Like most art districts and entertainment industries across the world, Bollywood is a liberal hub. Its actors and filmmakers have always been strong advocates of left-wing rhetoric and legislation and so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone that they recoiled in horror when they heard the news.
Here’s what they had to say:
Emraan Hashmi
Tapsee Pannuu
9/11 or 11/9????
Shabana Azmi
Whats happening? Its very very scary.. even Republicans didnt anticipate this..
Javed Akhtar
A leader like Trump connects with our meanness He tells us don’t feel guilty there are many as vicious as you are . We love him for it .
and my personal favorite:
Arshad Warsi
America has just put a pyromaniac to put out the fire… god save the world…
11/9 was definitely a somber day for me too. I was at work when everything unfolded and I remember feeling immobile and incompetent for a few hours. As much as I deride the country and its toxic media imperialism, America will always be my first home, the first country I ever felt safe in, welcomed and loved. The vast majority of my friends are American and I regard many of them as family. One of my friends, Stacy Leko, whose son is just a year old, was lamenting about him growing up in a country that exalts misogyny, bigotry, megalomania and bullying.
I was a fragile state throughout the day but at night, I decided to kick my blues to the curb, wear red clothes as a means to reclaim that color, put on some cashmere and cologne and surround myself with friends. One of the people I saw was my chef friend, Marco at his new restaurant. I was greeted so warmly by him at the door that it felt like an unburdening. He whipped up some incredible dishes for me (spicy, dark chocolate pasta, anyone?) that made me forget temporarily about things, and while I was sitting by the window staring out, I had a sobering epiphany.
In order to be at peace with this looming crisis, I had to love everyone, including myself, harder and in a more determined way. I especially have to love those whom I have ideological disagreements with more.
That’s unfortunately not what this election did, it widened the ever-widening gap between two kinds of Americans so much so that the two could no longer entertain the thought of living next to each other. The way the two turned their backs on one another, berated each other was a horrible thing to witness day in and day out.
11/9 was Trump Day but 12/9 is Whatever We Want It To Be Day and I hope that it’s a day when people decide to work diligently on being better people with those who aren’t like them. It’s the only beneficial alternative to the Orwellian nightmare we’ve created for ourselves.
