Public Interest Litigation

My morning starts with picking up the newspaper and a packet of milk from my doorstep everyday. Both these elements play an active role in bringing me to life every morning. A cup of hot milk helps me open my eyes and the newspaper does the rest by filling up the eyes with bizarre news from all over the world. The news at the front page that caught my eyes today was about a minister from AP preaching the tribal groups to (re)produce more babies to combat the high infant mortality rate. Wow!! It was quite an innovative idea of beating the viruses and bacteria in their own game of multiplying. The picture of humans multiplying in a higher rate than the microbes frightened me. It was somewhat like the advertisement of AXE where the guy stood on a deserted sea shore, just to discover thousands of females chasing him. Of course, here with a little twist. Think of each of the woman carrying a baby in their womb! I felt nauseating. Was that what you call a morning sickness? Well, my morning sickness did not allow me to munch over it any longer and I left the tribal group with their own fate.

Anyway, I turned the pages and landed on the entertainment page. I could see only two kinds of news: Controversies about what Sharukh did and controversies about what Sharukh did not do. I wondered how one person can create so much of news by his presence or lack of presence. His latest blockbuster was ‘Om Shanti Om’ and with it came a new set of controversies. One veteran actor who appeared capricious with his hand over his face, threatened to take Sharukh to the court as the veteran actor was shown getting humiliated in the movie.

India is a funny country. You can do whatever you want and still can get away with the nexus you have or you might not do anything but still be dragged in to the court. Look at ‘poor’ Shilpa Shetty. She got dragged into the court for being kissed by an expat actor. Thousands of PILs were filed against this ‘immoral’ incident and it soon became a national issue. The proceedings in the assembly were stalled over a fight among the members to decide whether Shilpa Shetty should be hanged. I am really impressed by these people for showing their concerns against this ghastly incident and being generous in filing PILs. I am also impressed by the same set of people, who manage to hide from the media the adventures of their personal life of wife beating, tax evasion, child labor, murder and what not. But this is not important. The issue is whether Shilpa Shetty should be hanged or not!

Prior to the 1980s, only the aggrieved party could approach the courts for justice. However, post-1980s and after the emergency era, the apex court decided to reach out to people and hence it devised an innovative way wherein a person or a civil society group could approach the Supreme Court seeking legal remedies in cases where public interest is at stake. Since then PIL has gained popularity and lots of good changes have come to the society through PILs. But today, PIL is a tool to become famous. It gives you a chance to draw the attention of the media without trying to steal the sunglass of a politician who is addressing a mass gathering. The only thing it costs is some meager amount of money and one day to spare in the court. And all you need is a bizarre reason to file a PIL against some hot shot personality.

I wondered what public interest was at stake when Shilpa Shetty was kissed by a foreign national. The only thing that came to my mind was the fact that Indian men are gradually losing ground against those foreigners in having the proximity of Indian beauties; close enough to feel their cheeks. The Britishers have ruled us for years, taken away all our valuables; and now the Americans are coming down to get our women. This just cannot be tolerated!! Now that I am writing, I am also going through the realization of this horrible pending doom of all Indian men. My blood is boiling in anger and I also feel like filing one PIL.

I could not find any other reason to file a PIL against Shilpa Shetty. The more I thought of Shilpa Shetty, my boiling blood began to cool down but the desire to file a PIL still remained. So, after reading the newspaper, I realized the best person to file a PIL against is Sharukh Khan – a man whose farthest associations can acclaim to fame. So I thought, I found, and I wrote it here for public interest. I was listening to the song “Deewangi Deewangi” from ‘Om Shanti Om’ and somewhere in the middle it goes like this:

All the hot girls, put your hands up and say Om Shanti Om
All the cool boys, come on make some noise and say Om Shanti Om!

I was shocked. It was complete violation of basic human right! The cool girls and the hot boys were completely ignored in this song. You can not ask boys and girls to say ‘Om shanti Om’ based on their cool-quotient and hot-quotient respectively. What about guys running a fever and girls who have just taken a bath? It’s completely bizarre to discriminate the right to speech based on body temperature of boys and girls. I was damn sure that I have a strong ground against Sharukh and the OSO team to file a PIL. I rushed to my wife and expressed my divine intention to save the interest of all the cool girls and the hot boys.

My wife was ecstatic and was nurturing a similar intention for long. She told me she was going to file a PIL against the husbands who shirk responsibilities and stay away from all the household activities in the pretext of writing article and doing divine things. She wanted to request the honorable court to make it mandatory for all husbands to share 60% of the household work. I was taken aback. Her divine intentions could jeopardize the life of entire husband clan. So, I had to sacrifice my noble intentions and spent the whole day working at home to save the entire husband clan from leading a life, just unthinkable!

Although my desire to file a PIL to claim to fame is still unfulfilled due to my unadventurous personal life, one day I am sure to get my share of fame by using this weapon of guaranteed fame.