State of Mind

Page 3

I saw Page 3 yesterday. It’s an Indian movie about the urban social culture of India, and how it is hyped and splashed on page 3 of the newspapers. It depicts the use of stimulants, the casting couch, and the fake relationships with people, putting on a fake smile for those one night stands. It revolves around the story of a journalist, Madhavi, working on page 3 reports and how she encounters the sickness of the society. She then starts working in the crime beat, under a male colleague for the same newspaper, Vinayak, who is using his power to uncover the illegal trade of drugs and children. In one of her biggest stories, she uncovers the sleazy child molester who is one of the biggest revenue sources for the newspaper. The editor obtains all the proof of the story and is forced to shelf it for fear of losing the funding. Madhavi is angry, sad, frustrated and confused at the same time. Vinayak talks to her, saying that the truth needs to be revealed, but it has to be done with smartness – “You have to be inside the system to change the system”. This line struck me as contradictory to what my uncle says, i.e. “You have to get out of the system to change it”. However, on careful analysis, it turns out that Vinayak was right; you have to be in the system to change it, in order to reveal it. However, my uncle was right too in one way; you have to be free from the clutches of the system in order to change it. It’s like the words of Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix. They were free from the system, but in order to change the system, they had to get back into the Matrix. But, Morpheus – “As long as they [who are still stuck in the system] are a part of that system, they are our enemies”. For this potentially makes them Agents, who would morph into any body they wished too in order to kill those outside the system.