The beauty of a game is in winning? To win one must go to any extent.

While many coaches may have used similar phrases, whenever they make such statements to motivate, they have it in mind that the rules of the competition are adhered to and the player respects sportsmanship and is pure in intent. The Coach and the player never discuss whether a ball beyond the line is a throw in. Because it is not something to be discussed, it is universal, it is an integral fundamental rule of the game that is part and parcel of what the game is.

So, when the coach says you must go above and beyond to win, what can be done?
a. You put in the Effort, go for the winner and get yourself a win.
b. You put in the effort, game the system in one way or the other and get yourself a win.

We all agree, even the winners despite their refusal to accept it aloud that the win of the second kind is not a win at all. It won’t leave a mark and will be forgotten in time. Any utterance of it would only bring disgrace to the winners and distaste against them.

It is about to be a month now. The dust propped up around the landing of what one has been asked to term industry’s “spiest of spy thrillers” has somewhat settled. Let’s not kid ourselves, all dust here, is propped up. But there are unsaid rules about who props up the dust, how the dust is propped up and to what extent it is propped up.

All of those norms were obliterated in the last month. The industry finds itself gasping for ways to take hold of its position as the ground beneath it shifts rapidly. On watching the spice thriller, one of our industry friendly, a loved yesteryear actor, opined that the movie was great and must be commended for its technical quality irrespective of its political leanings. What happened next would be one of the tales for us to tell in the years and decades to come when we talk of industry’s turbulent times and its victims of nefarious powers.

Little did he know that the mudslinging he was about to face had been practiced and honed around the country for over a decade. Ideally, in an industry as dirty and cartel operated as this, all sort of backstabbing is expected from within. However, what we all could see was, this time, the mudslinging, shit flinging and the dust propping was coming from outside. An outsourced artificial army of familiar sounding uncivil animals. While this army took a dump behind their keyboards based on the scripts provided to them and flung it across over all the industry, its eminence, history, rules, culture and decorum (however fake and pathetic you may consider) of over 70 years, the fairest and loveliest couple basked in the supposed success of their masterpiece. This is the same bot army that revels in sending rape threats to girls and women online. This is the same bot army that has ruined the minds of our people in the last decade and have desecrated our culture and society.
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Were they unaware that these bots and their vicious human counterparts were going to be hired to promote their project in this manner? Were they so naïve or audacious to assume nothing would come of it?

Who is to say that couple did not enjoy the humiliation directed at a man who dared to speak his mind?

Perhaps, this is going above and beyond to win?

The intent of the project is clear for those who want to see. There are those who acknowledge and those who are too cowardly to acknowledge. The people associated with a project are of two types. One that do it because they want to, other that do it because they have to, both obviously after having considered the monetary aspect of it. Many associated with the project do not want to be associated it. Here, it is very important for us to observe and remember the people that wanted to do this despite knowing the intent of the project. It could definitely not have been a prayaschittam for having played a Muslim college kid in a progressive movie a decade ago.

Why?
Simply because they have decided to go above and beyond to win. What is it that they have won? Apart from money, only they know. They have decided to go above and beyond the norms and joined forces to outright attack you, question your loyalties, question your identity as an Indian and they will continue to do so, now that they’ve formed a clique and found some funding and power from a section of the same people that fund you.

They have taken a point from you, it is your turn now.
How are you going to resist?

Let’s say that the culture developed by decades of shared ideas, shared wins and losses, shared joys and sorrows, multiple faiths and intellect are on your side, let us say that you have multiple Gods on your side and that you’re simply on the right side of the history because your intent has never been to destroy anything. Still, how are you going to compete against those who do not respect the fundamental rules of the competition?

You must remember that we’re all the same blood here,
and we’re all well and truly capable of playing the unfair and unlovely game.