Ek Thaali Ke Chatte Batte or Dyed in the Wool

So it’s all back to square one.

All that Lokpal Bill sound and fury finally ended with a free for all name calling and we know now not just the politicians but the civil society members are also a shameless, whiny lot. Look at that joker Anna Hazare. He wrote another letter to Sonia Gandhi complaining her party men were calling him names. Is that what we expect from a leader? And pray who is Sonia Gandhi? She’s just the president of the same political party that has put Anna in the dock. As of now there has been no news about Sonia chiding any of her men. For all you know they must have cursed Anna after checking with her and she may have taught them a bad word or two in Italian. Sonia Gandhi is very clever. When Indira Gandhi was throwing Maneka Gandhi out of her house, she went and quickly hid in the bathroom lest her hand be suspected in the whole tamasha. But I am sure she was quietly winding up her mother- in- law against Maneka for days altogether like one of those evil bahus in an Ekta Kapoor serial. How do I know all this? Kyonki Sonia bhi kabhi bahu thi.

And it is not just the politicians and the civil society members who are the only guilty parties here. Our media persons are no better. The other day after Hussain’s death, Arnab Goswami was presiding over a talk show to determine the politician’s culpability in Hussain’s death. Anyone who reads my blog would know I am no fan of the political establishment and as for the BJP, I wish their leaders were also in that train on that fateful day in Godhra, but I think all this hype about the government not doing anything to protect Hussain when he got those death threats is silly. He chose to go. No one forced him and as for death threats, don’t all our film stars and directors get them all the time. Rajiv Rai got them and he fled to London with his wife. Preity Zinta also got a threat unless she was making it all up but she went to a court and testified against the underworld and she’s still alive and owns an IPL team and needlessly jumps up and down whether her team is doing well or not. No one has targeted her as yet. We should say only good things about the dead and all I will like to say about Hussain is that he liked publicity and nubile young female actors of Bollywood. He seems to have had a good life until he died at the ripe old age of 93 and may his soul rest in peace. He once gifted my wife a sketch and if that work appreciates in value and is worth millions one day, I will bless his soul even more.

Anyway, I was on the topic of Arnab Goswami and his strange antics during the show. He dropped his voice in that pseudo manner and asked ‘Can our politicians drop their compulsions for once and do the right thing?’ Yes...they will do the right thing if journalists do the right thing! How come our media persons are always haranguing the politicians but sparing the corporate honchos? If one is a bribe taker, the other is a bribe giver. They are the two faces of the same coin. But you can never expect to see a talk show where the chairman of a corporate conglomerate is being quizzed for his role in the scams, not at least in this country. How come there has been no probing report on why the Tatas were given a clean chit in the 2G scam by the CBI. Tomorrow if the Talwars are let off similarly, Goswami will make us sick with all his antics but who wants to take on the Tatas? Certainly not those who depend on them for their ad revenues. If Goswami even talks about implicating a large corporate house, his masters will pack him off to Siberia and he knows this. And such a person wants to be the messiah of the common man. Heaven help us.

The other two journalists who are pissing me off big time are Manu Joseph and Hartosh Singh Bal. When ‘Open’ magazine did the expose’ on the Radia tapes last year, I felt admiration for both of them. But they turned out to be like Bhakti Barve in ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron.’ They recently did a cover story on how some research by the Tatas is path breaking. For the Tatas, in these troubled times, the cover story achieves what full page advertisements in every page, including the front and back covers would achieve. And as you know the corporates always pay well for the advertisements. To add insult to injury, Manu Joseph is always heckling the educated middle classes forgetting the same middle class was squarely on his side when Barkha Dutt and Sonia Verma placed him in that chair during the show on NDTV that ‘hurt’ his bum so much that he whined about it afterwards. We could have also laughed at him like I am sure generation after generation of Barkha Dutt’s family will laugh playing the tape of Manu’s expressions when the chair was poking him where it hurts the most. But we didn’t as we happen to be decent folks.

His colleague Hartosh Singh Bal is no better. He talked about the Jaipur literary festival being racist with William Dalrymple as the head. At that time one of the festival organizers had mentioned in an interview Hartosh was saying all this because he was not invited. I had felt bad for him then. But turned out she was right after all. For not only did he go for the festival but was also photographed having a lot of fun and he never wrote anything bad about the festival or the organizers after that.

Well, they are welcome to invite themselves to festivals and parties thrown by the research wing of the corporate entities who not so long ago they were busy 'exposing.'

I have decided not to watch ‘Times Now’ or buy ‘Open’ Magazine. That is my peaceful way of protesting.

Barkha, Kapil and Anupam...and Anna too...

Some of my well meaning friends are posting youtube downloads on Facebook that show Barkha Dutt being ruthlessly heckled by a mob when she was at India Gate after the Anna Hazare victory. They are saddened by what they perceive to be a fascist outburst. My reaction to the entire episode is what’s the fuss all about? She deserved what she got.

Barkha Dutt is as much a symbol of the malaise of corruption as A Raja or Suresh Kalmadi is. If the defence pertaining to Dutt is that nothing has been proved against her and she was merely doing her job, then surely we can allow Suresh Kalmadi to get away too. The courts have not pronounced him guilty as yet. What if he had landed up at the site where Anna Hazare was fasting? I am sure the treatment meted out to him would have been a lot worse.

We, the English speaking elite of the country, tend to lose perspective when it comes to one of our own. Like in the case of Dutt. She went to a school just like ours. We can vouch for her middle class roots. That makes us feel like taking her side. We tell ourselves, at worst, she was guilty of social climbing. After all, the most ridiculous thing about us is that we take great pride not in who we are and what we have achieved but who we party with. The whole page 3 culture is about this phenomenon of name dropping. ‘You know I was standing close to so and so celebrity and could hear her fart. It smelt nice,’ kind of a thing. But the X tapes proved Dutt is guilty of far worse than just seeking a place next to Radia at a cocktail dinner. She played her part in foisting a corrupt minister on this country. She was a power broker after the last elections.

If she turns up at a venue where enraged citizens are celebrating their victory against corruption, what did she expect? Air kissing from the irate mob that had gathered there? If you show a red flag to a bull, it’ll chase you. You are lucky if it doesn’t gore you to death.

I am ready to believe anything about Nira Radia’s four a.m. friend. Including that she landed at the venue in order to first garner attention and later sympathy from us. I am sure the television channel that employs her has other reporters they could have sent to cover the event. Why did she have to go?

I am hoping no one is stupid enough to play the gender card here. Both Radia and Dutt look as if they can take on half a dozen men at a poker game and walk away smiling. That’s about the only thing I like about them. They are power women and I respect them for that. But since they have misused their power, they deserve to be treated badly by the citizens of this country just like a Raja or Kalmadi.

Somehow whenever I am on the topic of Barkha Dutt, I think of Kapil Sibal. Maybe because they look very comfortable together. The first time I noticed their chemistry was in one of those celebratory shows after the UPA government won the last elections. Dutt egged Sibal to recite one of his poems. It was a very bad poem. Neither did it rhyme nor did it have a deeper meaning. Kuch bakwas tha. But both of them looked very pleased at the end of Sibal’s recitation. Barkha more than Sibal. Like he had written it for her or something.

The next time I saw them together on a show was after the 2G scam broke out and brought to light the not to so insignificant part Dutt played in the entire shenanigan. I think she was under some kind of pressure to be tough with Sibal in order to protect her own image. But she couldn’t sustain the tempo with her poetry spouting pal who kept on looking adoringly at her whenever she shot a difficult question at him. Very different from the way he looks at Arnab Goswami.

So instead they started talking about how sensitive our honourable Prime Minister is. The expressions on their faces resembled that of the parents of a ten year old boy,when they are sharing with dinner guests their prodigy does not like cricket but plays the piano beautifully. The whole nonsense was very painful and manipulative.

Like that bald Anupam Kher in that Goswami show after Anna’s victory, correcting that activist lady about her body posture without realising he has one of the worst postures among the Bollywood hams. But that’s okay. Kher is paid to be a clown but Dutt and Sibal aren’t.

Anyway just as Dutt was heckled by Anna supporters, Sibal was heckled by Anna himself. When he decided to take the wind out of Anna’s victory by making pious statements about how the Jan Lok Pal bill is not going to help the cause of poverty or education, Anna told him to resign from the committee. Sibal ki to phat gayi. He forgot poetry and made all the right noises to toe Anna’s line. I think this Anna is rather clever. Almost as clever as Sonia Gandhi.

We should be a bit careful about him.