Those who have watched the Tamil psychological thriller Anniyan that hit the screens in 2005 will remember the spine-chilling scene in which the anti-hero fries alive a railway caterer in boiling cooking oil.
That vignette of angst — one of the three methods adopted by the hero’s alternative avatar in an outlandish coiffure to punish those whom the meek hero complains about - went down well with the cinemagoers, turning the blockbuster into a success. It was also dubbed in Hindi and Telugu.
That the cruel form of killing a person, called Kumbhipakam, raised no public resentment only exemplified the collective endorsement of the punishment meted out to a caterer who failed to provide quality food to railway passengers. Perhaps people saw in the Anniyan (stranger) their own alter ego.
But do those who normally act like the protagonist — a law-abiding citizen and a straightforward lawyer who only talks about rules and complains — ever want to emulate the ‘stranger’? Can’t really figure that out, but clients of railway catering do express their resentment over the quality in a variety of ways.
Will Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee’s latest solution — taking the catering portfolio out of IRCTC and giving it back to the railways — produce any qualitative change? The jury is out.
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