Jhadoo Maro flash game

‘Jhadoo Maro’ flash game takes place in a situation, which takes its context from the larger narrative of protests and negotiations that have taken place between Dow Chemical officials and activists involved with protests surrounding Bhopal Gas tragedy. The game is rather simple to play with the game player being a woman hitting with a broom an official of Dow Chemicals. Dow Chemicals took over Union Carbide whose industrial plant in Bhopal had led to the disaster. One tends to get points based on the timing of the broom hit as well as the force with which the hit is affected.

It is interesting to observe that the player is impersonating a woman and there is an identification that is being asked for from the player/audience because a majority of the survivors/victims of the Bhopal Gas tragedy have been women. One can also find pictures of women with Jhadoo in their hand protesting outside Dow Chemical office buildings in the earlier demonstrations undertaken by the Bhopal activists. Thus, while playing the game, one could experience oneself being an activist. In addition to that, I did experience a certain thrill in perfecting the art of hitting with the broom.

However, if it was meant to be a complete resemblance, one would have expected the woman in the game to be wearing a sari or a more authentic indigenous Indian costume. That is not the case. Though, one should be cautious of reading too much into this, the fact that the women is wearing an improvised ambiguous costume, it could mean that the character has been kept open and the player could fill in his/her own interpretation. It is also possible that with the local movement in Bhopal getting allied with transnational advocacy networks throughout the world, the representation of the woman is left ambiguous in the hope that more multiple fluid identities of the character can be formed, thus reaffirming that local disasters could have global answers and people in developed countries as global citizens can play their part in speaking against MNCs like Dow.