National Awards

One would think, and be completely reasonable in thinking so, that when a national award is given in a particular field, the recipient of the award has done something which deserves recognition on account of being of great importance to the country. For example, some works of great national importance & hence deserving of a 'national award' could be laying out your life as a soldier, making a great discovery which solves country's energy problems or spearheading a revolution which wipes out corruption in the country! Less dramatically, in the context of cinema, it would be perfectly 'reasonable' to assume that the kind of movie which may deserve a national award will have some important social, political or economic issue at its heart. However, as it turns out, 'reasonable' could mean different things to different people. Your and my idea of reasonable could be completely different from the idea of a dumb-witted lunatic or the committee deciding the national awards for that matter. So, the commitee in all its 'wisdom'(giggles) has decided to bestow the honour of national award to a movie which displays the lives of the rich & the famous in all its naked glory.To top it off, the national award for acting went to a wooden actor for playing a casanova in a rehash of a stale Hollywood movie. But, what really had me in splits was a comment from one of the esteemed jurors lauding the actor for "his sheer ease, subtlety and spontaneity in portraying a complex and demanding role." I can't help but think what if we put these esteemed jurors in other national award committees. In that case, national award for sports may go to KPS Gill for "his valuable contribution towards Indian hockey", national award for journalism may go to Times of India "for their painstaking & thorough coverage of matters of national importance like sex lives of Britney Spears & Angelina Jolie" and national award for social service may go to Dawood Ibrahim for his "relentless zeal & passion for an extremely difficult job of controling India's population by exploding as many bombs as possible." As I said 'reasonable' can mean different things to different people.