Quizman sends us the following message over our tipline:
[Here is an] Article on Aamir Khan and The Rising. How can The Sepoy(ia) mutiny refuse to carry it? :-)
How indeed?
Circa 1857. A wounded soldier arrives at a doctor’s clinic after a skirmish with his British superior. The sepoy has challenged his senior’s order to shoot opium farmers who were agitating against the English East India Company’s monopoly. As he is being treated, the sepoy meets a courtesan, Heera, played by Rani Mukherjee. While the woman admires this young sepoy for his bravery, he snubs her. Heera shoots back: “Sepoy saheb, we prostitutes sell our bodies, but you sell your souls.”
The courtesan’s words stir the sepoy’s conscience. And Mangal Pandey turns a rebel. It eventually leads to a chain reaction which triggers off the first war of Independence in 1857, described by the British as the Sepoy Mutiny.
Director Ketan Mehta is bringing alive on an epic scale the story of Mangal Pandey, the sepoy of the 5th company, 34th Native Infantry Regiment, Barrackpore. And who better to play the rebel who roused society to challenge imperialism than a rebel himself.
“He is one of the few actors who stand by their convictions,” said Ketan, who hails Aamir Khan’s portrayal of Mangal Pandey as his finest ever. “A revolutionary and a rebel in his own way, Aamir is a contemporary Mangal Pandey in many ways. Only he would have given everything to a venture of this magnitude.”
Mangal P. even has a profile up on MySpace MSN Spaces complete with a blog. If Kal Penn can do it why not Aamir Khan?
Now look closely at the transformation above. On the left Mangal’s mustache is curled up, his eyebrows are raised up, and his hair is kept tucked up under his cap. In the picture on the right his mustache droops down, his eyebrows sag, and his hair flows down over his shoulders. That is a transformation people! He went from a saluting Western soldier to a good proper Indian boy. Coincidentally the same thing happened to us when we rebeled against the oppressive Blogosphere to start our Sepia Mutiny. You should see pictures of me from before. It’s like I had a rod up my $%# or something. Manish was far worse. Don’t even get me started about Vinod. Am I being presumptuous enough as to compare us to those real Sepoy soldiers? All I am saying people, is that the Blogosphere and the former British Empire have a lot in common. For starters they both start with a “B.”
