Watch out! Julius gets badly stabbed

When did violence depicted in fiction - whether body counts in Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar duology, or a grim tale in Grimms' fairy tale - elicit statutory warnings a la 'Smoking kills'? It turns out, Bill Shakespeare, that Elizabethan Quentin Tarantino, hasn't been spared Sir Wokeness. We hear a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Julius Caesar - not quite a Disney narrative - now comes with trigger warnings for various sensitive issues like on-stage stabbing. What next? A label on a bottle of Evian that says, 'Contains water?'

Trigger warnings have migrated from reasonable notices about flashing lights and unusually loud bangs into consumer-protection labels for the imaginative virtue-signaller. Everything must apparently disclose its emotional ingredients before serving. Might as well have FSSAI take over arts and entertainment: 'Julius Caesar - contains 40% grief, traces of betrayal, and one assassination with multiple knife stabs (23, according to Suetonius and Plutarch)'. Cinema will require similar assistance. Jaws: shark warning. Psycho: shower-related unpleasantness. The Godfather: scenes of non-compliant corporate governance. Sholay: dancing on glass. Books fare worse. Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's story, Mahesh, which depicts grinding poverty and - spoiler alert - the tragic death of a bull, may need a serious emotional safety notice.