Nothing works better than a bit of controversy. And controversy is exactly what everyone has been hunting for. Everyone, almost everyone, is just waiting for an opportunity to get pissed at a drop of a hat/pagri/ topi/whatever.

Some people are maha angry because of a lousy movie called Jodha Akbar. I must congratulate all those who were terribly interested to sit through a very long movie which talked about a (factual/fictional?) love story of a bored king.

The great king, after all, needed to get involved in some true-blue romance; taking time off from all the darbars, wars and opium shots. It must have been quite a task with hundreds or perhaps thousands of concubines doing god-knows-what in the harem.

There is another twist in the tale. The greater than greatest Salman Rushdie says something else: no one called Jodha ever existed.

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The Jodhaa Akbar controversy has suddenly taken a literary twist, with Salman Rushdie’s short story in the New Yorker recently. Believed to be an extract from his forthcoming novel, Enchantress of Florence, Rushdie sheds new light on the epic love story.

Did Jodhaa really exist? Yes, says Rushdie- in Akbar’s imagination.

She was the ultimate male fantasy, not the woman "of big breasts and a small brain" that boys dream of, but an emperor’s erotic fantasy dreamt up by a bored Akbar, stealing traits from his many queens in the harem: sensuous, mistress of the Kamasutra, especially the art of unguiculation.

[Unquote]

I learnt a new word – unguiculation- which means “using the nails to enhance the act of love". Phew!

Apart from that, I also got to learn that History is a bitch.

Everyone seems to have one’s own version of history. The version depends on prevailing socio-political situations and of course, personal/organized faith systems.

This ‘versioning’ of history thing also provides good fodder to the religious fundamentalists to peddle their own little agendas.

These controversies become even more ‘with it’ when we have debates happening between states and CMs. Who can forget the rubble that was raised over the very existence of Lord Ram? If people do believe that there was a time when monkeys wore dhotis and built bridges using floating stones, so be it. But Karunanidhi was not too pleased with that version and made some infuriating remarks against Ram Himself, doubting his engineering skills and making supposedly blasphemous remarks about Lord Ram’s drinking habits.

Oh, that thin line between history and mythology! The saffron brigade needed just that to make a hell lot of protests. The mandatory bus burning ritual had to follow. Hay Ram!

The other day, I read that Pakistani history text books say that History ‘begins’ somewhere around 600 AD when the Prophet was born. Before that, every one was a barbarian. They also mention that Pakistan came into ‘being’ when the Arabs under Mohammad bin Qasim occupied Sind and Multan somewhere around the 7^th Century.

Aurangazeb is portrayed as a villain in Indian history books. He is a hero in Paki text books.

The rebellion of 1857 is called the ‘First War of Independence’ by Indians. The Brits thought it was just a tiny ‘mutiny’ involving only a few thousand overtly religious sepoys.

Similar contrasting views are held about Shivaji, Gandhi, Mao, Netaji Bose, Bhagat Singh and a lot of people.

One could go on and on with other examples.

Each man’s version of history is different from the next one. It all depends on the man’s socio-political bent. Ultimately, it is the politics of the day that decides what history ought to be.

Politics is the mother of history. What say?