Politics as Entertainment
Television offers us a lot of choices. News, movies, sports, cartoons, history, geography, and a plethora of dance and music competitions, you name it. You can also have the language of your choice.
I therefore have no rational explanation for almost rarely watching television. I prefer good old reading, walking at the Joggers Park conveniently located near my residence, swimming or actually fooling around the pool watching mothers of different shapes and sizes teaching their kids to swim. I am not so sure which.
The old girl watches the IPL matches and thinks I am mad not to join her.
I have been a professional cricketer and hate the way cricket has been desecrated, commercialized and milked dry of every joy it had to offer.
But wait a minute. Suddenly and without warning I have started watching television a great deal. Ever since the Elections were announced and all the political parties realized that they had nothing to offer the voters except some great entertainment.
I call these shows “the great laughter crusade”
Let us start with the most hilarious of the lot. Here we have a young man who is actor, producer and director and audience rolled in one. I have spent hours watching his antics. There is so much authenticity in his role as actor. He screams that he will cut off the hands and legs of members of a community that he dislikes completely.
That dislike is flexible and deniable whenever the Chief Minister of the State in which he is contesting threatens to dismember him secretly in a local jail. The real laugh is when we discover is that this macho foul mouthed hero is nothing but Mama’s boy.
And Mama, mind you, won’t allow us, normally compassionate citizens, to harm an animal, bird or bee. Not even swat a fly.
Realising that he destroying his Mama’s lifetime agenda he switches to his late father’s magnificent obsession. Reducing or may be controlling India’s population that is neutralizing every gain we make. So he becomes over night the champion and ardent promoter of sterilisation.
What next? The TV programme tells me he will be soon a Member of Parliament. I start to weep until he announces that his 500 and odd colleagues would be the first to be sterilized. Pure entertainment. I fall off the chair laughing.
We also have a great deal of Bollywood type of entertainment. Several shady characters secretly visiting several fat women at separate times and different places asking them to reveal their Fronts. Which of course they don’t, leaving the shady characters salivating.
Although there is none of the usual chasing the woman around a tree till you get giddy nor the dip into a river to come out wet and “just about” revealing behind 12 yard saris that fat women wear, the suspense is unbearable since the vote counting has not yet started and Front cannot be revealed.
As I write this the counting is over, the results declared, the fronts discovered to be “falsies” big size no doubt. The entertainment is over with the common Indian voter having the last laugh.
One such “aam admi” told me a story that I need to share with you.
At a conference of surgeons the participants started to share their surgical experiences.
“I love to operate on accountants” he said, “you open them up and everything is numbered”
“My choice” said the second “are electricians. You open them up and every thing is colour-coded”
“My favourite patient is the librarian” said the third surgeon “you open them up and everything is in alphabetical order”
“Hold on” said the last one “you have forgotten the politician, especially in these election times”.
“They are the easiest to operate upon. You open them up and you discover that they have no guts, no heart, no spine and no brain. What is more they have only two moving parts. The mouth and the arseole. And mind you, they are both interchangeable!”
Let us hope that the U PA with a massive mandate will include in its programme a good deal of transplant surgery so that we start getting political leaders with a heart, more spine and guts and always with integrity and sonographic transparency.
August 14th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Dear Mr. Menezes:
Of course I enjoyed this piece as I have enjoyed all your articles.
I was never interested in politics, it just bored me. Infact (and you may not approve of this) I was so disgusted with all the grandstanding politicians, that in the last few years before I left India for the US, I had just stopped voting.
I too have a ‘politician’ story I’d like to share, only this really happened. It involves a very well known politician (now departed) who when he was the CM of Maharashtra had enforced prohibition and then later went on to become the Prime Minister, albeit a very short term PM.
Anyway this story happened in the 50′s (before I was born) when my father had attended a function to honor one of his former college principals (a Madrasi, his name eludes me).
Anyway the politician I referred to earlier was also present. This was after he had become the CM but before he became a PM.
So when it came time for the principal to make a speech he started…..
“All of my best students have become secretaries to the Government, and all of my worst students have become politicians” to which there was a thunderous applause and he had to wait a while before being able to continue.
My father swears that the speaker looked at the ex-CM when he said that.
Well, I certainly agree with that and I think you will too.
By the way, did your father ever have students who became politicians and do you by any chance know what he thought of them?
Let me know.
Sheila Titus
August 16th, 2009 at 4:44 am
Dear Sheila
Your stories are always amusing. I guess you are talking about Morarji Desai.
When my father was Principal of Karnatak College Morarji was a guest at our home. My mother offered him tea but he only wanted tender coconut water. I had to cycle all the way to the market to find some.
My father had some distinguished politicians as students. Most endearing was Violet Alva who came and stayed with us when I was with the Indian Embassy in Paris. All politicians are not rogues
When my father was asked if he prayed for polticians he said “I watch our politicians and pray for my country”
George