now want freedom and choices. Not fetters and silenced voices. Or are these Fringee young people different?
Beyond these questions, the more sinister thought is the reason why there is a rash of those on the Fringe now. Is it that they simply can't be controlled now or is it because they have all simultaneously decided that this is their opportune moment in the sun?
The rest of the world watches with the joy as we descend to the level of monsters in our neighborhood Pakistan and Bangladesh or further away in Sudan or North Korea. Meanwhile the Royals of the Right, like Advani, are steamrolled over in efforts by the Fringees to take centre stage. Where these unguided set of missiles will land next with a thud, is anybody's guess. Can you?
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