My name is not Khan or Thakaray. And I dont care about either of them.

This weekend was kind of exciting, as Mumbai (or Bombay if it pleases some people, but still even BBC & CNN refer to this city as 'Moombhai') saw a clash of titans, a clash that was much hyped up but turned out to be meek, although I still wonder what was it all about. On the two sides of the battleline were two ageing stars of Mumbai, one a seasoned politician and another a seasoned actor, both hungry for publicity as competition for their rivals in their respective fields is threatening to make them irrelevent. Uddhav fighiting for survival against his cousin Raj and Shahrukh fighting for his status as the King of Bollywood against Amir.

Firstly, lets talk about the movie. I have not watched the movie and do not intend to watch it either. Not because I am a maharashtrian and it is my duty to be with the Sena, but because I am diabitic to excessive sweetness of Johars and Chopras and Badjatyas. I like realistic movies made by directors such as Vishal Bharadwaj, Anurag Kashap, Nagesh Kukunoor, Madhur Bhandarker and Ram Gopal Verma. In fact I rarely watch bollywood movies, perfering to watch DVDs of classical Hollywood, European and Japanese movies. So moving on to MNIK, we have another star of yesteryears, Karan Johar, trying to be different because he too is under pressure from the new kids on the block, and ends up with mixing Forrest Grump and Crash with his very own Kuch Kuch Hota Hai to come up with 'My name is Khan'. Its been more that 18 years since 9/11 and America has moved on from terrorism to economic crisis. Today americans are debating on who are the real enemies of America, terrorist in remote mountains of Afghanistan or the Bankers on Wall Street. Yet we have a bollywood that is obessed with 9/11, even though we have our 26/11 to resolve. The reason for this obsession in some section of bollywood is that they still believe that they can make more money from overseas market than domestic market. These people should take a lesson from Amir Khan, who has made movies for Indian audiance and came up with three consecutive top grossers for the year, each beating its own record. Wake up Karan, even the britishers are selling indian poverty to americans to win oscars. And you are obsessed with NRIs.

Now lets move on to politics. Just as Karan Johar is obssesed with NRIs, so is Balasaheb Thakarey obsessed with the marathi manoos in Mumbai. There are around 1 crore maharashtrians in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane, and around 1 crore non maharashtrians. In the past maharashtrians in Mumbai used to defacto vote for Shiv Sena and non maharashtrians for Congress. Most of non maharashtrians were happy to go to vacation in lonavala/mahabaleshwar/goa on election day, so maharashtrian votes mattered and Shiv Sena ruled Mumbai for almost three decades, although they could never rule the whole of Maharashtra because maharshtrians outside maharashtra dont care anything about what happens in Mumbai and Shiv Sena never cared about what happens to maharashtrians outside Mumbai. Suddenly, the grand old party of India came up with a lesson from history that Britishers used for 200 years to rule India - 'divide and rule'. Congress exploited the internal greviances in the Thakarey family and created MNS. In Mumbai, Maharashtrian votes got divided and non maharashtrian votes consolidated towards congress due to threats of MNS. So inspite of votes of Shiv Sena & MNS being greater than Congress/NCP, the latter swept both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Mumbai. Ironically in this battle for Mumbai between Shiv Sena and MNS, both wasted their valuable resources in Mumbai and did not find any time for rest of Maharashtra. So inspite of anti incumbency being strong in whole Maharashta, it turned out to be a cake walk for Congress/NCP in assembly elections. Now Rahul Gandhi's tour of Mumbai has brought in another twist in this tale. Congress is getting too strong in Maharashtra, and the growth of Congress will be at the expense of NCP. So just as Congress used MNS to clip the wings of Shiv Sena, NCP is now reviving Shiv Sena to clip the wings of Congress. And we have a show down on streets of Mumbai on an irrelevent issue.

Now that the battle lines are drawn, who is the winner. Both Shahrukh and Uddhav. And who are the losers. We the people. Shahrukh got free publicity for a mediocre movie, and Uddhav free publicity for a mediocre ideology. And there will be lot of people out there wasting either our money or our votes.