gandhigiri the munnabhai way

26 year old Rahul at a disc with his girlfriend and a few friends. Some guys pass lewd comments at the woman. Friends crow in fear since Rahul is infamous for his volatile temperament. Rahul walks towards the offenders while friends watch with bated breath, places his hands on one of their shoulders and in a cool voice delivers a sermon on how to respect women. Friends gasp in surprise, has this guy been attending anger management classes? No, not anger management classes, explains Rahul, but the effects of Gandhigiri as inspired by Munnabhai.
Not only Rahul but innumerable Indians have turned over a new leaf after having watched the roaring 2006 hit Lage Raho Munnabhai. Patience and tolerance seem to have made inroads into the hearts of otherwise impulsive and a restless mass. In Lucknow a wine shop owner Gurnaam Singh was presented flowers by a dozen youths who wanted him to close down the liquor joint in front of a temple. Gandhigiri spread like wildfire since then and people throughout took to this unique concept of showing their protest.
The film’s director Rajkumar Hirani was flooded with hundreds of stories from across the country about the way audiences have been reacting after watching the film. An old couple was about to move into their new house and was thinking of consulting a Vastu expert before shifting. But they dropped the idea after watching ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’, which rubbishes the beliefs in numerologists and astrologers.In another incident, a young guy came out of the theatre after watching the movie and after noticing the disposed off tickets strewn all over the place he started picking them up and threw them in a waste basket. Meanwhile, in Delhi some youths have already adopted the slogan and written on the back of their cars – ‘Gandhigiri wins over Dadagiri’.
In Delhi elderly people stripped off clothes (this is directly out of Lage Raho Munnabhai) to shame government officials in charge of pensions to actually disburse their funds. And there are stories about pavement dwellers, in response to trash outrageously dropped where they live by thoughtless passers-by, cheerfully (but pointedly) cleaning it up — again right out of the film. The father of the nation would really be smiling to see his children living out his tenets nearly 60 years after his death.