Mihir Chakravarti

So okay that  the FM has eased up on the Income Tax. That’s all right. Great going I say. But only for the handful in India that actually pay Income Tax. Yes “handful”, compared to the rest of us who don’t and who make up  the Indian aam janata  today.

But what the hell has he done with the fuel?  Screwed all the rest of us. And skewered the economy. Because everybody knows that the price of diesel and petrol touches everybody everyday and in every which way. The fuel is the great connector. Price of fuel controls every thing; from the price of onions and potatoes to  all forms of transportation that is so, so , so vital for this huge spread, that is India. You touch  fuel, you’ve touched a raw nerve of the fine fiscal balance. If this hadn’t been raised, and so much, the FM needn’t have gone easy on the IT.

No wonder the opposition staged a walkout. This is unprecedented. Never happened while the Budget was being placed. And did you see the expression on the Speaker’s face? That was sheer comic relief!

The only relief in this year’s Budget, come to think of it!

Years ago a man crazed with visions of power, riches and glory and with great rabble-rousing charisma got together a following. A following that got all fired up with the zeal of this man, their leader, who played the ethnic card and reached the heart of his followers, mostly a bunch of losers, all “sons of the soil”, who were losing out to the steady influx from other parts of the country. The “sons” were losing out in terms of jobs, business opportunities, and in other commercial and economic fronts that the settlers from the other parts of the country were wrenching away from the “sons” with seemingly effortless ease.

Before long the followers of this charismatic leader were well formed  in a united discipline of well co-ordinated thuggery and violence against those who did not ethnically belong to the soil. Wth the passing years and decades these followers became a force to reckon with and be fearful of. Even by the Government and  politicians, industrial magnates, celebrities and other important dignitaries all over the State. 

One of the first agendas of this force was to change a well-established name of the capital of their state. Nobody dared raise a voice of dissent. Like a herd of obedient sheep, free citizens of a free republic with a shining Constitution, (the best, as we like to proclaim, in the world), we accepted. Postal authorities were under a strict diktat that no mail was to be delivered if the name of the city wasn’t written “right”. The postmen didn’t dare disobey. No one seemed eager to take on this force, that styled themselves after a historical figure, known for his bravery in his time against the ruling Moghuls.

We all know who this force it is we are talking about. But a strange thing has happened of late. Two in fact.

First came with the fatwa issued by this force , akin to the SS stormtroopers of the Hitler regime, against our Congress leader’s son Rahul Gandhi.  Rahul was to be stopped at any cost from even entering the State. But Rahul proved too wily for these SS goons. He gave them the slip easily, slipped  unnoticed and travelled by the commuting trains like any other commuter. Not only that, in the speeches he gave, he repeatedly referred to the city with it’s old name that had become famous throughout the world, as the first outpost of trade and commerce by the earliest sailors who had arrived in our country from the distant shores of Europe in the centuries gone by.  The old leader, seethed in futile anger in his den. But could do nothng.

The second fatwa issued was aginst the darling of the Indian cinema, Shah Rukh Khan whose movie ‘My Name Is Khan’ (MNIK in short) was to be released. The leader of the SS clan issued a fatwa against the release of this movie unless the great SRK retracted some statement he had made somewhere about his personal views on the selction of a cricket team. Nobody had even remembered what these views were, personal as they were, until this leader of the SS high-lighted them and brought them to the national focus by demanding that SRK publicly apologise and retract them. SRK stood his ground and showed no fear in the face of  the SS threat.

  Both Rahul Gandhi and Shah Rukh Khan  had set very shining examples for the Government. The Government  also had had enough of these SS goons by this time. For once, instead of buckling down, they braved the fatwa and enlisted all the armed forces at its command and mobilised them to ensure that the SS goons couldn’t resort to their usual tactic of smashing and vandalising private and public property whenever they wished to make a point or make their presence felt. The Government also threw a cordon around SRK’s home.

What happened was a pleasant surprise for the Government and also for people in general. The SS goons stayed put and and quietly slunk back to their corners. The movie was released without any movie theatre being vandalised, chairs or furniture being smashed. 

The Government taught itself a very valuable lesson: not to cow down and cower in fear whenever a  militant outfit tried to hold the country to ransom. They should call their bluff.

It took just one slip. Then the shit hit the fan!

Having had eleven conquests under (and below) his belt must have lulled the Tiger into a false sense of security. He was riding high. On top of the world. Numero Uno in his chosen sport, Golf which gave him a fabulous mansion in Florida with a stunning view of the ocean. He was a millionaire many times over. The toast of the nation and a celebrity par excellance, leading a squeaky “clean” life (at least officially).

Then he had to go and meet this “Grubby” woman.  Jamie Grubbs, the cocktail waitress feigned ignorance of the fact that her boyfriend was already married, and to a high profile Swedish model Elin Nordegren at that.  At least that’s what she told the media when the hoo-haa began. And all because she went public with the fact that the Tiger was seeing her. What a serpent, this woman!

Then all the well kept skeletons in the Tiger’s cupboard came tumbling out. All ten of them. There was just no use going into denial, or turning away from the mess. The media picked it up instantly and it became world-news in a flash.

The victim wife, proverbially always the last person to know, was rightly devastated. And the Tiger’s career lay in ruins. It’s been such a trauma for them both, poor creatures,  that one can’t help but feel sorry for them.  Of course the trauma for  the wife is in finding out and for the hubby has been in being found out. Two different reasons, true, but trauma for them nonetheless.

Tiger’s golfing days are now on hold. But I don’t think he’ll ever be the same again.  Sad, but this fine  sportsman who had dazzled the golfing world, has been finished by one scheming devil of a woman. And who has benefitted out of this sordid mess?  Only the media.

The Tiger has been sent packing to the Woods. Will he ever come out of it?

President Patil visited Calcutta, the city of  “joy” yestreday. To attend a seminar on alternative energy.

Suddenly the Municipality woke up from its deep slumber.  You can’t blame the Municipality for its long siesta. After all it’s the big man at the top, the Honorable Mayor himself whom the media had photographed numerous times in deep sleep while an important session of the other Councillors are going on. And it is but natural that the rest of the Municipality has picked up on the cue and  proceeded on a long hybernation themselves lock, stock and barrel.

But the scene changed abruptly with the news that President Patil was going to visit Calcutta. The Municipality now had to wake up.

The route of the President had to be cleaned and spruced up. What would the President think of our dear city if she saw the filth and garbage and the stink en route? So steps were taken on a war footing to clean up all the mess that have collected over the years and clear up the all pervading foul stench. Most of the slum areas which lay along the path the President would take was swarming with flies and mosquitoes. All this had to be cleaned up double quick. There was no time to lose.

Armies of men with sackfuls of bleaching powder were dispatched. They went over the entire stretch of the route the Presidential cavalcade would take. They threw down the bleaching powder helter-skelter,  all along the kerbside of the entire Presidential route.

Some brilliant mind in the Corporation had decided that strewing bleaching powder on the road surface any which way would do the trick. The wise men of the Municipality proceeded under the utterly false and misconceived notion that the bleaching powder was a miracle chemical that would instantly clear the air of all the foul stench and kill off all the flies and mosquitoes. Unfortunately it was not.

In point of fact it did no such thing. If anything, it filled the air with a strong pungent and burning odour that the delicate membranes of the Presidential nostrils must have found highly irritating. The powder also made the route incredibly ugly as the powder had been hurriedly thrown out of the sacks in a wild and haphazard manner. The wind had done the rest. The resultant pattern on the road surface was grotesque and anything but pretty.

However it does bear mentioning that the ‘babus’ and the officers of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation went to sleep  that night secure in the self indulgent confidence that they had performed the job well.

Late last night I was watching the TV and I saw a reporter interviewing the residents of the locality over which the President had travelled to and from the Seminar and the adjoining slums. All of them complained bitterly of the utter indifference of the Municipal authority to the rampant malaria, dengue and other diseases that the swarms of mosquitoes and flies are helping perpetuate. Now that the President was in the city for just a day, what good would it do to throw around a few sack-full of bleaching powder?

The President has come and gone. The Municipal Corporation has happily gone back to sleep. Along with its Mayor, one would imagine. And everything is again back to square one.

The farce continues.

One year has gone by when horror struck Mumbai.

The lone living perp is still languishing in jail while the country’s eggheads and power barons are scratching their heads deciding what to do with him. Everyone knows there’s no escape from the gallows for this prize catch we have in our custody. But the question is WHEN?

Nobody seems to have any clue what would ultimately happen to this lone catch. The entire judicial machinery seems to have been handed a hot potato. They can neither swallow, nor drop it. And our dear Chief Executive of the Country keeps making stern promises to the countrymen from time to time that this catch will be soon dealt with suitably.

I have a feeling that Mr A K will eventually die in captivity,  an old doddering man of eighty.

He is about twenty now. The powers that be will easily spend another sixty years debating back and forth as to the best possible way to deal with the lone gunman we’ve been oh so lucky to have captured alive. The way things are moving that’s the only possible forecast.

Whatta a farce!

A much scoffed but virulent political caucus calling themselves SUCI (don’t ask me what it stands for)comprising mostly (about 90%) terribly unattractive females have called a 12 hour bandh tomorrow.

That means everything will cease to function between 6 AM to 6 PM. No shops or markets. No trains will run. No private cars on the road. Another useless show of strength  and flexing of political muscle.

These bandhs are usually called by the two most powerful political groups, CPM or Trinamool Congress bringing the State down to its knees as show of their brute strength over law-abiding, peaceful citizenry. Now this satellite group, who don’t really have any political voice that matters, don’t want to be left behind. This is a cry for self assurance that they too exist.

And what is their agenda? Rising prices of essentiual food and vegetable items in the market. It IS a fact that prices are soaring like they  never have  before and are reaching impossible heights.

But what I fail to understand is will this one day’s bandh make the prices come down. Will it have any effect on the market economics at all? Not one little bit. But nobody seems to realise the utter folly of this mindless and meaningless bandh.

Bandhs are said to be the only method of protesting a wrong. But merely “protesting” a wrong won’t correct the wrong. One has to figure out why the ‘wrong’ is happeninmg to start with.  Once the cause can be found out, the solution would emerge. But merely protesting mindlessly won’t do.

But who listens? Organising a bandh feels good for the party boss and the party hoods can have a field day unleashing all kinds of terror tactics on people who have the temerity to defy their bandh in any little way.

The judiciary has times without number  held that bandhs are illegal and should not be condoned. But in our country the rule of law takes a second place to political whim. It is the politicos who are the supreme power and authority on this our so-called democracy.

And the political parties dictate what is to happen in our country , even if their actions, particularly the calling of a bandh may amount to nothing but an exercise in futility.