If you want to understand the headlines, you’d better have a solid background in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, because Priyanka V is linking the PM to Duryodhana and his “terrible twin” (Derek O”Brien calls him that, not me) comes back with a cutting (provided you understand) riposte that May 23 will reveal Arjun. What a bun he is going to get if it is not the current PM.
The religiosity continues in West Bengal where Mamatadi is doing everything to fight Hindutvavad (mind, it’s not to be confused with Hinduism), from blowing conch shells to invoking Ma Durga, and if it’s a tossup between Mamatadi and you know who, who do you think Ma Durga is going to favour?
Meanwhile in MP, 7,000 sadhus have jumped into the fray and are performing havans to defeat maha sadhvi aka terror accused Pragya Thakur and former BJP minister turned foe of the party Computer Baba is working out spiritual algorithms to ensure she is defeated and that Diggy Raja wins. In Kashi, a whole bunch of angry sadhus are even angrier because their nominations to fight the elections were cancelled on a technicality, so things get more and more confusing, though ever more entertaining.
What could be more entertaining than Yogi Adityanath campaigning for Gautam Gambhir in East Delhi against the redoubtable and 1000 times cleverer Atishi Marlena of AAP. Why? Because the unpopular, graceless (my adjectives) cricketer has had “a stellar innings as an opening batsman for the Indian cricket team…I am here among you to show support so that he can do the ‘opening of BJP’s victory in Delhi”. Which remark came at the end of a rambling speech about how Delhi was not a patch on his own UP and I am sure we all believe him and if I am in Delhi I will vote for Gambhir hahahaha (joke).
Arun Jaitley is emerging as a champion of free speech (partial), especially when it comes to abusing dead fathers who have been blown up by terrorists but not if you say anything about living mothers but it’s fine if you make sexist remarks about 50-crore-girlfriends and by the way Mr Jaitley, is it permitted to ask you how your transplanted kidney is doing and how you managed to jump queues to get it as fast as you did? No? Too much free speech, okay sorry.
Congress has moved EC against Modi’s statement on dead father, but it looks as if EC can find nothing wrong with the current PM, giving him free pass after free pass in at least five instances of complaints. Not all in the Election Commission concur but this is the era of brute majorities so you get the picture. Now the BJP has moved EC against Rahul indulging in “corrupt election practices” and you should hear the ruler hit the latter’s knuckles any day.
Then there are the mental pictures. Former BJP CM of MP and bad loser has been saying the Congress government in the state is lying about loan waivers to farmers. Now he must contend with a truckload of documents sent to his home as proof. Terror accused Thakur stroking a cow backwards to bring her blood pressure down. Pakistan offering to send us loads of Rooh Afza since ours seems to have disappeared from the market, dismaying the hundreds of millions for whom it is an integral part of the holy month of Ramzan.
There is a lot of other news too. Concerns about the functioning of the Supreme Court, a man in Odisha who says he feels like he won a lottery on procuring four buckets of water for his family, women cops in Gujarat behaving like Annie Oakley and nabbing a dreaded dacoit. Then they pose around him in civvies while he sits on the ground, legs outstretched, looking for all the world like a government clerk nabbed for pinching a women. What is WITH that?
Oh… and it looks like Obama might have indeed addressed Modi as tu or whatever. In the Tea Leaves podcast, one of his former aides describes how the former American president pulled out all the stops, using personal chemistry, his considerable persuasive powers and even race to swing Modi to his side on the Paris Pact to reduce use of fossil fuels. Now, try not to think of what Adani has done to Goa, okay?