So then, Shah Rukh Khan gets stopped at for further questioning at Newark airport and the rabble-rabble crowd is getting ready to hold protest demonstrations near the Parliament. Me? I find the situation delightfully hilarious, in a ironic sort of way. You see, SRK had gone to the US of A to promote his new movie My Name Is Khan – and here’s the irony – it’s about racial profiling of Muslims after the 9/11 attacks. Maybe I wouldn’t have found it hilarious if it happened to me, but since it hasn’t I’ll can have a laugh. See, a lolcat too!
photo credit: Kitty de Medici
You see, most of the outrage is centered around “INDIANS ARE BEING RACIALLY DISCRIMINATED AGAINST! BUY BARACK OBAMA POSTERS FOR Rs 100 ONLY AND BURN IT!”. Sorry to disappoint you guys but Transporation Security Administration has made some truly astounding errors earlier too. SRK isn’t the first one to be stopped because his name featured on the watchlist either – earlier, a five year old kid called Matthew Gardner was prevented from flying too. The same link (gracias, Cracked.com) details other incidents – like a guy called David Nelson being stopped too, and someone else who was handicapped and her crutches were snatched away because they needed to be inspected.
‘Shah Rukh Khan’ being on the watchlist doesn’t mean that the Shah Rukh Khan was being ‘targetted’ – it simply means that quite possibly there’s a suspected criminal with the same name whom the authorities are looking out for. The issue is not of targeting but that of idiots who slavishly follow rules taking things a bit too far.
While at this point you would love to hear a redneck joke or two along the lines of “haha Americans are so dumb”, lemme remind you that security staff anywhere around the world can be dumb when it comes to taking rulebook interpretations too far. I don’t understand why HT decided to headline this story as ‘Child abuse by CISF…’ (what’s described is not child abuse); anyway, the story is about how CISF made a 10-year old kid stand outside a security checkpoint for over an hour because he didn’t follow the security drill.
Must we protest outside the Parliament?
3 replies on “Khan’t get past security”
To be true, all americans have turned into machines. The day their machines fail, they won’t know what to do.
The Bastard was probably just carrying a pair of scissors or something. Damn we Indians are stupid.
Rachit was stopped once for carrying a pencil sharpener. Accounts vary as to why he was doing that in the place, but most of them suggest that he was going to hijack the plane.