Me, Myself, Middle Class

Yesterday an ex-colleague told me about a very happening newspaper appointing a certain person- lets call him Mr X- to a very senior position there. My only reaction was ‘great choice’. My ex-colleague found the response a bit surprising since I all along never had much of an opinion about this Mr X. But you could look at it in the same way as most drivers never have a good opinion of their seths. A streak of jealousy perhaps.“Come on what has happened to you? You really think this chap is good?” this ex-colleague asked me.Of course I said. Look at everything that he has and tell me how he can go wrong there? I asked this ex-colleague.“What does he have?” he insisted.“He is not middle class, bloody middle class like me so what are his chances of going wrong anyway” I said and added that at the end of the day that is the greatest asset you bring to the table. And sadly yours truly, the ex-colleague and another very senior and extremely talented reporter we weaved into the conversation were all just that – bloody middle class.Mr X was a smooth talker, you could never know if he knew his onions but he definitely showed he knew the entire grocery market damn you. He spoke with a twang that you get when you go to the elite public or boarding schools. Now this includes saying ‘skedule’ instead of staid ‘schedule’ with the ‘sch’ the same as in ‘shit’. If you tell anyone that your favourite musician is Michael Jackson, you get slotted as bit of an upstart and it gives away the game but if you say you love listening to Brothers Four or say Rosemary Clooney and her Italiano Mambo - just some of the fabulous songs on the Ipod of a colleague-, then that is class. And your pedigree needs no introduction anymore into the rarefied air engulfing the top offices of the new age economy where middle class is nothing more than the stench of an open sewer.
I have seen so many attempts made by people to get away from that cursed phrase all their lives that sometimes that is in itself a life.
A friend from small town Jamshedpur did such a fabulous job of it that almost a decade after we left school and met at Marine Drive, I could place no bits of memory I had about her growing up in Jamshedpur to the person standing in front of me.
Her lips were a seductive shade of brown- aided of course by lipstick- but that she said was to hide lips gone off-colour with all the cigarettes she lit up through a tough day. Her prim business suit and the skirt just inches above her knees made it a great sight for several of the all-guy gangs that come to Marine Drive from middle class places like Virar. Her hair, a salon frizzy, had light streaks of blue that gave it a nice glow in the yellow light that bathed Marine Drive. Her voice had turned husky probably with all the cigarettes or simply with time. After all I had last met her when she was 15 and now she should have been around 28, the kind of age where a lot of working girls start turning into women, and the sari comes out of the cupboard more often to be worn seductively at office parties. The voice at that age also achieves varying degrees of modulation as is required to beat a tough day at office when just work might not suffice in keeping your name out of the wrong logs maintained of the rat race by bosses
She had come along with some colleagues for a business conference to Mumbai, were all put up at the Oberoi and when she handed me her card later, I got to know that when compared to me- just a reporter at a city newspaper- she had run the race as a sprint and not like a marathon as I had and still did.
The middle class uncouthness in me couldn’t resist telling her that she had changed. Changed for the better or the worse is best to avoid because you can really never be sure about these things. The butcher might love the stench of carcasses because that for him is money in the cash box.
“Ya I have” she said. “It took me some time. But yes today I am not the person you ever knew. Am I happy, I don’t know but if you are living a life fast enough to never think about it, I guess it just doesn’t matter,” she added. I guess she was right. She acknowledged she at most times of the day felt she was not good enough for the job she was holding but yes the attitude which made her say so had long gone. In a world where it doesn’t matter how much you know but how much you show you know, our girl had all of it covered perfectly.
When I suggested to her friends that we could go to Gokul for a drink- and talk about old times- she looked at me, then her colleagues – all of them the perfect shirt crease and gelled hair and scrubbed face types- and said, “Binoo, so middle class man”. I looked at my baggy pants, my Rs 200 Jockey T-shirt and my Rs 250 Bata floaters and allowed my case to be rested in her favour.
Another example I remember is when some top marketing guys of a hugely successful newspaper went to meet a top railway official whose English is dodgy and his choice of shirts and pants a reminder of his genteel upbringing in north Bihar. The meeting ended with the marketing hotshots realising that the Indian bureaucracy is probably the only place where you need not be as suave as Shashi Tharoor- never mind the bungling- to be somewhere at the top of the rung. The man used his head to calculate all the figures thrown at him by the marketing suits and then sent them packing saying the Indian railways- because of an animal called the Central Bureau of Investigation and because of a human tendency to get jealous- offered no free lunches to corporates who could very well pay.
So there you go. Middle class gets you only till the middle like the station in life I find myself in, and then you wait for the tide to take you wherever the tide plans to go...

Telengana is the way to go

If one reads newspapers today, you would imagine the people of Telengana who have supported the movement to create a separate state are as dastardly as Qasab and unpatriotic as probably the jehadis.
I think it is high time we saw smaller states, time we saw states forming informal groupings among themselves, sharing economic resources without much interference from the Centre.
The type of federal democracy that the founding fathers envisaged for India has long been compromised by leaders like Indira Gandhi and subsequent Congress leaders who gave it a name that has become part of official lexicon- High Command. Time and again we have heard after state elections that the ‘High Command’ would decide on the chief minister. As if the people of the state who voted were idiots and came out to vote because they did not get stall tickets for the movie they were planning to go on the afternoon of voting day.
Smaller states mean resources can be utilized better, project outlays could be smaller leaving them not just more manageable but also protects them from too much stealing. Now think of it, if the total outlay for computerization of all RTOs in Uttar Pradesh is say Rs 10000 crores, just imagine the scale of the project, the time it would take and the number of babus through whom the files will have to routed. The work might never take off and by the time we realise it, almost 25 percent of the total outlay might have reached the pockets of sundry netas and babus. But if we had smaller states, the outlay for the same work might be say Rs 2000 crores, the scale limited. So work might have been done and at the most the netas would have pocketed say Rs 150 crores. We will live with that, thank you. Similarly almost all other aspects of administration get better.
Just think of Andhra. With Hyderabad gone to Telengana, along with it goes the cyber city and the billions of rupees worth of investment.
The challenge would be to now create a new capital, a new powerhouse of economic activity, a new magnet for investments. As a state they might be able to do it if the economic climate provided by the government is good enough. What does the nation as a whole get in return? In place of one Hyderabad, we get another one in the region formerly known as undivided Andhra Pradesh.
Dividing babus and IPS officers has never been a problem except for those corrupt ones who do not want to leave the city they have preyed on for long. Like some cops in Mumbai who do not mind heading to nondescript departments without any manpower or cases as long as they are left in peace in Mumbai, close to their daily watering hole and to the neta they serve at Mantralaya.
At the end of the day the simple logic is that it is better to have smaller states within our national boundaries. Than allow the apathy and blind eye to give people and states a reason to move out of them. And in the process give our nation a black eye.

Islam is as peaceful as Hindus are intelligent

The Asian Age has a good opinion piece on page ten in its Sunday edition on the ban on minarets in his native Switzerland by Peter Stamm. Nice because Stamm writes simple lines and probably does not think of himself as in intellectual. Some of the opinion pieces- save the ones by Swapan Dasgupta and MJ Akbar in the Times of India and Admiral Arun Singh in Asian Age- can be very bombastic and tough to follow after a couple of paragraphs because the writer is busy trying to sell himself as a ‘know all’.
However I have a serious problem with Stamm’s idea of a friendly, peaceful, accommodating Islam.
The religion as I know it in India isn’t any of the above three. It is just a religion whose proponents have realised that come hell or high water, they would be pampered for their ability to rise above local issues and unite behind imaginary persecutions and ‘Islam is in danger’ cries during the elections. Plus every Muslim who votes knows that his ability to carry around a persecution complex in garb of inequality is rewarded in election after election by ‘secular’ parties. And he uses the unique gift.
Secondly the Muslims of India know that the vast majority of Hindus in this country are hypocrites, frightened, unlearned and vain. All of which is true since I myself am a Hindu and possess all these characteristics in abundance.
Just lo look at us. When a group of like-minded Hindus get together, they form a party like the Bharatiya Janata Party. When those who dislike the Hindu ethos or culture of this country- the negationists like Nehru- come up with a party, they make the Congress. The Congress is probably the brainiest party in any part of the world and its ability to divide and pamper different groups of people in the right amount and at the right time is so legendary that even when they are up for the count after ten years of stupendous inactivity and mismanagement, they still win elections. Look at Maharashtra. The problem with a lot of foreign writers like Stamm is that they live in worlds far removed from the bile of lesser developed nations and have this amazing urge to show themselves as secular as is defined by the West. Probably how I might react if I am told that some bloody black Nigerians have blown up some oil pipelines in the Niger Delta. My first reaction would be savages, heathens and the like. But my view might not be the truth because I would not be knowing the angst of a group like the Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) because I read newspapers run by big corporates whose brotherhood with big corporates, who sustain the former with their ads, is too strong to give in to the urge of reporting what is true.

Why does Islamism deserve an apology?

Now Mani Ratnam wants to make a film on Muslims portraying them in a ‘positive’ light. He wants to name the film Azan- or the muezzin’s call for prayers. My question is when was the last film we made where we showed Muslims in a ‘non positive or negative’ light. If the villain was a Muslim, then you’d have a balancing character who would be Muslim, good, courageous, and if he isn’t all that big a star, then he would die mid-way in a show of bravery that would make Mahabharata’s Abhimanyu look pale.
Just recently we sat through such pseudo-secular shit in Karan Johar’s ‘Kurbaan’. The kind where Islamism is justified as a rectifying process against the oil greed of the United States.
However does any religion sanction such mindless violence as we saw on 26/11or 7/11? I don’t think so.
But the problem with Muslims can be summed up in a Malayalam saying which goes something like this- religion is like underwear. You wear it, it is comfortable, you show it, it is vulgar.
Now Muslims worldwide and India especially have ventured into an area of style that is commonly a preserve of Superman. They want to wear their underwear right above their pants. And damn anyone who tells him that it is a style that suits people from Krypton best.
Let us go back to the oil argument. Some groups have a problem with US presence in the gulf, especially in the cradle of Islam- Saudi Arabia.
But when the Americans landed there several decades ago, it was to help the Arabs get a better life from the black gold that flowed beneath the vast arid sand. The US did a good job with it and Arabs managed to create entire kingdoms where standards of living- financially mind you not socially- matched the best of the west. The US also profited but that is expected in a fair transaction. Would you pay more for your grocery if you realised the shop-keeper needed fast cash to get his daughter married? In business what it is worth is what you give.
Now Afghanistan. Well the US went there but only after the Mujahids took up arms against the Godless Russians and only when the US was assured the Mujahids would be with them to fight the demon of communism. Come to think of it what the Godless Russians were trying to do in Afghanistan might have been the best thing for them, eradicating a public God from a land where every breath, smile, tear, woman, man, camel and goat belonged to the will of God.
The US soldiers are still there fighting the same Mujahids who they once armed. Of course the demon of communism has been replaced by the ‘Satanic’ Godliness of America.
The vast majority of US military presence is after 9/11. What was that all about? Why America? For what it was doing in Iraq and to Muslims worldwide? Iraq asked for it after it took over Kuwait. An oil cartel led by a crazed Saddam would have seen you using you car just once a year at best. That needed to be downed and the US did it.
I’m sure the US President who will call back all US troops from the various Muslim theatres of war- and still ensure there would be no 9/11 ever again on US soil- would beat the hell out of the opposition in any election.
But the problem is no US president would be ever able to guarantee it. Because Islamism is no longer about right or wrong, it is about the madness of a group of demented souls who think medieval Arabia was the only place and system God created prefect. Democracy, secularism, progress, dynamism, human rights and equality as fruits of a constant churning of human minds in the pursuit of something better is alien to these Islamists. It is not the essence of Islamic teachings that they care about but the very word that they are written in. That kind of dementia has no place in this world.

We Indians I think started off their journey in 1947 thinking we will build a nation where religion and caste would gradually melt away and a huge mass of people who believed in common good would come up. A nation where God was a private being within the confines of your heart and where law and the Constitution became our religion. Where man was free to choose no God if he so wanted and where a woman was as equal to any man in whatever work that she chose to do.

Ideals very tough to follow for sure but what the heck we could still try for it. In that scenario a group of people who think as Muslims, who want to eat like Muslims and dress like Muslims should have no place in this system. I think the only way forward for India is to start a movement that would destroy religion- Hinduism, Islam or any other- so thoroughly that not a soul would ever be able to tell the difference between a man who goes by the name Jatashankar Pandey or Mohammad Shahabuddin.

Religion needs to be confined to the dustbin ASAP. And in that process, chicken-hearted pacifists and apologists have absolutely no place either.

Saffron, white and green, never say never again

The stage is set for an old drama to be played out again in the electoral theatre of Uttar Pradesh.
Friends have become foes, foes have become friends, and the inter-linked destinies of two ragged armies could put paid to the fortunes of two new lords.
One of the biggest icons of the Hindutva brigade, Kalyan Singh, walks around without a destination. His ports of call have all been sunk by the inclement weather of politics.
Maulana Mulayam, Kalyan’s greatest rival during the heady days of the Babri Masjid demolition, has finally called it quits on their ‘who could ever think of it’ friendship. Kalyan now does not know what to do. He has made the right noises about how he was always an RSS man and how Hindutva runs in his blood. But the BJP, several times bitten never shy, is reluctant to have Kalyan hop into their bed again.
However it might not be left with a lot of choice since Kalyan still has his caste card perfectly arrayed on his table.One time Hindutva cronies like Vinay Katiyar, sidelined by the party because of the like of Katiyar proving incapable of spouting anything sensible when the times demand it, are looking at Kalyan to bring back the saffron hue in a party gone pale by successive electoral defeats.
Mulayam, seething at young Rahul Gandhi taking away Fiozabad from right under his family’s nose, now wants to go back to the times when his almost bordering on anti-national Muslim appeasement earned him the sobriquet Maulana Mulayam. The first thing he wants to do is build back the Babri Masjid so that the ‘pain’ the Muslims felt when it was brought down can be lessened.
Mayawati meanwhile is proving to be a quick learner. A setback in the Lok Sabha elections meant she quickly re-arrange her caste cards and the feisty lady did just that and left Mulayam with a bloody nose.
Rahul baba and his media-heavy visits to Uttar Pradesh, especially Dalit houses - Mayawati's fiefdom, had made the UP race a two horse one.
Now with the Liberhans Report on the Babri Masjid demolition being leaked to the media, and Advani, Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi, being accused of being key conspirators, the wheel has come full circle for the BJP.
It is a firm but very welcome step backwards for the saffron party, one when religion played a big part in our politics, one when Mulayam whipped up Hindutva by going crazily pro-Muslim and one when both Mulayam and BJP were the two lords of the Uttar Pradesh electoral game.
Rahul and Mayawati might have been running a two-horse race for the past few years in India's most populous state, but it suddenly seems the turf has changed and two old horses have once again got a fresh lease of life. As James Bond might have put it with a twist, in politics never say never again.

Why is Changez Khan not a prophet?

Amidst all the sound pollution over the Chattrapati Shivaji statue in the Arabian Sea, I got to know that the people and politicians of Mongolia have managed to upstage us in Maharashtra. They have taken the lead by erecting a massive statue of their homegrown legend Changez Khan or Genghis Khan as the English tongue pronounced it in their capital.To quote Wikipedia, the Genghis Khan Statue complex is located 54 km from Ulan Bator, Mongolia, on the bank of the Tuul River, in a place called Tsonjin Boldog, where the magnificent Khan had found a golden whip according to a Mongol legend. A 40 meter high statue on horseback was erected on a 10 meter high base, covered by stainless steel and surrounded by 36 columns. Those 36 columns are meant to represent the memory of 36 kings’ who descended from Khan.Mongolia of course now has the Khan on its currency notes, parks, restaurants, dishes, hotels, lobbies, offices, just about everywhere. Reminds you of Maharashtra, right?Two airports about a kilometre away from each other both named Shivaji International Airport?However my question has nothing to do with whether this statue mania in Maharashtra or Mongolia is good or bad.I just have one question to ask- Why is Changez/ Genghis Khan not a prophet? The answer is not easy nor palatable I suppose, or someone would have come forward to answer it.

Koda saheb, come on fight sir

So very happy to see a front page article in the Times of India on Monday in which Madhu Koda has declared that in good time ‘kissi ko chhoddunga nahi’. My heart went aflutter again after the DNA carried a picture of Koda saheb campaigning and all smiles.
Thank God Koda sir is back. I had started doubting my country and its ability to not recognise a genius when it sees one.
In a nation where the brute majority of people are like me –average looking, lower than average brained and higher than average jealous- it would be a shame to send Koda saheb to jail for his crimes.
It is just that some geniuses cannot except the rules framed by some other geniuses just to keep in check people like me or you. Do you ever see anyone call out to a lion when night falls so that he can tied to his post in the cowshed. No. Those rules are for cows and calves, not for lions of course.
Similarly how can we expect someone as exalted as Koda saheb to follow simple rules of ethics, morals and taxation and submit his genius to such things meant for commoners?
Now just imagine how vile it is to go after a man who has given the power of attorney of crores worth of his wife’s property to a constable who says I have no clue about it (Mumbai Mirror front page Tuesday). Does anyone care to know that this man- the politico- came into this city as a hawker and built a fortune encompassing several crores here in this city? Why should he allow your morals to dim what he is capable off? Why should anyone have a problem if he has two PAN cards?
I think we Indians must let go of our inherent streak of jealousy and allow such geniuses to flourish.
The only silver lining is that a vast majority of Indians have already begun realizing this line of thought. Look at the number of such geniuses in our Parliament and state assemblies.
I’m sure the people of Jharkhand will once again reiterate this awakening by giving Koda saheb enough votes and seats for him to become chief minister another time. At least my vote is firmly for Koda saheb.

what happened on 26/11? no clue man

The first anniversary of the terror raid of 26/11 is upon us. Some designers have gone ahead and come up with designer bags with motifs of a burning Taj and Oberoi for people to ‘remember’ the horrific event. Our police commissioner was the chief guest at the event. A passing footnote is that some part of the proceeds from the sale of these devilishly over-priced bags will be given to the police fund.
A former IPS officer has written lyrics for a song to be sung by a public relations man. Several dignitaries are expected to grace this occasion.
There are painting exhibitions to ‘commemorate’ the event on a daily basis at some or the other gallery in the city. For details please check Bombay Times.
A private advertising company and the police are making an anthem for the city and Amitabh Bachchan will most probably recite it in his baritone.
A private radio channel will get the stars of a up for release terror movie – Kurbaan- in their studios to talk about the film as part of their retelling of the 26/11 raid.
I don’t how many more are going to latch on to one of the most shameful episodes in Indian history since the Chinese whipped are bottoms in the cold dreariness of the Himalayas.
But a year later is there anything that we are doing different to stop the next Qasab? I guess not. A nation which has no capacity for retributive violence has no right to have memories. So let us forget 26/11 and celebrate it as if exactly a year ago, absolutely nothing happened except that the Churchgate-Virar might have been late by a few minutes or the BEST driver took a rash turn on some city crossroad.

To sing or not to sing when the nation is croaking

Fantastic, now Syed Shah Geelani of the separatist Jammu Kashmir Hurriyat Conference wants all Kashmiris to stop singing Jana Gana Mana and also boycott functions where the anthem is played.
This was bound to happen. When half of India is deciding whether we should sing Vande Mataram or not, someone was bound to get a little more adventurous and demand that his kin and clan not sing the national anthem.
However I see nothing wrong with it. It reminds me of an incident that happened in my native Jamshedpur almost two decades back. While we kids couldn’t understand what much of the fuss was all about, the Malayali community there was gripped by the debate and at most of the times found themselves arrayed against the other communities in the Steel City.

The immediate provocation was that one of Jamshedpur’s most loved doctors, especially among the Malayalis there, suddenly decided that sending his three school going children to school on Republic Day or Independence Day would fall a bit foul of his religion.

The school, which made it a strict practice that no student could miss the two red-letter days, promptly started the procedure to expel the three students.
If you are surmising that this gentleman was a Muslim, think again. He was a Jehovah’s Witness, a little known but staunch group of people, predominantly Malayalis.
Now the tenets of their religion forbid the break-up of humanity into religions, countries, anthems, flags and so on a so forth. It is a community that puts a lot of emphasis on education and the power of God to set things right. And despite this gentleman being a fabulous doctor himself, he respected the wishes of his family members when they refused to take any medical help for even serious ailments. Visiting a doctor is a sin according to staunch Jehovah’s Witnesses and the logic is that if an ailment is the handiwork of God, then we have no business going to a earthly mortal for relief.
This doctor, a wonderful human being who was respected by all and sundry in Telco township where I grew up, soon found himself in the eye of a storm in a place dominated by Biharis who thought singing the national anthem was one of the fundamental pillars of showing your patriotism. The fact that dowry deaths, female infanticide, illiteracy and discrimination between girls and boys were rampant among them made no difference to them.
However a judgment by the Supreme Court around that time in the famous Biju Emmanuel versus Union of India case- wherein the apex court said not singing the national anthem or not being present for such functions is no crime- came to the help of the doctor. A few weeks later the dust settled down and everything was back to normal, the doctor’s reputation and respect among his legion of patients intact. The doctor continued dispensing his medicines with a smile and some jokes that lost much of their colour when translated from Malayalam to Hindi.
The point here is that singing or not singing the national anthem does not make us lesser Indians or unpatriotic ones.
If some people believe the national anthem isn’t robust enough or that it was actually written by Tagore for a British king, then those are viewpoints we should respect and move on.
Just think about it. We have hundreds of politicians who swear by the Indian Constitution and then create Swiss bank accounts running into billions of dollars even from impoverished lands like Jharkhand.
We have thousands of lawyers who swear to uphold the law of the land and then behave like minions of gangsters and frauds.
We have lakhs of doctors who take the Hippocratic Oath and then cut out a kidney when the poor chap isn’t looking.
We have hundreds of witnesses in court who swear on the holy books to speak the truth and then speaking anything but that.
So what difference does it make whether someone wants to sing the national anthem or not.
Most of us are horrible Indians anyway, singing or not singing a song for just under a minute will not make much of a difference. Or if you don’t want to sing it, standing for it wouldn’t hurt either.

Welcome again Lord Clive

When the British landed in India as traders, no one gave them a chance in hell that they would achieve their goal of ruling this vast land. India was an amazing labyrinth of castes, creeds, colour, religion, illiteracy, ritualism, occult, a bit of learning and a lot of bluff.
The learned men said the British would just not be able to play the game well enough to keep a sizeable number of people with them. After all the British, a tiny shipload, could not have fallen back on what is commonly called the strength of numbers.
Amazingly enough one astute Lord Clive, a robber and ruffian more than an officer, for whom India was a punishment posting managed to do it.
Yes India always was a punishment posting and if you are not convinced please rent a DVD of the Mel Gibson starrer ‘Patriots’ and see for yourself where the British Viceroy is sent after Gibson’s ragtag US Army defeats the pompous redcoat.
Sometimes in a land of vast differences remaining focused on the goal is the only way to success, all affiliations and biases be damned.
I’m coming to this because for every Indian who says the days of one-party rule in India are over, and coalitions are the only way out, there is some egg waiting to hit their faces in probably under a decade’s time.
The Congress will steamroll every party in sight in the next few years to emerge as the sole ruler of this vast land, like the times of Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Their Lord Clive of course would be Rahul Gandhi.
My conviction stems from the fact that it is the only party that has mastered the art like the British of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.
Look at how its government has been slowly using the Naxal movement to first wipe out the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram which gave strength to the BJP in the tribal pockets of India, and then used the red rascals to demolish the Left in West Bengal. The fact that a Red Rascal could tomorrow become Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and do to the present Congress leadership what his Sikh band did to Indira Gandhi is no worry to the Congress. That is called focus.
In Maharashtra, it allowed the MNS to tear into the Shiv Sena. Never mind if the MNS comes to the table with the kind of venom that could poison an ocean.
Never mind that migration is an accepted fact and more and more north Indians will come into the state.
Never mind the fact that when these north Indian bands get organised into stronger political groups, they would also come out to fight the MNS and other sons of the soil brick for brick, knife for knife, turning Maharashtra into some of the villages of Assam where Bodos, Asoms, Bangladeshis, Islamists and Biharis carry out bloodbaths like civic corporation anti-malarial fumigation.

Because the Congress knows that as long as the Sena is in a process of going downhill and the MNS’ fortunes are on the rise, the Congress will never lose a general election in this state. And that could be a minimum of 25 years.
To break whatever little stranglehold the BJP may be having on the Hindu votes- very negligible- the Congress is allowing largescale secession of castes and sub-castes and tribes from the mother religion.
Look at how it allowed missionary activity in Orissa, Jharkhand and the north-east to build up its own base there. In Assam to counter the Asom students’ movement, it allowed the entry of lakhs of Bangldeshi Muslims, enough to change the demographics of some of the areas there. Which is the biggest party in the north-east?
It is playing the same games to divide the Sikhs in Punjab and Hrayana? Who won the recent elections in Haryana?
The BJP does not know whether to be a right of centre progressive party or a left of reason Hindu party.
The Communists do not know why they are opposing the naxals when the naxals are just doing with force what the bhadralok leadership in Bengal have been doing with talks?
The Samajwadi party does not know why Maulana Mulayam’s charm is not working anymore?
The Shiv Sena any which way you looked at it was always a party made by a man who went from drawing cartoons to becoming a cartoon.
The MNS is too thin on logic and the problem with goonda parties is that they prosper only till the victim is a lamb. Remember how the Samajwadi Party lost its teeth, brains and limbs when its goondagardi was matched man to man by behen Mayawati? To day the SP cannot get a hundred people if it wants to organise a rasta roko fearing how devilishly Mayawati’s administration will come after them.
The Nationalist Congress Party is just an apology of a party which runs on the whims and fancies of Sharad Pawar and the promise that there is lot of money to be made from Maharashtra, so staying together means the loot can be theirs and staying away from Congress means they do not have to share the loot.
The Karunanidhi led DMK will soon lose out because the old man’s love for his large brood means sooner or later the mercurial people of Tamil Nadu will bring the party to its knees. Plus none of the old man’s brood has his charisma.
Jayalalitha is too arrogant to be a national player.
That leaves Mayawati and it would take at least another quarter of a century for the party to gobble up the votes being shed by the BJP and the other mainstream parties. Which leaves us with just one party and its Lord Clive. Enjoy

The end of Hinduism

‘Tum Hindu hoke beef khata hai’ I have often been asked by my very proud upper caste Hindu friends while in Bihar.
I used to tell them that I eat it because I really like the taste, especially if it is made in the Malayali style. There is this small shanty mess- Chandrans- in the slums close to the international airport where it is made quite superbly. Another one is Nityanand restaurant in the market close to PWD colony in Andheri. I’m sure there are several other Malayali joints where they make good beef but not being a culinary expert of any standard I’m unaware of them.
The problem is Hinduism is now restricted to nonsense like this. Growing up in Bihar, the Tulsidas Ramcharitamanas style of Hinduism is all around you, especially if you live in a place like I did dominated by upper caste Hindus- the Singhs, Tiwaris, Mishras, Jhas and the Kayasthas. To put it lightly it is nauseating.
The brand of Hinduism these people sported mainly included reading the Hanuman Chalisa, with which I do not have any problem with, and then not having alcohol or meat or certain types of foodstuff on certain days.
Oh today is Saturday, oh today is Tuesday, today is this fast, tomorrow is that fast.
And followers of this brand of Hinduism always start off their religious boasts by saying ‘hum logo mein’ which is an indirect reference to the elevated positions of their castes in the Hindu social hierarchy.
In a place where tribals were a dime a dozen, this ‘hum logo mein’ always brought about a sad pained expression on the face of these tribals, most of them just the first generation into the mainstream. Most of them from houses where the father/grandfather probably cleaned the gutter lines and sewage pits till subsidized education gave them wings to dream dreams for their children.
The problem is for a lot of us Hindus, it is all this nonsense that makes us feel Hindus.
The rapid way the religion is shrinking in this nation, I’m surprised Hindus are busy abstaining from beef and good food on certain days rather than making full use of the time left. We are all probably the last or maybe the second last generation who will follow this religion, as we know it now. The Ramcharitamanas style Hinduism, where Ramchandra is the Raghuvanshi upper caste king and Raavan at most a crazed Dravidian king who you can substitute for a demon if you care. All the others of course remain monkeys.
The Jains have walked out, the Sikhs have walked out, and one of the biggest mass movements slowly going on without many realizing is the preparation for the Dalits to walk out.
In Tamil Nadu the movement has become a wildfire. The state is seeing Dalits embrace Christianity by the truckloads. Have you ever noticed posters across the length and breadth of Mumbai of Prayer Festivals and Jesus Calls with reverend this Kumar or Brother that Kumar holding fort. The vast vast majority who attend these festivals are one time Hindus who disgusted and pained by the upper caste Hindus not allowing them to enter temples decided to make their way to the nearest church.
In a very moneyed Muslim organisation centered in Dongri and which follows the hardline Wahabbi sect, I have seen scholars and students in long beards sit for hours with books in a well stacked library trying to drive the final cut in the heart of the Hinduism most of my friends follow. These books are all by Dalit authors, painstakingly detailed about the insults Hinduism heaped on them, and how moving away from the shackles of upper caste dominated Hinduism is the only way. A lot many of the books they read are by Babasaheb Ambedkar.
In Tamil Nadu the police recently had to open fire at an upper caste crowd after they disallowed Dalits from entering a 100-year old temple. Something like this happened in the early 80s in Tamil Nadu’s Meenakshipuram district. The Dalits converted to Islam and made life hell for the Hindus left in that village.
As India progresses and the opportunities of getting rich become better but more concentrated, caste aspirations will once again raise their heads. All it would take is a charismatic leader to lead away a large section of a certain caste to break away and then barter its voting power for reservations in jobs and education.
And we all know that when it comes to riches, social standing can go to hell. Just look at how some groups in Rajasthan- till a generation ago proud and fierce warriors who passed themselves off as Rajputs- are today demanding Scheduled Tribe status so that their children get a easier way to that pot of gold collectively belonging to all of India.
Ambedkar did it with Dalits and Buddhism but the great visionary was left helpless at a time when the means of communication was obsolete. With the bigger but definitely not better media today, a man like Ambedkar could run through all our notions of Hinduism like a hot knife through butter.
It happened once. It could happen in a larger scale. And that would be the end for Hindus. If you look around and see the obnoxious charade of cultural arrogance and selfishness that passes off as Hinduism and of course the sheer stupidity all Hindus possess, some might say the end of Hinduism might be good riddance to bad rubbish.

beware customized history

So finally a handful of Muslim longbeards, the thinking class for the community, have decided that singing Vande Mataram is haraam. Which legally is no problem at all. As long as Muslims don’t jump, laugh or sing any other song when the song is being sung, it is fine.
That is something the Supreme Court has already stated in the Biju Emmanuel versus Union of India case. As long as you stand in silence- and respect- for the national anthem- which also extends to the national song in this case- you are doing just fine.
The problem begins when this kind of history-changing militancy takes more serious and problematic turns.
What if the Muslims of Maharashtra say they will not read Shivaji in their history books? What if the secular Congress government allows them to read ‘Tribal Justice and Navigation of Camel Caravans in the Arab Peninsula during the Medieval Ages’ instead of reading Shivaji?
What if tomorrow the Sikhs say that modern history from the period of the ascension of goongi gudiya Indira Gandhi to her death in 1984 be deleted from history books in all gurudwara schools in Punjab?
What if Mayawati and her BSP bunch ask for the deletion of Gandhiji and his works among the Dalits- at the time called Harijans- from history books prescribed for the downtrodden? To be replaced by the ‘Ideals of Kanshi Ram and Behen Mayawati’.
What if Karunanidhi says no Ramayan will be taught in Tamil Nadu and it be replaced by ‘The Dravidian Adventures of Kalaignar, Kanimozhi, Stalin, Azhagiri and the Marans’? I hope I have not left out any of the bespectacled Tamil patriarch’s brood?
Being born Hindu already bestows on the vast majority of Indians a stupidity we just cannot shake off. Hindus can go and feed a cow after buying the grass from the owner of the cow itself and think that it is going to do massive good to them. There is another bald fellow on India TV who wears velvet maxis and comes up with shit like ‘look towards the west and feed three pieces of puffed rice to a black cow to bring about peace between you and your estranged wife/mistress/neighbour/bai’ etc etc. Hindus lap it up and the ratings of these programmes go through the roof enough to make Aaj Tak, Star TV and Zee TV follow them with inane amounts of idiocy masquerading as Hindu occult.

If we allow our history to be customized by longbeards, saffron robes, cross-bearers, priests, nuns, jokers, clowns, secularists and pseudo-secularists, then we will grow up into a generation so idiotic that we would actually go to our grave thinking popstar Madonna invented Ashtang Yoga and we scratch our balls in tribute to Michael Jackson’s crotch grabbing act or that kids stammer as a mark of respect to Shah Rukh Khan’s k-k-k-k-kkkirran.
Because any other history in our schools would just be too hot to touch even with a barge pole.

Every Indian is a Bihari

‘You don’t look like you are from Bihar’ was what an acquaintance once told me at a party. She rolled her eyes and said ‘I mean you sound intelligent’. For a man who can’t fall back on his looks- for the lack of it- to get girls to make a beeline for him at such parties, I am blessed that I was born and spent the first twenty years of my life in Bihar. It ensures pretty young things come to me and then with an all-knowing smirk on their faces ask me ‘What exactly is the problem with Bihar’. Since I like being invited to such parties once in a while, I shrug my shoulders and say ‘don’t get me started on that place. I mean what do I say’. This sort of a response allows me to stay part of their group, the city-sleekers, the Mumbaikars, the French and Yoga classes gang. It allows me to not be mistaken for a Bihari. Because in their world, Bihari is not a word to describe a person born and brought up in Bihar, it is a word that describes a mindset, a virus, an endless capacity to parasitically cling onto the progress of others, an unwanted entity, a burden on the face of the earth. Thanks to Raj Thackeray, Bihari and Bhaiyya have become words that describe several million things at the same time.

As an Indian and as a Bihari – and still maintain a third party view since at the end of the day I’m a Malu born there- I can prove that however much we smirk at Biharis, every Indian is a Bihari. Let me go about proving it.


All history, no future:
A Bihari really loves to boast about how almost all of pre-Mughal history that is taught in our school books has its roots in Bihar. When Hinduism was getting suffocating for the lower castes, two saviours appeared- Gautama Buddha and Mahavir. Where were they from or where did they attain this enlightenment- Bihar. When we talk of the greatest of our kings, who do we think of- Ashok, Chandragup? Bihar again. Which kingdom’s splendour and ferocity made Alexander the Great’s men say enough and no further? The Magadha Saamrajya under the Nandas. The only medieval Islamic king who defeated the Mughals and made public works his life mission? Sher Shah Suri from Rohtas. The same gentleman who made the Grand Trunk Road. So on and so forth. But don’t we see every Indian do this? We invented zero, Aryabhatta, astronomy, plastic surgery blah blah blah. End result- when we went gaga over Chandrayan finding water on the moon’s surface, the foreign papers and a NASA press conference only mentioned their equipment that found water, not a word of Chandarayan which took that equipment to the moon in the first place.

Cultural arrogance:
All the above-mentioned firsts inevitably gives the Bihari a streak of cultural arrogance that borders on nausea. As a Malayali living in Bihari, I was always reminded that we khattaas- the term for all south Indians because of the amount of tamarind we allegedly eat- married in our lungis and all our brides and the womenfolk without fail came to a marriage as widows. That was the Bihari take on the fact that white is the predominant colour in a Mallu marriage.
The Jharkhandis and other tribals were always haadi bootis roots, shoots and rice beer people, or chota jaat. Chota jaat also extended to Yadavs, Kurmis, etc if a Singh was talking. If it were a Mishra Jha or Tiwari speaking, then even a Singh would be a chota jaat. Doesn’t every Indian do this? In cosmopolitan Mumbai I hear colleagues say he is a Kobra, he is a CKP, he is a Deshasht, Maratha, Mahar, Jai Bhim. For us Indians, all south Indians are Madrasis, all Sardars are well dumb sardars, all east of Kolkata are chinkis or nepalis, all people from the mountains are pahadis. All Bengalis are machchees or dadus. Ghatis, Horo, Paandy, Gulti, cutpiece, topaless- mind you not topless. We Indians can give any nation a run for it money with our absolute mastery in cultural obnoxiousness.

Wide range:
Some of the most intelligent people I have met in my life are Biharis. At my school, Bihari students always stood first in almost all classes. These chaps then went on to gain entry into IITs and some went further into the IIMs. A Union HRD survey predicts that by 2025 all districts in India will either have an SP or a Collector or a Magistrate from Bihar. The civil services exam seems like it is made only for Biharis, looking at the numbers who clear it from that state. At the same time some of the biggest idiots I have seen are also Biharis. You will hear old men say that a particular candidate is a ‘full criminal’ but since he is Yadav – or substitute that for Thakur, Kurmi, Bhumihar, Moosahar, Brahmin, Baniya- I will vote for him. ‘Nahi to kya satta yeh haramzade uchche/ chote jaat ko dede?’ he will reason. Biharis vote for crooks who keep Pakistani made guns in their houses, crooks who buy mines in Liberia, crooks who have rape cases against them, murder dacoity, molestation, fraud, you name it and a Bihari will go and vote for that idiot. Are we Indians any different? Look at the recent Maharashtra assembly elections. Sons, fathers, crooks, scamsters, party-hoppers, sons of criminals, absconders, you name it and we have voted for them.

Low self-esteem:
Every Bihari when he moves out of his state feels it impossible to defend his place. I mean can you do anything more than just grin and bear it when every one starts laughing the moment you say Bihar and then follow it up by saying Lalu Prasad Yadav?
So the normal Bihari outside Bihar is a nervous wreck apologetic about the fact that when he came out of his mother’s womb, the mother happened to be within the geographical limits of Bihar. Think for a moment, my fellow Indians. We go abroad, shameful of the fact that we are Indians. We look at their cities in awe, badmouth our system back home, take the smiles and smirks when the average foreigner- only interested in India if he has read Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book or has heard that the Beatles were fairly impressed with some of our yogis- asks us about snake charmers, animal sacrifices, Hindu pagans, elephants, Pushkar, Kumbha and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

There are several more ways I can prove we are all Biharis. But I’m feeling too disgusted to go any further. All I know is Raj will continue to make capital out of the Biharis, Marathis will continue to vote for him and girls will continue to tell me ‘you are from Bihar?’ I will continue with the same response.

the rascals of Hinduism who shame every Hindu

All those idiots in Goa who claim to be members of the Sanatan Sanstha need to be horsewhipped in public, their heads tonsured and then paraded naked atop donkeys. This way at least the owners of the donkeys will get some money and the donkeys can have some rest from the back-breaking labour they would have to otherwise put in to give its owner that kind of money.

The Goa police is investigating the Sanatan Sanstha group, apparently an upkeeper of Hindu ideals and values, for trying to cause bomb blasts in Goa. Two of the members of this group were killed when a bomb they were allegedly transporting, police claim, blew up.
And what was the reason for this sudden awakening of Hindu ideals in the tourism hotspot? Apparently these idiots had a major problem that in the festivities to commemorate the slaying of demon Narkasur by little Krishna, the idols of Krishna are too small when compared to that of gigantic Narkasur.
Do these bloody right-wing Hindu warriors have any clue about the religion or the state it is in?
I’m convinced if all the Hindu right-wing brains- when I use the phrase right wing I use it for such idiots- are collected at one spot, there wouldn’t be enough intelligence in them to fill up the eye of a needle.
Except for bluster, boasts, outdated myths, cultural apartheid and pseudo religious logic, these idiots will not be able to say one word worth hearing.
Looking at these people if you feel ashamed of being called Hindu, then you can bet your last penny you are dead right in feeling ashamed.
These people are not Hindus. They are mental retards.
A Hindu is someone who can answer correctly two simple questions:
1) Is your chance of dying of cancer higher compared to being shot dead?Do you fear flying planes more or a donkey grazing near you?

Jharkhand: Rich land, poor people,

Growing up in Jharkhand, December was picnic time. Entire families in big noisy groups rented trucks and set out in the bitter cold of early Jharkhand mornings to get to places like Ghatsila, Joeeda- the confluence of the Subarnarekha and Kharkhai rivers- and Dimna for a day of fun and frolic in the winter sun.
These were places which far removed from the hustle and bustle and pollution of industrial Jamshedpur looked like time had stopped since God created them.
But for young boys like us and even grown up men, the picnics of Jharkhand also held another and more important fascination.
In a time when India had just opened up to the outside world under the watchful eyes of Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, internet and easy availability of porn was not an option.
The next best option was hiding behind the cliffs and dry grass growing all along the banks of thinning rivers to watch tribal women bathe, which they always did without any clothes. Abject poverty meant that a change of clothes was for most women never an option and backbreaking physical labour meant that their bodies were taut, without an ounce of fat and glistened in the play of sun and water.
Luckier still getting caught in this act of delicious voyeurism did not come with the fear of getting thrashed by other tribals which was a strange paradox for a people who always saw the non-tribals who have made Jamshedpur their home with great mistrust.
The reason for this paradox was not their naked ladies but their naked children. All through December and January, hordes of families made their way to these places. Any news of a picnicker thrashed by tribals during this season went back to Jamshedpur increased manifold and it usually put a premature end to the picnic season.
With that came to an end the poor tribal’s only chance to have cakes, chicken masala and rice that had aroma rather than a stench.
That is because every year when a group of families took up a scenic spot to enjoy their picnics, small groups of almost full-naked men would arrive with arrows and bows and demand food. The menace- if being ‘civilized’ allows us to use that term- forced people to carry extra food as bribe for the tribals. A few bars of chocolates also got thrown in for the little kids who waited back at the hamlets for their fathers to come back with the ‘loot’. Sundays and public holidays in these two months meant happy hamlets all along these picnic spots.
So that meant that a proud race of people, who even took on the British when the white man took on their customs- remember Birsa Munda- never thrashed city boys ogling at their naked bathing women because that helped their children- those who managed to not end as infant mortality statistics in the block development officer’s file- get food far better than they would probably have all their lives.
In a dirt poor state with more minerals than any other part of India inch by inch, where men allow boys to ogle at their women if it got their kids food, comes the news of a man who while being its chief minister made enough money to buy mines in distant Liberia, set up plants all around Jamshedpur, and make a whopping Rs 400 crores in hawala transactions half way around the world.
Madhu Koda had made history when he became the first Independent MLA to become chief minister. In a state where horse-trading is rampant and government change at the whim and fancies of a handful of MLAs, we probably now know the reason how Koda managed to become CM.
Is it any coincidence that Jharkhand is the most potent naxal laboratory in India? Any coincidence that almost a quarter of the state is inaccessible to cops all round the year, all part of liberated red land?
Who is right, who is wrong? These answers are never easy. In Jharkhand, they are tougher still.

Gadchiroli attack: what awards?

After 26/11 we all saw the sheer madness that enveloped families of slain policemen to get their departed beloved ones Kirti Chakras and Shaurya Chakras.
Family after family poured their hearts out to the media demanding, you cannot use a lighter word, that their relative displayed bravery of the highest order and deserved whatever chakra the government was doling out.
What did they exactly do? Die at the hands of two crazed Pakistanis. Did they kill anybody? Not till the NSG commandos came in. And of course brave Tukaram Omble who deserved his award.

A day after the naxals, almost 200 strong, armed with assault rifles and in guerilla war formation, mowed down 18 policemen, there is eerie silence.
The state government and the police set-up do not have enough courtesy or thought to send a fax to newspaper offices naming the brave 18. I’m saying brave because these cops, heavily outnumbered almost 10 is to one, fought for four long hours, took bullets all over their bodies and then finally departed like heroes. In the process these cops also killed 15 naxals.

But would they get any award? You bet they won’t because they are tribals from some of the state’s most backward districts and except for joining the police force or the naxal army, they don’t have much of a choice. The press will move on to the next event since unlike a Taj or a Trident, NGOs never come forward to light candles and hold fashion shows in the memory of naxal victims in Gadchiroli. So if there are no candle light vigils or skin-showing ramp walks, then there isn’t much meat in there for the television channels.

So Gadchiroli will be forgotten till the naxals think up their next move to rub mud on conceited faces like that of our all-knowing P Chidambaram. And we will continue giving awards to cops for dying at the hands of the enemy rather than for killing them.

let us do an IPL on the naxals

The Times of India had an article on a naxal leader in its Mumbai edition a couple of days ago. It was a partly vilification and a partly robinhoodising effort by the paper of 28 year old Kundan Pahan, the Maoist red rascal who ordered the beheading of Jharkhand inspector Francis Indwar.
In an earlier blog, we had touched upon the danger of the Maoist menace disintegrating into a thousand wars led by a hundred warlords if the Indian state didn’t act fast enough. That could be an absolute horror for the country. Imagine swathes of land under the control of different warlords with their own laws, some bordering on insanity.
To get the picture just think of Somalia or closer home the North West Frontier Province.
Coming back to the article, the headline was ‘Veerappan of the East’, referring to Pahan.
It spoke of how he went the bloody red way when rich landlords forced his family out of the village he hailed from. There are no details of when, where, how or what, lending credence to the fact that it might just be a journalistic way of giving a humane face to a man who is acting just the opposite.
So far the movement has been a shadowy one with no newspaper or even the cops managing a picture of Mupalla Laxman Rao or Comrade Ganpathy, as he was known, though with the outing of the moniker he might have changed it.
No one knows the structure of the organisation, or how many members are there in the Politburo or indeed in which part of the ‘liberated’ stretch between ‘Pashupati to Tirupati’ do they meet.
We have not even dwelt enough on the fabulous story of Saket Rajan or Comrade Prem, a man who could have become with some media benevolence and folklore passing of as fact, the Indian version of Che Guevara. Rajan was the son of a strict Army officer, went on to top class from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, was editor of the defunct Mysore Star which wrote scathing articles against uranium mining in India, wrote the encyclopedic History of Kannadigas which is still taught in almost all Karnataka universities, and then left to become the commander of the naxal army in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and known and dreaded by cops as Comrade Prem.
He got killed in a firefight with the Greyhounds of Andhra some years ago.
Rajan died a unheralded death. Let us not make heroes of people like Pahan.
Like the stories we had in some papers – I think DNA- of how mellifluously Ajmal Qasab sang his prayers during Ramzaan.
Let us do to the naxals what Lalit Modi did with the Indian Premier League. Copy the format from the Indian Cricket League, get it officially approved from the IC, spend money, make it a success and force the ICL to shut down.
Similarly let us listen to the naxals, take the good from their rhetoric, implement them with our laws and money and then go after them.

please don't vote, enjoy ur holiday

Hahahaha. This whole legal spiel to voting is very funny. Two days in a row all papers have reported that the state government has dug out some obscure section of the People’s Representation Act which says I bloody well have to go and vote. Even if it is for crooks, tenth fail crorepatis, useless sons of disgusting fathers, liquor-for-votes distributors, absconders etc etc.
Let us give the election commission and the state government a good one on the chin by simply making better use of our holiday.
Do anything but vote. Lets make history by bringing down voting percentages to single-digits.
You vote does not count so why count on it. If you’re afraid of your salary well then let me tell you inflation would have eaten into anyway so why grudge the deduction.
Enjoy your holiday

Naxals behead cop: Just not done

What the naxals did with inspector Francis Indwar in Jharkhand was very very unfortunate. The red movement has been a violent one but before this incident it never looked like one that could be equated with the idiocy of the Taliban.
Indwar was just a foot soldier going about his job. Kidnapping him and then beheading him seems to be the work of some very lazy naxals, the kind who wanted to do something but then went about the shortest and easiest way possible.
Did the naxals of Chottanagpur think that the government would have let free Kobad Ghandy, Chattradhar Mahato and Bhushan Yadav in exchange for Indwar? Indwar was just a lowly inspector and the state couldn’t have cared less. If the naxals wanted to get these guys out, they should have gone for some of the fat cat ministers or senior bureaucrats.
The incident comes on the back of some brownie points the naxals had earned over the past four days. First, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar stated that the Amosi massacre did not seem to be the handiwork of the naxals, something the naxal establishment itself had tried to impress upon the people.
On Wednesday union home minister P Chidambaram during a press briefing in Mumbai clarified that the naxals were not receiving any backing from China and that their funding mechanism was wholly indigenous. Of course the description might have been somewhat different. While Chidambaram called the naxal funding methodology a mix of extortion, ransom and bank robbery, the naxals might themselves be calling this ‘war tax’. In effect what the Home Minister was trying to say was that the red rascal movement is a home-made one, a big thing coming from a government that jumps to look for a foreign hand even in natural calamities if that could help.
But with Francis Indwar, the naxals have undone much. The revolution is an ill wind that blows nobody any good if it leaves behind tears in the eyes of a woman who till yesterday might have thought of herself as just another ‘have-not’ in a huge system governed by a small minority of haves.You idiots owe the people of India an apology.

Pati, Patni aur woh saudagar

One of the most popular pieces of philosophy that gets thrown into any conservation between people vastly jealous of the fun the rich and the famous tend to have in their lives is this---‘ in the highest strata of society and the lowest, things remain much the same.’
I do not know how true this is because fortunately I am not on the lowest rung of the social ladder but unfortunately nor am I in the highest.
But reading an article about the parents who have ‘loaned’ their infants for the NDTV Imagine show ‘Pati Patni aur Woh’, this piece of pop philosophy got me thinking.
If you have ever used Vikhroli station, then you might have seen this group of dirty women- by dirty I mean unwashed, unbathed and untidy and not any of the moral and ethical connotations the word has- who sit on platform number two close to the landing of the overbridge. Every woman has an infant in her arms and a couple of slightly older ones to spare.
Now these women, as any RPF constable will tell you, are part of a group that carry these infants into crowded trains and beg for alms for the kid’s milk and well-being. Most commuters moved by the sight of the little one sleeping peacefully will give a rupee or two.
A crying infant or an ailing one is trouble. That’s because the effort of the day for the ‘mother’ goes wasted in pacifying or tending to the infant rather than in making a sorry face to arouse pity among the commuters and get them to go for their pockets.
I once saw one woman ‘exchange’ an ailing infant for a healthier and sleepier one just as the slow train to CST pulled into platform number 2.
The woman who ‘loaned’ her more begging-friendly kid to the other turned to the leader of the pack and asked the leader to stand surety that the barter would be a fair one.
The barter was that the woman who took the infant into the train would give half her ‘earnings’ to the lady who loaned the kid. The deal was done when the leader, tobacco spittle trailing from her lips, barked at the woman getting into the train.
One such case of a baby swap turned ugly last year when one of these women jumped out of a train with her infant to dart across the tracks when a set of commuters objected to the merciless way she was hushing up a crying infant. A train from the opposite direction knocked her and the infant dead.
Cops say the easiest way to spot whether the infant carried by a beggar woman is her own is to observe if she feeds the infant once his crying gets uncontrollable. If she doesn’t, then she isn’t.
Coming back to those women who have loaned their kids to the NDTV show, is it any different? Obviously these parents- for want of a better word- have been paid handsomely despite the fact that from their mannerisms and language, they appear to be rich, sophisticated and ambitious social climbers. Don’t’ go by what one lady told Mumbai Mirror that they have done it as social welfare, which is making would-be parents understand the finer points of child-rearing. What a joke. The lady either thinks we are idiots or she is a genius many times over.
In several footpath colonies in Mumbai, the money that has to be given to the ‘footpath lord’ can also be paid in kind- usually a lady from the household.
Coming back late from office one night, I observed a fight on a footpath on SV Road right outside Borivali station between people from one such foopath colony. In this case a woman, her hair and clothes disheveled with the nocturnal activity, promised to cut some important parts of the anatomy of a man who was now eyeing her just-touching-puberty daughter.
“The money gets paid by me” the woman barked at that man, who, probably drunk observing his gait, just walked away to the other side of the footpath and life went on as usual.
Probably it might be happening in several of the very rich households as well. Who knows? We have heard of marriages of convenience among rich business families after all. So is the pop philosophy right?

Bihar naxal massacre: Don’t’ talk but listen in

The killing of 16 people in Bihar by the naxals, in what was a land dispute and nothing lofty by standards of the Mao-spouting and bullet-spitting red rascals, probably is the start of the next and more dangerous phase for the Indian nation.
The killing, if police is to be believed, was the naxal way of clearing up the social hierarchy that slot itself according to time, circumstances and opportunity.
With the arrival of Nitish Kumar as the doyen of Bihar politics, it is the Kurmis who have become the new Yadavs of Bihar. The Yadavs of course are feeling the pinch of the gradual alienation and frustration they feel with their messiah of the 90s Lalu Prasad Yadav.
The naxal operation was in support of the rat-eating Mushahars, a group that finds itself in the lowest rung of the caste hierarchy because of their fetish for catching, peeling, boiling and eating rats soaked in curry with fistfuls of coarse rice. As in any naxal operation, the end was cold-blooded and left dead bodies strewn all over for a shell-shocked and frightened village to wake up to.
The danger in only a militaristic solution to the fight now is the dismemberment of the so far monolithic People’s War, led by the 13 member Politburo, into a cesspool of individual warlords with small gangs of tribesmen to help them. What we saw in Central Africa especially Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo and Rwanda, could be a reality in India. We have enough tribes, enough castes, more than enough problems of corruption and just not enough honest men in the system we call democracy or India to avert something like this if it were to become a reality. All this could just be the fodder for the dismemberment of the people’s war.
Tomorrow these warlords could block highways, blow up dams, lay siege to mines and forests, kill the ruling elite, declare entire swathes of tribal land independent and then dictate terms to the democratic class. Sadly some of this has already begun.
The time might not be ripe to talk to the naxals- because of their hatred for Indian democracy or the parties in it- but the time is definitely ripe for us to listen in.
What is it that we missed in our 60 years as a welfare state that the naxals picked up? Why are the tribals such ready fodder for the red rascals? Why have we failed with smiles when they are succeeding with the gun?
It is time to go full out into these tribal strongholds and develop them, even if it means suspending democracy in these areas for some time. It is time for Tribal Development Authorities to be carved out of states like Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Andhra and Bihar. A justice system within that of the current one but with quick disposal of cases, inculcating the saner and civil parts of tribal justice dispensation, has to bet set up in these places. Failure could mean the colour red would figure more prominently in the lives of every Indian, only that it wouldn’t be representing piety and gaiety as in the festivals of life, but the fear and shock villagers in Amosi in Bihar’s Khagaria district woke up with on that fateful day.

Manna Dey: keep singing

The Dadasaheb Phalke award to Manna Dey might be most discussed in Kerala after his home state West Bengal. The man’s connection to the coastal state is a very old one.
In the land of the divine-voiced Yesudas, this man once saw himself in the idst of some of the most hotly contested debates the state has seen. As the millennium rung in and just about everyone worth his name was coming up with millennium polls for whatever they were worth, Kerala had one for the best film song ever.
Now Yesudas has sung so many songs, and so many of them hits that the grand title ‘Gaana Gandharvan’ – or Celestial Singer- sits very lightly and deservedly on him. Such is the enduring legend of the soft-spoken man that when Lata Mangeshkar and some of her close aides said that it is possible Lata may have sung the highest number of songs in India, Tamil song bard SP Balasubramaniam jumped into the debate.
Firstly he said that it is not Lata but yours truly who held that record. When that sounded immodest from SP- though the way he has got awards for singing, composing and acting, you’d forgive him for immodesty- the portly man said the only person who could have possibly sung more than him would be Yesudas.

Coming back to Manna Dey, in a very tightly contested poll with different actors taking sides, the outcome was a sensational one and spawned a hundred debates in a state which always believe the country has never acknowledged the massive artistic talent the tiny state held.

Back to the Manna Dey saga again. Voters in Kerala chose ‘maanasa mayele’ from the evergreen ‘Chemeen’ as the finest Malayalam film song ever. The singer- Manna Dey. To add to the surprise factor, the song was composed by a man who did not understand a word of Malayalam or had much of an expertise on Kerala except for an understanding of its communist fascination- Salil Chaudhary.

Later however Manna Dey lost out in a Hindi music era when fun and frolic in the voice of a singer was more in demand than meticulousness about the sound and note of the song. Kishore Kumar marched ahead. In the early 80s the same fate befell Suresh Wadkar who was pushed aside by untrained and in some cases jarring voices like Amit Kumar- after the Balika Vadhu and Love Story euphoria-, Shabbir Kumar and Mohammad Aziz.
But Manna Dey, forget all these awards. They cannot match up to the soft hue that comes over us when we hear the silken rendition of ‘zindagi kaisi hai paheli haye’ from Anand. Long live

seedha rasta kaun pass hua hai?

I recently overheard a group of collegians praising a friend to the stars at Vidyavihar station. I do not know which college they belonged to. From their looks, their style of dressing and their boisterous chatter about accounts, environmental science and girls, I’m assuming they were from a decent college though I could be wrong. All of them were waiting for a Kalyan-side train on platform number 1.The point of the decibel-irreverent discussion was one young chap amidst them who had just taught all his friends a new trick to smuggle in chits into the exam hall. Everyone in the group save none agreed that the method was ingenious and could even be tried out at higher levels, like say the CAT exams or the CET. It was an idea that was too good to be restricted to college and its unit tests, everyone agreed noisily.
Standing in the middle of the group, our inventor was preening like the cat who got the cream. As his friends patted his back, some of their smiles dimmed with jealousy at the chap’s cleverness, this boy just shook his head. A very cocky push of the chin sideways, nothing more. Like what some cricketers do when they have smacked a 150kmph delivery as straight as an arrow to the boundary.
As the group collectively dreamt that now everyone there with a bit of luck could get a first class, our man made his move towards the train that had just pulled into the platform. The punchline came as the genius placed his first step on the footboard. His hair waving, the Sultan of Chits turned around to his friends and as the train picked up speed yelled- “seedha raasta kaun m#@%r&*d pass hua hai? Yeh India hai dost”
The high five he got from one of the chaps in the gang who was at the door with him and the sheer admiration that continued in the truncated group till the next train arrived convinced me that everyone in that group heartily agreed the genius was right.
Have you ever taken a look at the affidavits politicians file when they file their nomination papers? SSC pass girls who talk like idiots are worth Rs 20 crores. Others have seen their stock worth increase almost 12 times in five years, better than what some top stock brokers can manage.
Filmstars convicted by courts for riots and bomb blasts inaugurate police Dussehras. Politicians who never show their faces to the electorate except in studios of television channels on their payrolls get second MP terms because their fathers have played the religion and caste mathemtaics well..
An absconding corporator who was caught taking a bribe from a BMC contractor gets a Congress ticket for the MLA elections.
A man hailed as a hero once by a fawning press- BBC no less- is finally raided by the Anti-corruption sleuths and is found to be worth several crores, shops, flats and acres of land. He gets bail, sounds indifferent because he knows after lying low for some months he will be back to some plum post and doing much the smae things he caught for.
Probably the chap who was being hailed as the ‘smartest smuggler of chits’ by his college mates that afternoon at Vidyavihar station was right after all --- seedha rasta kaun m-----d pass hua hai? Yeh India hai dost.

Maharashtra elections: Let us make it historical

Mumbai had abysmal voting percentages for the Lok Sabha elections this year. Cheers to that. Can Maharashtra rise above the stupid argument of ‘your vote counts’ and make history by not turning up to vote at all for the assembly elections. Can we all get together and make October 13 look like some Shiv Sena bandh. Every road empty and every house echoing with the good times of a well-deserved holiday.
Let us make October 13 a red-letter day by simply sleeping the day off if we have nothing better to do.
Think about it. Are we idiots to vote for sons, wives, daughters and brothers and uncles of politicians? Are we donkeys to believe that our MLA can change anything apart from the size of his bank balance?
Are we fools to think that this is democracy? Are we blockheads to go and stand in the sun to vote and provide the shade of luxuries to SSC-fail crorepatis?
Are we so shameless as to be herded in lines by cops to vote for parties who couldn’t care a rat piss about us?
Let us show the country, the world and every place that thinks this is democracy that the people of Maharashtra have more brains than anyone ever acknowledged.
Let us get every leader worth his salt thinking? Let us start the world’s most silent revolution by not turning up at the box office of politics to stamp the tickets of someone else’s – and thoroughly undeserving- ride to fame and riches.
Please don’t go out and vote.

kobad ghandy, naxal

You could call it timing. Just when Maharashtra is in the throes of the run-up to another frenzied assembly election comes the news of the arrest of Kobad Ghandy. Even for someone who has read some literature about the naxals, I must admit I had never heard of this man before. I have heard of the elusive Comrade Ganapathy- though I don’t know by what moniker he goes around now- and to a little extent about scholar historian –turned naxal commander Saket Rajan or Comrade Prem- though he got killed several years ago in a fire-fight with the Greyhounds of Andhra Pradesh.

Reading the lead story of the Times of India today- September 23- a stray thought about what is right, what is wrong and what is it that we call a country all came to me at the same time. Funnily enough every time you think deeply of the political system in this country, the only reaction you can elicit from yourself is a smirk, which itself tells the story of a dream we started when some good old men chased the Britons away.

Here we are reporting on a daily basis about parties ‘committed’ to the nation-state of India as we know it. Parties who once they attain power swear on the holy books that they would uphold the sovereignty, integrity blah blah blah of the nation. And then go into the teakwood paneled offices and start doing exactly the opposite.

In the run up to attaining that power- through a circus we call elections- these parties and their leaders ensure that every promise they have ever made to their party workers or the nation in general is stuffed up whichever part of the anatomy has place to take it in.

Leaders think nothing beyond promoting their kin even if they are jackasses of the first degree. So the dear leader’s daughter gets a ticket, the departed leader’s daughter gets a ticket, the son gets one, the so-called mass leaders get tickets from safe seats, the opportunist gets a ticket the moment he walks into a party even if it is the fiftieth party he has walked into in the past five years.

Those who lose out on tickets openly say that the party demands Rs 2 crores for a nomination. It is a barter of democracy pimped by parties, prostituted by leaders.

Amongst a barrage of such news- that makes Churchill’s prediction of Indians being too idiotic to govern themselves true- comes the news of Kobad Ghandy. The man studied in the best of schools- as a journalist I know how editors swoon over pea-brained journalists whose only claim to fame is schooling in Doon and college at St Stephens- and in the best of colleges- HE’S FROM XAVIERS!!!- but somehow schooling could not dumb him I think.

The man then went on to be managing director of a company, lived amidst riches, married rich and still managed to think of some who are so not part of the system we call India that they don’t get counted even if they die.

And then he leaves all of that to go out and claim for the poor what the poor are too poor too claim for themselves.

I know in the days to come the establishment will make Kobad Ghandy look like that bastard Qasab. I know we will get to hear stories of Naxal leaders living in posh surroundings while the cadre fight it out in god-forsaken jungles. Cadre who then fall to malaria, bullets or snakebites whichever wins the race to fell a red rascal. By the way Kobad Ghandy’s wife died of malaria the cops inform.

I hold no brief for the naxals, because any movement that holds the gun as its bible generally leaves a caravan of carcasses and stench, not revolution and utopia. This would be no different.

But if the leaders of parties like the BJP, Shiv Sena , the Congress and the NCP are reading about Kobad Ghandy amidst haggling for tickets for their sons, daughters, dogs and dhobi, let them reflect for a moment.

Ghandy might be served the justice he deserves by the law that governs India, but in the court of law of the elements- where barter of good and equality is the cornerstone- Kobad Ghandy might just be handed a ‘not guilty at all’ sentence.

Let us fight the naxals not with the gun, but by bringing the equality they talk about. We have a bigger system, we have better guns, it is now time to show we have better hearts as well.

kobad ghandy, naxal

You could call it timing. Just when Maharashtra is in the throes of the run-up to another frenzied assembly election comes the news of the arrest of Kobad Ghandy. Even for someone who has read some literature about the naxals, I must admit I had never heard of this man before. I have heard of the elusive Comrade Ganapathy- though I don’t know by what moniker he goes around now- and to a little extent about scholar historian –turned naxal commander Saket Rajan or Comrade Prem- though he got killed several years ago in a fire-fight with the Greyhounds of Andhra Pradesh.

Reading the lead story of the Times of India today- September 23- a stray thought about what is right, what is wrong and what is it that we call a country all came to me at the same time. Funnily enough every time you think deeply of the political system in this country, the only reaction you can elicit from yourself is a smirk, which itself tells the story of a dream we started when some good old men chased the Britons away.

Here we are reporting on a daily basis about parties ‘committed’ to the nation-state of India as we know it. Parties who once they attain power swear on the holy books that they would uphold the sovereignty, integrity blah blah blah of the nation. And then go into the teakwood paneled offices and start doing exactly the opposite.

In the run up to attaining that power- through a circus we call elections- these parties and their leaders ensure that every promise they have ever made to their party workers or the nation in general is stuffed up whichever part of the anatomy has place to take it in.

Leaders think nothing beyond promoting their kin even if they are jackasses of the first degree. So the dear leader’s daughter gets a ticket, the departed leader’s daughter gets a ticket, the son gets one, the so-called mass leaders get tickets from safe seats, the opportunist gets a ticket the moment he walks into a party even if it is the fiftieth party he has walked into in the past five years.

Those who lose out on tickets openly say that the party demands Rs 2 crores for a nomination. It is a barter of democracy pimped by parties, prostituted by leaders.

Amongst a barrage of such news- that makes Churchill’s prediction of Indians being too idiotic to govern themselves true- comes the news of Kobad Ghandy. The man studied in the best of schools- as a journalist I know how editors swoon over pea-brained journalists whose only claim to fame is schooling in Doon and college at St Stephens- and in the best of colleges- HE’S FROM XAVIERS!!!- but somehow schooling could not dumb him I think.

The man then went on to be managing director of a company, lived amidst riches, married rich and still managed to think of some who are so not part of the system we call India that they don’t get counted even if they die.

And then he leaves all of that to go out and claim for the poor what the poor are too poor too claim for themselves.

I know in the days to come the establishment will make Kobad Ghandy look like that bastard Qasab. I know we will get to hear stories of Naxal leaders living in posh surroundings while the cadre fight it out in god-forsaken jungles. Cadre who then fall to malaria, bullets or snakebites whichever wins the race to fell a red rascal. By the way Kobad Ghandy’s wife died of malaria the cops inform.

I hold no brief for the naxals, because any movement that holds the gun as its bible generally leaves a caravan of carcasses and stench, not revolution and utopia. This would be no different.

But if the leaders of parties like the BJP, Shiv Sena , the Congress and the NCP are reading about Kobad Ghandy amidst haggling for tickets for their sons, daughters, dogs and dhobi, let them reflect for a moment.

Ghandy might be served the justice he deserves by the law that governs India, but in the court of law of the elements- where barter of good and equality is the cornerstone- Kobad Ghandy might just be handed a ‘not guilty at all’ sentence.

Let us fight the naxals not with the gun, but by bringing the equality they talk about. We have a bigger system, we have better guns, it is now time to show we have better hearts as well.

let us take the BJP to ground zero

Let us start off by playing a game this election season. For years we have been voting for corrupt netas, sons and daughters of netas, illiterate wives of netas and so far have only abstained from voting for the dog of the neta.

To all you Bharatiya Janata Party supporters out there, I hereby present a game that you could play this assembly elections in Maharashtra.

It is called 'choose the funniest symbol' contest.

Please go to your voting booth, take time in looking at the symbols of all the sundry candidates and you will find among them funny ones like brinjals, carrots, donkeys, cows and an assortment to raise a few laughs.

Choose the one that you found the funniest, get your finger inked and walk out feeling proud of yourself as BJP supporters.

Let all of us pledge to reduce the BJP to nought in the state. Let us reduce it to dust before someone sane comes around a rebuilds it into the party it should have been or it had promised to be.

It today is a party of leaders who in order to further their own dynastic aspirations think nothing before destroying the party if it helps.

Gopinath Munde, that creation of Pramod Mahajan, has ensured that Pramod Mahajan's daughter Poonam gets a ticket from the Ghatkopar east seat. The trade off was Guhagar which since 1972 was the BJP's safest seat. Dr Vinay Natu, the five time MLA from there can go take a walk, said the BJP's dynasty setters. So what if the party workers revolt, the party isn't as important as ensuring that one's own kin get tickets from safe seats, seats made safe by the toil and sweat of thousands of workers.

Then Munde manages to get his daughter Pankaja a ticket from Parli. His nephew Dhananjay can also take a walk because a daughter is a daughter and a nephew, excuse me, is not a son.

So let us all as friends of the BJP go out in droves, play 'choose the funny symbol' contest at the polling booths on October 13 and hand the BJP the worst defeat it has ever seen.

Let 2009 Maharashtra be so severe that Lok Sabha 2009 can be conveniently forgotten by the saffron idiots.

Let us help make a new BJP, The one where workers still become chief ministers, like Narendra Modi, and where sons and daughters get tickets only if they deserve them. And from seats they are capable of wresting from the opposition, not safe seats.

Let us tear apart the BJP to shreds.
Join in.

Lets take BJP to ground zero

Let us start off by playing a game this election season. For years we have been voting for corrupt netas, sons and daughters of netas, illiterate wives of netas and so far have only abstained from voting for the dog of the neta.

To all you Bharatiya Janata Party supporters out there, I hereby present a game that you could play this assembly elections in Maharashtra.

It is called 'choose the funniest symbol' contest.

Please go to your voting booth, take time in looking at the symbols of all the sundry independent candidates and you will find among them funny ones like brinjals, carrots, donkeys, cows and an assortment to raise a few laughs.

Choose the one that you found the funniest, press the EVM, get your finger inked and walk out feeling proud of yourself as BJP supporters.

Let all of us pledge to reduce the BJP to nought in the state. Let us reduce it to dust so that someone sane comes around and rebuilds it into the party it should have been or it had promised to be.

The BJP today is a party of leaders who in order to further their own dynastic aspirations think nothing of destroying the party if the cannibalization would help.

Gopinath Munde, that creation of Pramod Mahajan, has ensured that Pramod Mahajan's daughter Poonam gets a ticket from the Ghatkopar east seat. The trade off was Guhagar which since 1972 was the BJP's safest seat. Dr Vinay Natu, the five time MLA from there can go take a walk, said the BJP's dynasty setters. So what if the party workers revolt, the party isn't as big as ensuring that one's own kin get tickets from safe seats, seats made safe by the toil and sweat of thousands of workers.

Then Munde manages to get his daughter Pankaja a ticket from Parli. His nephew Dhananjay can also take a walk because a daughter is a daughter and a nephew, excuse me, is not a son.

So let us all as friends of the BJP go out in droves, play 'choose the funny symbol' contest at the polling booths on October 13 and hand the BJP the worst defeat it has ever seen.

Let 2009 Maharashtra be so severe that Lok Sabha 2009 can be conveniently forgotten by the saffron party.

Let us help make a new BJP, The one where workers still become chief ministers, like Narendra Modi, and where sons and daughters get tickets only if they deserve them. And from seats they are capable of wresting from the opposition, not safe seats.

Let us tear apart the BJP to shreds.
Join in.

Yesterday once again, 1984 India, 2009 Andhra

A news repot in the Times of India – September 17- claims that more than 75 percent of the Andhra deaths reported as those that were the result of the ‘massive shock’ of YSR Reddy’s death were exaggerated, concocted and in many cases ‘bought’. The Congress leaders owing allegiance to Jaggan- YSR’s son- actually paid certain families to tell the press that a death in their household was caused due to the immense love the man in question had for YSR. Of course several papers, loyal to the Congress rather than the profession of journalism, carried these deaths in order to bolster the chances of Jaggan becoming CM of Andhra Pradesh after the untimely death of his father. A first-time MP from Cuddapah, Jaggan according to reports is a bit of an upstart and was a perfect candidate for the ‘too big for his boots’ category when YSR was in power. Moreover Jaggan’s business background meant the ‘make Jaggan CM’ campaign had the backing of several moneybags.
It rang the alarm bells in the Congress High Command which at all times consists of just two people- Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and in case of the rare deadlock, Priyanka Gandhi as the casting vote.
The first family could definitely not allow another family enterprise in their party, especially in an important place like Andhra Pradesh, which, if the trend for smaller states continue, could end up as three different states- Andhra, Rayalseema and Telengana. Three states is a lot of bureaucrats, lots of middle-level governmental carrot postings and on a larger scale Rajya Sabha seats. Moreover with the Telugu Desam Party floundering and failing to capitalize even on the multi-crore Satyam fraud, especially when Satyam’s disgraced bosses were close to several top Congressmen, the Congress knows Andhra is theirs for some time to come.
So far the High Command has had its way and has very curtly told Jaggan to rein in his men who now go by the sobriquet Jaggan Sena but everyone knows that something is about to give there. MLAS have started openly defying stand-in CM Rosaiah, even his ministers and bureaucrats- those epitomes of servility to their political masters- not turning up for meetings chaired by the new CM. For how long the party can hold back Jaggan is a question no one is willing to answer now. If Jaggan gives in to the hot-bloodedness of youth, he might just walk out and take away a major chunk of the party with him. With him would go the sympathy wave that accompanies deaths like that of YSR. With him would go the Congress citadel of Andhra for sure.
I’m sure the main players in the drama- Sonia and Rahul- might be getting memories of a particular November in 1984 that started off with just such a dilemma for the grand old party.
Indira Gandhi had been assassinated, Sikhs were being butchered in several cities in India, the intelligence agencies were talking about a major mutiny in the India Army as restive Sikh soldiers had refused to attend duties in many cantonments in the country, Khalistani fringe elements were swearing bloody revenge and most of the Congress leaders leaving their work were busy trying to prove to the party and the powers-that-be that no one had been hurt and devastated more than them with the death of the ‘only man in the cabinet’.
In short it was one of the most painful phases for the country. A decapitated party was looking for someone to lead them through the labyrinthine mess. Some sane head who could go back to the drawing tables, keep his emotions in check, look around, and then lead.
The names that got bandied about for such a role included old fox VP Singh, loyalist Pranab Mukherjee, wily Narasimha Rao, Arjun Singh and SB Chavan. It is of course a matter of destiny how anyone of these would have fared. Only VP Singh and Narasimha Rao ultimately got to sit in the PM’s chair and while the former destroyed his chance by trying to be India’s foremost social reformer since Babasaheb Ambedkar, Rao lost it for trying to make the party from a Gandhi family enterprise to a Rao venture.

But loyalists in the party at the time, like the ones now who are rooting for Jaggan, played the same emotional blackmailing games and riding roughshod over all these experienced heads all the way to the PM’s chair was Rajiv Gandhi.

Of course five years down the line, in 1989, Rajiv Gandhi led his party to the biggest poll defeat ever which saw the Congress down from 410 seats to a humbling 140 seats. And VP Singh went on to become PM before Mandir and Mandal trapped him and brought him crashing down.

History has a strange way of coming back to enact the same scenes in the same old drama with a new set of actors. Andhra is nothing but India of 1984.

kissa TV kiss ka

Trust Ekta Kapoor to line up a blitz of such shrewd marketing that you would believe that she is going to start a trend of kissing on Indian television. While bikinis and choreographed bathing sequences have made their debut, thanks to reality shows, we are being made to believe by a city tabloid that the kissing sequences are going to be a television first thanks to Ekta Kapoor and Co's all-pervasive marketing arm that has all television reporters by their throat.The paper has over the past carried two articles on how youngsters who arrived to audition for Balaji teleserials were suddenly asked to kiss the person next to them, in most cases complete strangers. The article despite being cleverly packaged as a negative one by the paper did not do enough to keep the reader from seeing the shrewd Balaji marketing gimmick behind the whole affair.Coming back to the point, kissing isn’t new to Indian television. If it begins again, Ekta wouldn’t be the pioneer however much her marketing team might want us to believe.That credit should probably go to the team at Zee TV that brought in the first Indian cable television network in around 1993 if I’m not mistaken.That would be the Sharad Sharan-directed Dillagi, a serial that notched up another first by being entirely woven around the characters and locales of the city’s oldest theme park- the Subhash Chandra-promoted Esselworld at Gorai,The serial had a long kissing sequence between Neena Gupta and the late Dilip Dhavan.Infact the first kiss controversy on television might also be the one involving the Zee TV serial Kurukshetra, directed by Lekh Tandon.India Today on its last page carried a snippet with a mug of Seema Kapoor that Indian television viewers would be in for what the magazine claimed would be the longest kiss in Indian TV history when the protagonists in the serial- Harsh Chayya and Seema Kapoor- would finally admit to their feelings for each other and seal it with a 'caution thrown to the winds' kiss..The audience waited with customary eagerness only to be cheated with a kiss sequence that got canned with some suggestive camera-angles like the way directors in the 60s and 70s managed thanks to tough censorhsip. In short it was a scene which could have been shot even if both the actors were corridors apart, forget rooms.Aware of the bad press, Lekh Tandon made amends and gave the audience an authentic kiss in the same serial, this time between Harsh Chayya and Shefali Shah who were part of another parallel love track in the serial. The fact that Shefali Shah was at that time Shefali Chayya and Harsh's real life wife helped.The channel once again gave Indian television its first adult serial - definitely a departure from the staid ones offered by Doordarshan- when it telecast 'Shaadi Ya' directed by Aruna Raje.It had several television stars make their debut and featured issues dealing with low libido to marital rape and had some of the first scenes of couples in bed, in embrace and stealing smooches. Among those on whom these 'role in the bed' scenes were shot was Himani Shivpuri.Of course a good dose of complacency that came with an unchallenged run for nearly five years killed the channel and soon Star Plus took the lead and, though I have not followed TV much of late, seems to have kept it. Prime movers in the Star Plus armada were Amitabh Bachchan and of course the lady who brought marketing into the TV serial world- Ekta Kapoor.

Wait till the Dalit Queen says STATUE !

The Supreme Court might have dealt a telling and deserving blow to our Dalit Queen Mayawati by halting the work on the statues being raised all over Uttar Pradesh at a colossal Rs 2600 crores. But expect the queen to not give up without a fight.
Her counsel told the Supreme Court to take a look at the Rs 10000 crores- her figures and not verifiable- spent by the Congress party in erecting memorials to their leaders, all of whom have that one common thread that the party has been hanging onto for almost a century now. They all belong to the Gandhi-Nehru parivaar.
Of course, the SC pushed aside the argument but I believe in the months to come as this fight over statues gets into the business end of litigation, the Dalit Queen is going to leave the Congress and its fist family with more than a bloody nose.
Because she might just re-ignite a long-dead debate than in a nation of so many disparities and differences why should one family lord it over with such brazen misuse of taxpayers’ money.
That brings me to the old Congress trick of putting out full-page advertisements of some or the other inauguration about to take place. They cleverly beat the election code of conduct and when it comes to answering these allegations, the party and the government goes back to the old explanation that these ads relate to that particular ministry and not any party or personality. The Election Commission- not the epitome of fairness at most times- accepts the argument every time. But then we have had reams of newsprint expended on people who have sat on that supposedly unbiased chair and have given clear hints about who they support. Remember how former Chief Election Commissioner MS Gill after taking allegations of a bias towards the Congress with indignation felt nothing of that righteousness at joining that very party as a junior minister.
In the September 9 issue of the Times of India there is this half page ad of the Textile Ministry of the government of India. On the top are the smiling mugs of Manmohan Singh- he gets left side billing which means he is not the most important man around- Sonia Gandhi right in the middle- slightly higher than the mug of Singh- and the third of Dr Kalaignar Karunanidhi.
In the middle of the text that goes blah blah about the textile ministry and its initiatives is a mug of Textile Minister and Karunanidhi’s DMK scion Kalanidhi Maran.
Well the Congress might say this is just an ad put out by the ministry but the only problem is that the ad is for a textile hub coming up in Surat- the Gujarat Eco-Textile Park- mind you not Tamil Nadu- that the Union Textile ministry is setting up in partnership with the Gujarat government. Ideally then, instead of the bespectacled mug of Thiru Dr Kalaignar Karunanidhi, we should have had one of Narendra Modi, since he is chief minister of Gujarat.
But then as we told you earlier, when the Congress gets into governance, every ad in the papers and every function should propagate just one ideal- that of the party and of course that of the family.
We have never thought in these terms because we tend to get too much of a dose of ‘secular’ media led by journalists fed on the awards bestowed by the Family.My bet is that a lot of that silence is going to be broken when our Dalit Queen starts talking, and mind you the Queen talks in a very shrill voice. She started off her career ticking of good old Gandhiji- remember nautankibaaz- and she might end it with those who use the old man’s legacy to get to the seats of power.