Author: Dr Sumedha

‘Come September’ might have been the music theme for the eponymous romantic comedy, but it has apparently gained fame in the northern reaches of the country as the ‘doosri wali dhun’ played routinely during baraats causing many a baraati to rock until hapless passersby are convinced that the person rocking and thus inadvertently blocking the route to their legitimate business is off his rocker in the first place. It is how we welcome the wedding season.

In this large and lovable country of ours, ‘Come November’ is a better theme because it is the start of the silly season which lasts well into June, when you are dragged nilly-willy into everyone’s itch to hitch. If Lord Vishnu can rouse himself from cosmic slumber on Prabhodini Ekadashi to marry Vrinda in what is celebrated as the Tulsi Vivah, how can puny humans not emulate Him? Taking a cue from the Gods, they rush to pledge themselves to their (not necessarily) better halves. Add a celebration prone people to the mix and you get glitz, glamour, gigatons of gold, good cheer, and gazillions of guests.

Any life-changing event needs witnesses. ‘The bigger the better’ has been a common theme since days of yore, accompanied by several rituals. If this is only too evident in births and deaths, can event as seminal as marriage be left behind? It of course deserves its own chapter in the book of life. And nowhere is this more evident than in the Big Fat Indian Wedding, with its ever-increasing BMI, which has either not heard or does not care about the global obesity and Syndrome X epidemic. The sizes of Indian weddings tend to follow the lines of those of American food portions: large, huge, and enormous. Even the most private of weddings easily boasts a crowd of a hundred and fifty or more. With the great Indian family boasting ties which not just bind but also gag, to not invite your aunt’s sister-in-law’s third cousin four times removed is an unpardonable crime. Playing the ‘better safe than sorry’ card, wedding venues burst at the seams with so many people milling around, that gate-crashers appear far more genuine than legitimate guests, as evidenced in the movie ‘Three Idiots.’

To be a part of this three-ring circus can be fun for the gregarious kinds, but if you happen to be the shrinking wall-flower kind (my favorite), then such weddings represent a Chakravyuh which will put the one designed by Dronacharya in the Mahabharat in the amateur class. Battling your way through this melee dressed in heavy armor (read your finery), accosted at every step by pesky long-lost relatives who pop up with the battle cry “Remember Me?,” adroitly fielding nosy queries about your job, money and family while trying to summon a smile when enlightened about how Chinki, Pappu (not RaGa, he has smartly avoided weddings for fifty years) and Sonu are doing much better than you can be extremely taxing for the uninitiated.

There was a civilized time which I remember from my distant childhood in which weddings were genteel events which you attended with your hand tucked safely in an elder’s, when you were expected to arrive for the Mahurat, shower the newlyweds with rice grains, blessings and a discrete envelope containing cash, partake of the ice-cream thrust at you by the waiter ( don’t even think of hanging around in hope of seconds) and beat a dignified retreat within the space of an hour. If you happened to be a relative or a particularly close friend, you were invited to join the banquet which was a classy sit-down affair with a few standard ‘wedding’ items on the menu. Immediate family like older, married siblings, uncles, aunts, and first cousins, next door neighbors and a few out-of-towners doubled as wedding planners, beauticians, decorators and if need be impromptu caterers and attended the pre-wedding ceremonies which mostly comprised of ritual poojas and havans, attended to by a well-endowed family priest in a dhoti and a large upvastram barely covering his girth as well as the main event. A small pandal to feed the extra mouths and a few strings of lights formed the decorations and distinguished the ‘wedding house’ from the others on the street. So far, so simple.

Now that times have changed, weddings like everything else have been ‘upgraded’ into bigger (though not necessarily better) versions of themselves. Wedding planners have replaced the aunties in charge, multiple cuisines with live counters and chefs tossing roomali rotis in the air have replaced the few homely food items and queues snaking for miles at the buffet and at the reception line have replaced the formal sit-down affairs. The venues are transformed from the street to the starred hotels. The less said about the themed decorations the better. The invitations have morphed from single page comprehensives to multiple page novels detailing everything from when, where, and how the happy couple met to what they expect from YOU on their several pre-wedding and wedding day functions. A clothing theme, an entertainment theme, food theme, song-and-dance theme. All you can do is heave a sigh of relief that you are not expected to tag along to contribute to the cost of the honeymoon theme! Most weddings these days stretch themselves for a minimum of four days with a Haldi ceremony, a Ladies Sangeet (what do the gents do I wonder?), a cocktail night, a reception and so on and so forth. The actual wedding ceremony is often lost in transit, what with flexible and multiple Mahurats!

Just how much of an effort the guests put into attending said weddings was borne home to me when the spouse had to attend a destination wedding in a golden beach state. Now, getting the spouse to dress in new clothes for any occasion is a Herculean task, but to co-ordinate all the clothes required for this three-day bonanza entailed several shopping trips on the part of yours truly looking for a pajama here, sandals there, and a yellow Modi jacket elsewhere for the haldi ceremony.  The list for the must have items for this wedding far surpassed those for his own (to me, unfortunately). Anyway, to cut a long story short, said items were procured, the spouse duly dispatched and I was looking forward to a couple of days of peace. No such luck. The wedding now having taken on the aura of Casper the (un)friendly ghost haunted me in the form of the spouse messaging a hundred times a day asking which pair of trousers went with which shirt, which jacket with which tie, which socks with which shoes and when was the yellow theme till all I could see was yellow spots before my eyes.

I generally try to slide out of the bigger wedding dos for the simple fact that most of them require me to wear a sari, which is not my strong suite. After four or five failed attempts, I finally manage the feat with several safety pins and prayers that both the pleats and the pallu should behave themselves and not cause unnecessary embarrassment by coming undone in a large hall packed with several elderly relatives. High heels, a handbag and a large buffet plate add to my woes as I teeter about trying to make small talk with several people who recognize me but whose faces and names don’t match in my middle-aged memory. While I feel a leap of delight on receiving a wedding invitation, it is laced at the fringes with a nameless dread at all the shenanigans involved.

As I discreetly rub my aching ankles after attending one of these necessary evils, I cannot help but remember the words of wisdom imparted to me by my uncle,  “After all these shindigs, no Indian in their right mind will do it twice. That is the real reason for the low divorce rate in India.” I tend to agree. Whether or not you believe the ‘Ek dooje ke vaaste’ theme of matches being made in heaven ala the movie ‘Dil to Pagal hai’, the themed weddings of the new generation are definitely the stuff of ‘Mad(e) in Heaven’!

Long ago, I dreamt of studying in Cambridge. Given its venerable age, it ranked right up there with the rest of the best universities in the world. I wanted nothing more than to don long gowns and tiptoe down hallowed halls, discussing the essence of life and death and how to save all life forms inhabiting the good earth, while colonizing (read illegally occupying) a couple of other planets or their moons at least should humankind ever run out of space to spread themselves. I wanted to hobnob with the brilliantly illustrious, who would initially guide me and whom I would guide after the passage of a respectable amount of time.

Of course, life had different ideas. Forget Cambridge, I did not even make it as far as Colaba. Years passed and I had all but forgotten about it. Until recently. After my disastrous run in with the muffler and nearly being coopted into the joining Juggernaut, I had decided to lie low for a while, and take things easy. And that is precisely what I was doing. Minding my own business. Until blaring speeches and glaring headlines proclaimed the fall of an old bastion to the charms of venerable, middle-aged youth. Cambridge (or its management school, at least) had been conquered by an intelligent, impressive, inclusive, insightful, intuitive, and inspiring Indian! Reading all the adjectives used to describe him made me slightly irascible, but that is another story.

To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. I had always imagined Cambridge to be the serene and halcyon haunt of the great and the good. Surely conquering such a hallowed place would take exceptional ability? Yes, my friendly conqueror did have one such exceptional ability. He could always be called upon to provide comic relief. All that it had taken to conquer Cambridge was a clown! And one with marked Chinese leanings at that. And of course, the less said about his confusing statements, guaranteed to confound the cleverest, the better!

After an exceptionally somber and busy week dealing with patients in the throes of some dreaded ailment or other, I decided to have a good laugh and set about downloading his speeches with gusto. If I was looking for something along the lines of ‘vision which is global, but China has it’ or ‘a machine which churns out gold if fed with potatoes,’ I was not so much in for a surprise as a nasty shock. The man, while on the run (sorry, I meant walk) had with his suave well-bearded look, also acquired a new clarity of thought and was giving clarion calls for help. Now on whose behalf said calls exactly were for, remained a serious matter of contention. Some claimed they were on behalf of the motherland. Others just as vehemently claimed that they were for the invasion of the motherland. The conqueror was using confusion to claim all for himself.

Repeat a lie often enough, they say and it can be mistaken to be the truth. And thus the ‘Democracy in Danger’ refrain, which went on and on, like a broken record. When the simplest of minds can understand that you get either heads or tails on tossing a coin, one failed to understand how he believed himself when he was allowed not just permission, but also protection while on the run, sorry walk. And how in the wide world was he allowed to fly the nest when he was supposedly put behind bars not once, but several times thanks to his self-righteous and obdurate stance against the fascist regime now holding the common population in its snake- like hypnotic stare? If the mind of the common man boggles, that of the Cambridge dons must have reeled into the realms of insanity.

If it was a word-perfect actor playing to the galleries on a world stage, to a script which would have even given Shakespeare a run for his money, our conqueror was certainly worth the full houses and headlines proclaiming his ‘coming of age’ at last! Closer home, a much younger, saffron-clad monk went about his daily tasks with a sad shake of his venerable head, knowing that he could never win this battle of the elixir of youth. Another person who had joined the regret band was the father of all things Indian. MKG. I am sure MKG was by now regretting his shared surname what with his Dandi March being blatantly compared to the great joining juggernaut. At least one can safely say that the British who saw MKG on his march did not mean to simply stand and stare and did cause some grievous bodily harm to his followers if not MKG himself. But it is totally believable that the few terrorists in Kashmir who saw the clown were either busy ROFLing or were too scared to approach him by the thought of being infected by some new form of virus thanks to his Chinese connections not to mention the copious amount of beard! Perhaps we had discovered a simple new peaceful missile to solve militancy in Kashmir once and for all!

Again, the worst was saved for the last. There were repeated mentions of all the ‘institutions, constitution and pillars’ which supported the largest democracy in the world were being constantly bombarded. You wanted real bombardment? Then forget Ukraine. India was THE place to visit.  And this is how a blatant invitation was issued to several Western powers to ‘ensure’ that democracy was restored. It was the new post-colonial school of thought. Conquer in order to free! The ‘Learning to Listen’ lecture which was the key to Cambridge had sinister undertones of ‘Sustaining Slavery in the Subcontinent.’

It has many times been seen that people prefer to don masks to hide the unsavory. And our conquering clown is no exception. Under the mask of a simpleton lies an extremely devious mind which will stop at nothing in an undisguised bid for power. A scion of a freedom fighter family making unapologetic appeals to foreign powers is the height of hypocrisy and the depth of depravity. For a would-be ruler, to be so unsure about the trust of the people whom he seeks to rule means that something is fishy and it is so much more than a basket of fish.

If, in a democracy, it is people who truly rule, it is time to unmask all the masqueraders and to vote for what lies beneath. It is time to read not just the writing on the wall, but in between the lines as well. It is time to see through the freebies and know that there is nothing like a free lunch and when the time comes, the price extracted will far outstrip not just the cost of lunch but that of an entire lifetime of full-board. It is time to no longer jest, but be just in choosing who we vote to power.

And to prove to the world that clowns may well conquer Cambridge but not the common man!

Come the Eighth of March and the world is awash in pink. Women’s Day Wishes fly around like so many interdepartmental memos in the ‘Ministry of Magic’ a la` Harry Potter world. There are promotions and promises, programs and prizes and articles (mea culpa) and awards which begin anywhere between a month to a day in advance. Everyone and their aunt and uncle ‘celebrate’ womanhood. Having made the right noises, everything is then wrapped in cotton wool and laid away carefully awaiting the next yearly outing.

It is an open secret that women in many societies are a repressed lot who carry the heavier end of the stick. A day to celebrate them is therefore a small way of acknowledging them and their vast contributions to society. It is an occasion for acceptance and appreciation which otherwise remains confined to the background. An occasion when the mostly voiceless are given a chance to be vociferous.

If the greetings which make their way on social media are to be believed, all women are possessed with superhuman powers, which become apparent only on the eighth of March. Perhaps they are hiding under a bushel the rest of the year? Touted as multitasking individuals, who can not only take on but also finish every assigned job at the drop of a hat, women are placed at the pinnacle of impossible achievements. Most media outlets, whether conventional or social seem to abound in achievers who are swiftly felicitated to make the correct corporate statements. Women of all shapes and sizes put their feet up, let their hair down and a general good time is had by all. So far, so fair and so frothy.

At the cost of sounding cynical, or even worse, critical of my own kind, I say that Women’s Day though important, nevertheless plays more on women’s inherent need of acceptance and appreciation than any concrete agenda for true emancipation. In many cases, it devolves into a feel-good thing to assuage the guilt which has built up over the course of the remaining three hundred and sixty- four days of the year. Something akin to offering a candy to a child to divert its attention from a badly scraped knee. While the candy is a good idea, the real need is to clean and dress the knee so that it can speed up the healing process.

It is but natural that men and women are different. Nature, of course has a strict no exemptions rule. Women trying to equal men in certain respects is simply not feasible. Nor should they try to. What is needed is for them to find common ground and let each other be, without stereotyping roles for either. The fine line which divides them, and believe me it still exists, needs to be not so much erased as annihilated, through genuine camaraderie, without continually viewing the other as a mercenary adversary. The discovery that they complement each other in more ways than thought possible can be liberating, while giving each other a more sympathetic outlook to the hurdles the other faces. And thus, the lofty ideal of the two being the two wheels of a chariot can spring to life instead of staying confined to the imaginary world of writers and their ilk. As long as the chariot runs smoothly, no one said anything about the wheels being exactly the same, the Tata Nano with its mismatched front and rear wheels being a prime example.

What we as women need, is to stop seeking validation not just for everything we do, but in some cases for our very existence. Strangely there is a flip side to this, in which some women expect to be continually complimented and lauded for being women, conveniently divesting themselves of traditional roles while staunchly refusing to don new ones. This will merely have the effect of widening the gap between the genders till it becomes first a chasm and then a yawning void. If it is equality that we seek, then it is important to remember that it works both ways. Act like a hot-house flower all you like, but then stop complaining about being confined to the hot house.

If we take pride in being touted as complete beings and truly believe in it then we will experience complete contentment too, without unnecessary competition. No one doubts that a fight for rights IS the right fight, but to fight just for the sake of ‘one upmanship’ would be akin to accepting defeat. It is the belief of the world in general and India in particular that women even after being awarded equal rights need to ‘prove’ themselves. This is equal to proclaiming males to be something more. Who suffers in this case? Women of course! By being trapped in their own thoughts and minds.

It is time for women to seek true equality and liberation. Equality in the eyes of the law, in family matters and in available opportunities. It is time to embrace the essence of ourselves, which make us different, unique even. The day we decide not to indulge the need of unnecessary competition with men, will be the day when we will truly wake. We will make our own pedestals and keep them in what will be truly our own space. Each day will be earmarked, because a single day to celebrate us is not enough. Every day will be ‘Women’s Day’!

I really get Trevor Noah and his classy wit. Especially his take on the ‘civilizational revolution’ which much of Europe foisted on the rest of the world. Of course, the bitter pill of loot, pillage and plunder was cleverly concealed under the sickly- sweet coating of ushering, (read dragging, kicking and screaming) the heathen natives, who did not know any better into the modern age, with its concepts of equality, prosperity and that elusive concept called freedom. It was a promise of a utopian world, were no one would be exploited, everyone would work together for the greater good and mutual brotherhood would rain upon all and sundry like manna from heaven. It was the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the mythical rainbow which when reached would lead humanity towards a bright new dawn.

Well, utopian dreams have a strange way of remaining only dreams and staying as far away as possible from coming true. And this is precisely what happened when the world engaged in a horrendous experiment called colonization. For us lucky ones, who were born with a sky to call our own, it might be difficult to fully understand carrying (in most cases literally) the white man’s burden of ill-conceived thought that anyone who was a shade darker was in severe need of redemption which could only be got through the good interventions of the West.  When natives after suffering tremendously decided that enough was enough and began warming to the idea of claiming their bit of the earth (unfortunately with all its bounties), sea and sky as their own, it was as if the earth shook under their expensively shod feet and sure enough, sturdy native boots landed on their backsides to send them back to where they came from. Adding insult to injury, the natives gradually proved themselves to be as good if not better at managing their countries and themselves. True, there were the initial hiccups, an odd famine here, a few wars there but on the whole, the whole operation was rubbing along far more smoothly than imagined. No one had recalled their erstwhile masters to rule them again, on bended knee, a secret Western aspiration. However, absolute power not only corrupts absolutely but also leaves a rankling lust for it behind long after it has been lost.

And thus began an even more dangerous game: one of dissemination. The old slave and master mentality no longer fit into the concept of the post war (both world wars and cold war) world. And thus, much of the colonized world had to be subtly pointed to the direction in which the old colonial masters wanted it to go. The right noises made at the right times, much hot air about human rights and stirring up trouble where there was none later, the world was beset with wars (evident in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan), economic crises (Pakistan, Venezuela and Sri Lanka) and several other man- made calamities including climate change. It was of course, so much easier to lecture others on what was right and wrong than it was to follow what one preached.

And when a busybody nonagenarian called Soros, in keeping with his name decided to add to the collective sorrows, well, every dark cloud had an even darker lining. A wonderful concept called the ‘Open Society’ was his beloved brain-child. It meant to do away with national borders and the recognition of different countries in what was to be a ‘truly global’ world. Old wine in a new bottle if ever there was. It was of course, a brilliant concept on paper but essentially flawed because the king-emperor, commander and high priest of this cabal in high places was to be Soros himself, who would not only decide who would rule where and how, but put his chosen ones on their respective thrones and made sure they stayed there. It was loot and plunder by proxy. Open Society would remain open as long as you toed his line. Questioning led to it closing its jaws faster than you could say ‘trap’ and more often than not taking a good chunk of your economy, peace and land with it. Several smaller countries ranging from the African to the South American succumbed to this, for want of a better name, underhanded warfare which relied heavily on arms, oil and pharmaceuticals.  An attempt in vain by an equally vain individual at playing ‘I am the king of the world’.

Since biblical times, the love of money has been described as the ‘root of all evil’ and our man of the many sorrows excelled at economic warfare. Trained at the knee of the master marauders (read London School of Economics), he made the better part of his considerable fortune by shorting the pound against the Deutsche Mark, earning the sobriquet of the ‘Raider of the Bank of England’. The dramatic fall of the Thai Baht and Malaysian Ringgit was also purportedly born of his fertile imagination, though never ‘proved beyond reasonable doubt’. After many such little debacles the world over, it was time to stage a big ‘kheddah’ to net the Great Indian elephant, especially when the denizens of the Indian jungle had had the temerity to elect a nobody who had not trod the hallowed halls of a few of the accepted temples of learning (western thought at its best and brightest) like Cambridge to the highest political post of the country. Not only was the man a forthright nationalist, but a staunch Hindu. The situation was simply untenable.

An uncouth brown man in a position of power! Especially an incorrigible one who could not be bought lock, stock and barrel. Who insisted on setting a nor’nor’east course when told to take the sou’sou’west. Who traded with the likes of the ruffianly Putin and bought and sold oil with impunity. The man had even exhorted his blighted country to come up with a new internet payment system to put paid to any ‘blockage’ sanctions from the West. Talk about a permanent cure for the various constipated nations of the world. A good part of the billion- dollar fortune pledged during the Davos summit had already been spent in half-baked attempts to bring about a regime change during the 2019 general elections, which had unfortunately fallen flat on their faces.

India of course was always a double-edged sword. While a quite a few people, especially in the fourth pillar of democracy could be easily ‘funded’ (read bought) and implanted to peddle their narratives, the number of people buying into it without reasoning for themselves were gradually diminishing, thanks to another revolution of recent times: the internet invasion, which allowed multiple forms of the same story to make its way around the world simultaneously. This of course gave rise to that biggest nightmare of the would-be supremacist: an ability to think and reason. The idea of toppling the Modi Government had latched onto several nefarious minds and the sorrows of Soros were intended to rain down through the stock market. An attack on a big business house, the owner of which was always in the news for more of the wrong reason of being the power behind the Modi puppet, never mind that he commanded a port-to-power conglomerate was the piece`-de-resistance that would send the entire Indian economy into free-fall beyond the point of no return.

The public sector banks which had lent lakhs of crores thanks to ‘crony capitalism’ would bear the brunt taking with them the small savings of the common man. When food was whisked away from the table, there would be chaos, fostered by a few discreetly placed rioters who would covertly carry out their master’s bidding in return for the thirty shekels of silver. If Jesus could be betrayed, Modi was small fry. But that was not to be. The Indian stock market took a hit, but the welcome spectacle of a blood bath did not follow as expected. Moreover, the banks had the temerity to declare that they were not as exposed to the business house as claimed, leading to the exposure of an old man who was still trying to play the obsolete game of White supremacy, sinning in trying to cause unnecessary sorrows.

In a way, we have Georgie-Porgie with his puddings and pies to thank for revealing the chinks in India Inc.’s armor so that we who have grown steadily to become the fifth largest economy in the world are not caught napping the next time a damp squib called Hindenburg Research tries to cheaply spook our economy and get away with it. Maybe it is time for George Soros to learn from Brendan Fraser to become ‘George of the Jungle’ the ‘all round good guy’, loved by all instead of going down in history as the ‘George Sorrows the Scoundrel’, the ‘all round bad guy’, despised by all.

Winter is on the wane. The sun comes a beckoning earlier and earlier and looks at me curled up cozily under a duvet with a stern eye. “Get up woman”, it admonishes with its rays. “Get up and walk”. When the entire solar system following the sun’s diktats without a murmur of protest, I am really small fry. I haul myself out. Reluctant and rather cross I don the walking shoes and a pullover to ward off the three days of chill which we Thanekars proudly tout as the good weather. For good measure, I also wrap a muffler across the lower part of my face, where it flaps desultorily in response to my brisk step.

“Good morning!”, calls out a pesky and scarily perky person, hustling past. As I think black thoughts about the morning not being so good after all, he jogs past again, even as I huff and puff on my way. This time, he gestures at my muffler. “Are you on your way to join the yatra?”. “What is that?” I wonder peering around blearily for a large crowd to appear on the horizon, because I am never at my best and brightest this early in the morning. Deciding not to cross him for a third time and be bombarded with more questions, I change track and walk away in search of quieter climes. But I seem to be out of luck. I spot three or four other acquaintances and they all ask me if I am joining the yatra and all of them seem to look askance at my muffler.

Deciding that I have appeased the sun enough, I decide to make a bee-line for home and perhaps try and get to the bottom of this yatra affair, when I am accosted by the offspring, no sooner I open the door. She promptly falls about laughing at what she terms my ‘unwittingly hilarious’ appearance. It turns out to be the muffler after all, which I had been suspecting as a culprit for some time now. I pause to take a look at the headlines on my phone, catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror and nearly drop my phone in horror. No wonder people think I am joining in the yatra which is making news. With my muffler, I bear an uncanny (and totally un-necessary) resemblance to a mendicant politician who is following the steps of Adi Shankaracharya in an attempt to traverse the length of the country.

With a gasp of panic, I rip the muffler from my face and feel my cheeks for good measure, to ensure that I have removed every bit of the offending wool and not grown a forest replete with its own ecosystem on my cheeks in the half hour that I have been wrapped in the muffler. Thankfully I have not. A rejuvenating cup of tea later, I am pondering the ‘humongous’ trek meant to join the country, pretty much in the way of a tailor regarding a shredded piece of cloth and putting it together again by a stitch here, a tuck there and a zip somewhere else. Humpty Dumpty MUST be put together again, even though he is not broken.

But the more I ponder, the more baffled I am. What exactly is the purpose of walking, living in an airconditioned container and wasting five months pouring trouble on oiled waters (yes, that spoonerism was intended) is something I absolutely do not understand. What I find even more baffling is the statements issued which range from outrageous to downright silly, when a well-respected and somewhat venerable person, who is a youth leader nonetheless says that he embarked on this journey to heal the nation of hate, but found it brimming with love instead. I beg to ask, did his minions not conduct a proper survey? Was there no ground work done before sending a middle- aged man on a wild goose chase? Maybe the grand old party was looking for a grander party on the road what with several other ‘Junta Sewaks’ playing hooky from day jobs, members of ‘civil society’ getting into the spirit and actors, writers, thinkers, bankers, and not quite a few wankers joining in with gusto.

Of course, Indian politics, right, left or center is filled with gimmicks and if the grand old party were to be involved in anyway, it has to be the grandest gimmick of them all. And this is what precisely happened. Much rhetoric, renaming of roads, a few choice speeches in the dripping rain and whirling snow, a couple of quick flits home and possibly abroad in hired helicopters, a vain attempt at turning into Hagrid with a beard thick enough for birds to nest in and several new sobriquets like ‘Tapasvi’, ‘Sanyasi’ and ‘Awam ki Awaaz’ later, the great Indian joining trip finally ended in Srinagar in the midst of flurries of snow and the nation collectively wanted to know if the several news channels which had hardly covered anything else could now go back to their regular jobs and show the actual happenings around the country and the globe.

According to polls run by several sites, popularity or should we say Pappularity ratings are soaring and we apparently have an old prime-ministerial candidate newly back in the ring, joints all limbered up and well oiled, thanks to the joining exercise, raring to go. The venerable seventy-something Prime Minister apparently does not stand a chance against this bright-eyed and bushy bearded fifty something who can make intelligent conversation on the state of the economy, the roads and how he has killed himself in the same sentence. No wonder that if nothing else, New India has a strong vision as far as joining minds, hearts, souls, houses, businesses, families, and communities goes. If the joining Juggernaut has his way, the golden days of ‘Din- E-Ilahi’ are not far behind. All that remains is for arthrologists to take a few tips from this vision of a perfectly seamless joiner to ensure that none of the joints in the human body ever go wrong again. A tall order, but I am sure a true tapasvi will always be ready to help.

Now that Republic Day is past, the great Indian Juggernaut has finally rolled to a stop in Srinagar where the national flag was hoisted amidst much fanfare and most people who have been walking the talk or talking the walk have returned to their day jobs which are a lot of fun since they involve daily disruptions, much mud-slinging, an appropriate number of allegations, stalling scheduled work and generally thwarting the other denizens of Sansad Marg and South Bloc who are struggling to go about their daily work. Perhaps the citizens are already missing their daily dose of laughter, the best medicine.

In the meanwhile, my joints are feeling disjointed, as if they have been pulverized by the joining Juggernaut. No longer wanting my muffler to be mistaken for Hagrid’s beard, I have decided to resume my swimming schedule in response to the sun’s summons. Also, I am firm in my view that if I need another Juggernaut, I am visiting Jagannath of Puri, the original one who truly does join us all!