Art doesn’t make money in India.

Entertainment does. Business does. Cricket does.

Even fraud does. But art doesn’t.

12th Fail made 70 crore rupees worldwide. While Animal made 900 crore and Tiger 3 made 500.

I got goosebumps watching this scene from 12th Fail on a crappy laptop screen while I slept through the entire second half of Animal screening.

It hurts a little, to see how Taylor Swift can make a billion dollars in a single tour but the best of singers in India have to justify the price of their craft.

J.K. Rowling is torn a blank check at the start of a new Wizarding World movie but a writer by definition in India, has to be a starving writer.

Unfortunately art has to come packaged as something else to make money in our country.

12th Fail has still done way better at the box office than other critically acclaimed but commercially failed movies.

It’s funny how something can be so powerful that it inspires the world yet so powerless that it depends on something else to survive!

And in this case, blaming the younger generations isn’t the rock behind which we can hide.

We’ve had a long and unforgiving history of letting our artists starve and suffer. Tulsi, Kabir, Nirala, Shergil, Ghalib, Batalvi, Majaz – the list is endless.

We let them die, named an award after them and moved on. That’s our way of paying homage to talent that has the power to summon Gods.

Things might be changing but we still have a long way to go for films like hashtag#12thfail to become more than just critical successes.