The Time Machine

MOST visitors at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters at New Delhi's Ashoka Road don't stop by the kitchen garden that lies to the back of the outhouse. Even if they did, they wouldn't discover a large hollow metallic sphere, for it's cleverly buried in a silo deep beneath the onion patch. Two-thirds of the sphere's surface is permanently painted saffron with beautiful images of a lotus, a golden chariot, the rubble of a mosque and the slogan "Jai Shri Ram". The remaining third is an interchangeable panel, which can be coloured according to the mood of the allies of the time. In a top secret operation conducted a few days ago, the smaller panel was painted bright red with a splendid hammer and sickle prominently displayed amidst images of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

I had heard about this strange sphere. Last night, I slipped into the compound of the Ashoka Road complex and went straight to the onion patch. Hiding behind the trees, I heard much whirring and clanging. Lo and behold, the onion patch slid away: the silo door opened; and slowly the sphere came up from the bowels of the earth. Then its door was opened and a retractable ladder was lowered to the ground. Trembling with excited curiosity, I stepped out of the shadows only to be confronted by a posse of lathi-wielding elders wearing white half-sleeve shirts and baggy, ill-fitting, flared khaki shorts.

Khaki knicker 1 (KK1): Khabardar! Kaon ho?

Self: Please sir, don't mind. I had heard that you had a secret weapon, an ancient maha-astra secreted in the onion patch. Being an admirer of swadeshi science, I had to come and see it. What is it, sir?

KK1: You seem a genuine desh-bhakt, so I can tell you the secret. The sphere is the world's one and only time machine. It has been built in Bharat solely on the basis of our ancient shastras, and it can only go back in time to Ram rajya and the golden age of Hinduism.

Self: Fantastic. But sir, why are you taking it out tonight?

KK2: When we made Atal the prime minister of Bharat, we thought him a disciplined swayamsevak, committed to upholding all the tenets of swadeshi. But with every passing day, he was being misguided. The last straw is the opening up of insurance to the foreign rascals. How can he be a loyal RSS man and decide to open the insurance sector to 26 per cent foreign and 14 per cent NRI participation? Even worse is that Yashwant Sinha! How quickly he's forgotten that he is what he is because our Sudershan intervened on his behalf. Today he has turned his back on the parivar to become a lackey of the foreigners. So, we are going to enter our machine, go back in time to Ayodhya, and decide in Lord Ram's court how to deal with this foreign menace.

Self: Sorry, sir, but why is competition in insurance a bad thing? After all, it's not that the public sector companies like LIC, GIC and its four subsidiaries are being privatised. Many say all that will happen is that these companies will face a little more competition. Is that a bad thing?

KK2: Don't you even talk of this competition nonsense. It has destroyed India. How much competition was there in the days of Ram rajya? Was Bharat any worse off because of that? There is already too much competition, and the foreigners are taking over this country with the help of our modern Mir Jaffars. We want to put an end to it.

KK1: Why do you need insurance if you are a real desh-bhakt? Ram bharose should be enough. Was there insurance in Ram rajya? Did it make the land any less prosperous?

Self: Sir, I have three questions. Number one, the penetration of insurance in India is abysmally low. Isn't India large enough to accommodate more players operating in different market segments? Two, your party had said that it has no problems with foreign participation in infrastructure. Don't you think insurance companies can bring in funds to finance various infrastructure projects? Number three, the Indian partners will still have majority control. So what is the fear?

KK1: I'm beginning to wonder if you are a true desh-bhakt. You don't seem to understand something very important. We don't want foreigners in insurance. We don't care whether they enter with 40, 26 or 4 per cent. We will block them. Period. We blocked it last year when Chidambaram tried to introduce a mild form of opening up. Yashwant's and Atal's proposal is far worse. So, how can we not block it this time? We have to. We will create such a shindig that the government will never be able to introduce the bill.

Self: Sir, but I've heard that Congress will support the government on insurance. So, how will you block the bill?

KK2: Haven't you seen that we have tainted our time machine with the picture of four unholy men and the hammer and sickle? Why do you think we have done that?

BEFORE he can answer that question there are loud shouts "Insurance bill murdabad" and "Long live the public sector". Leading a column of red flag-wavers are Comrades Pandhe and Surjeet of the CPI(M) and Comrade Gurudas of the CPI. They circle the time machine and continue with their slogans. Almost on cue arrives Mohan Gurumurthy of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, Raju Bhaiya of the RSS, Vinay Katiyar of the Bajrang Dal and Vishnu Hari Dalmia of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. "Swadeshi zindabad", "Jai Shri Ram" and "Har Har Mahadev" compete with "Capitalism down, down," "Lal salam, lal salam", and "Workers of the world, unite". Before entering the time machine, the parivar and the Marxists make a solemn pledge to jointly blast the Insurance Bill to smithereens. Then the Marxists insist that the machine make a short stop at Moscow in 1917 en route to the court of Shri Ram—to which the parivar graciously agrees. They enter. The door closes, and the machine takes off. I watch this cooperation with awe. While returning home, I wondered whether we could build an even better machine that might take these worthies back to the time where the truly belonged—when dinosaurs ruled the earth.