“Stalin, the fruit of my loins!”
– quivered an infirm Karunanidhi as he quietly slipped the baton to his son and
heir-apparent, M.K. Stalin. Pausing for dramatic effect, he also added – “A moment
comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the
new, when an age ends, and when the son of a dynasty, long suppressed, finds
utterance…”
This habitual poetic flourish
aside, the old and limp patriarch of the DMK family looked but a shadow of his
former feisty self. He had been a fighter all his life, the lone bastion of
Dravidian pride against a rapidly Aryanizing polity. His, was a life spent in
aggressive furthering of the Tamil cause in India as in Sri Lanka, in
water-supply networks that never got built and in spectrums that never got
allotted. A life spent in cultivating public-sympathy through rehearsed dramatizations
of police excesses, broadcasted live to a world-wide audience on Sun TV.
This fateful day, as he looked
towards the future, he could not help rue the fact that not only had facebook
rendered Sun TV irrelevant, but he too had been outmaneuvered and outclassed at
his own game by the Aam-Aadmi (NOT his real name).
With the uncanny shrewdness of a
man who had thrived through 60 years of vicissitudes in politics, he could
easily anticipate the reactions from opponents as well as allies.
Congress, he expected to be
thrown into a violent fit of inaction with The Prodigal Son (or TPS, as
Subramanian Swamy would tweet) strumming on his guitar
Give me some sunshine,
give me some rain…
Give me another chance
I wanna blow it once again…
Taking recourse in the only Hindi idiom he knew, he sighed – “Theek Hai….”
Unlike the Congress, he expected the BJP to be a beehive of activity. There
would be too many strategies championed by too many leaders. While some of them
would fart in splendid isolation, others would frantically check with their
media-managers to see if Swami Vivekananda had included The Dravidian in his
definition of The Ideal Indian.
Thinking about his prankish relationship with the BJP, he made a quick
mental note on how to greet its leaders during his next trip to Delhi – “I
think I will just ask them which engineering college did Ram graduate from?”
Other regional satraps, he rightly felt, would be fractured in their response
to this change of guard in his party.
The TMC Supremo, working tirelessly towards her elusive Sonar Bangla, will probably manage only
a brief moment of indiscretion. Letting her history trip over the confusion of
her politics, she might just quiz her party-spokesperson, “Wasn’t Stalin a
Maoist?” And that mouthpiece of hers, will probably jump to her defence, claiming
she had been quoted out of context and that it was a simple case of
journalistic misrepresentation by the big media houses in Bengal.
The SP and BSP, if contacted, were unlikely to have a considered
opinion on either his party or him. For them, it would just be the FDI
hang-over –
Bharat ke iss nirmaan
pe haq hai mera….kam se kam 20 percent!
Actor Jayalalitha will definitely create a huge fuss before storming
out. The CPM Politburo would, in a classic display of its out-of-touch with
reality, release a statement saying – “We will continue to provide issue based
support to the DMK government in Tamil Nadu.”
Meanwhile, he thought that there could also be the outside possibility
of an online petition accusing him and Mr. Nabokov of misogyny. While Mr.
Nabokov might not be available for comment (presumably, because he was dead), he
would definitely have a fatherly tip or two – “Grow up, lads!”, he would tell them.
Among all this clarity, there was, however, one note of dissonance
that made him feel really old. And that was the impertinent bunch, the urban,
middle-class. Their recent show of discontentment had not been kind to his
stomach ulcers. They could not be won over by free TVs or sacks of rice. They were
insolent rogues who had no reverence for authority. Now, if only they could be
contained at India Gate till the elections were over, Stalin could look forward
to lesser troubles and more sit-downisms at espresso shops.
P.S. – All views are deliberate.
If found offensive, the writer would like to withdraw the article
unconditionally. He would like this immunity to extend to all articles written
in the past, those in the present and others that he plans to write in the
future.
