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Talking Sense

OMG (2023) is a movie that could be classified under a few different genres. Irrespective of tagging, it was enjoyable and brings up an very relevant topic in a non-threatening way. I grew up in an India full of contradiction at home and outside. In the same family we had people who were extremely prudish and would sooner die than talk candidly about sex and those who did not believe in filters. And this was not about age or gender. From what I could, the attitudes were more determined by what each person's understanding of Indian culture and heritage was. 

There were those who had fallen victim to Macaulay's efforts to cleanse our heritage away to replace it with some foreign and serving the interests of our overlords. The others believed that an true independence for India meant returning to our roots. We are hardly agreed on what those roots were and how far back in history we needed to return to find them and if the misogyny of Manusmriti was anything worth clinging on to. 

Somewhere between these two groups were those that took a cherry-picking approach of selecting what made sense from various phases of Indian history. I aspired to be one of those people when I grew up but it turns out to be a lot harder than it looks - there is a lot of conflicting ideas that have to be turned into something cohesive that aligns with their values framework. 

In OMG the protagonist delivers a message that lands without much controversy on the average person. The use of a divine figure to deliver the boldest messages is the best way to neutralize it. Our gods have an established tradition of saying and doing things that mere mortals would not dare to from the fear of. The emissary of Shiva in the movie is fairly peaceful and smiles a lot. 

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