A few years ago, Maharashtra decreed that before every movie show, the national anthem needs to be played. I'm yet to truly make up my mind on this though.
As some friends have vociferously pointed out over many drinks & random conversations that never really lead anywhere, a compulsion to hear or play the national anthem is still a compulsion & therefore an infringement of a free individual.
You may not want to stand up but you do, fearing the crowd around. You may not want to hear the anthem, but you do even if the flick you came to watch is just pulp & you love it. You may not share the patriotic feeling, but you pretend you do because what kind of an individual would you be otherwise...

I'm not sure where I stand on this debate. When it first started I loved it. I don't think I've heard the anthem after school & that makes me sad. I don't do the things that would make me come into contact with any of the nationalistic 'compulsions' we had at school. Strange after reading the preamble of the constitution in every school book I've ever owned I think I've actually forgotten it. So yes it was surely welcome...at first.
Soon it became another advert, another 3 minutes you could come in late, another 3 minutes to buy popcorn, just another 3 minutes...

At last nights excursion to the multiplex - a weekly standard issue of my night life, I heard it again. This one was beautifully composed by Rehman & sung by some of the best singers in India. Being blind to it for so long, it suddenly struck me.
Why, oh why do we have to have a karaoke version of our national anthem?
So basically have the makers of the video concluded that Indians don't know the words to their anthem?
Or is it that Indians never show a vocal passion for their national anthem because well heck they don't know the words?
Don't know what was going on in their minds when they made this video but a suggestion for improvement might be to identify all the singers. Apart from the Bollywood regulars hogging the limelight, the average joe (or jarmeet) doesn't know the rest & that is as sad as not knowing the words to the national anthem.
What merit to being Indian if you haven't discovered the Indian gems which lie silently buried under the Bollywood glitter...
And why after using some great voices does the composer need to donn all white & untie his unruly locks & finish the crescendo? I do enjoy his music but honestly his singing is mediocre at best..but then maybe this is another exercise of 'ego maintaining'

As for the film that I saw..another post coming right up :)