Chhagan Bhujbal

Kya kya sochte thhe, kya kya ho raha hai! Rajneeti kuch ajeeb cheez nikala! Shiv Sena, udhar se Congress, phir NCP aur dreams of becoming the chief minister. Then earthquakes began to happen, the ‘Modi wave’ threw us out, now I don’t know where I stand. Two political parties in the state became four and each one of them could win the assembly elections and come to power. Of course, money is no problem, I own dozens of very big colleges, including management ones. What use are they to me if they can’t help me to become the CM? Umar ho gaya, too old to do dramabaazi on the streets like those days in the past.

The Modi mania is the most annoying. Apna idhar ladte thhe assembly seats ke liye, ae Modi PM ban gaya, woh bhi tulsi jal peeke! Here I am hogging on mutton, chicken, fish and eggs and I am not even CM. Dar lagta hain yaar, anyone can now become the Maharashtra chief minister or what? Woh, Gopinath Munde ki chokri, Pankaja Munde, suddenly CM candidate ban gayi, don’t ask me how! Last week, she came to Mumbai from her hometown Beed, travelled from Ulhasnagar to Ghatkopar by local train and announced it was her first ride in a local. And then she announced that when the BJP comes to power and she becomes the chief minister, she would introduce local trains in Beed district. I felt like laughing, how can you have local trains in Beed district? What will they carry? Beedis? I can’t understand today’s politics, it has so many startling developments.

Many of the Modi statements are alarming. We in the NCP have no doubts that having emerged as the ‘prime minister of Gujarat’ he was set to convert our Mumbai into his Ahmedabad. My NCP spies saw with their own eyes hundreds of trucks loaded with fafda chutney, Raipur bhajiya, Surti undhiyon smuggled into snack shops at Ghatkopar, Vile Parle and other Gujarati strongholds to bribe the voters. They also bro­ught to the city strongholds hundreds of Gujarati ‘bens’, highly skilled in mass producing ‘theplas’. The BJP propaganda machine had churned out messages in thousands that ‘dhokla’ is spicier than ‘vada paav’, khakra sweeter than ‘puran poli’ and ‘garba’ way ahead of ‘lavani’. More sin­ister attempts are being made to ‘Ahmedabadise’ Mumbai. Gujar­ati-owned restaurants are switching over to smaller cups and additional saucers among tea-drinkers because Ahmedabadis share a cup of tea among four.  It is a formidable challenge, but the NCP is not scared. We shall use the Ajit Pawar strategy of filling up dry dam sites with...ahem...human water which will drown out the Gujarati invaders.

The Mumbai-based satirist is the creator of ‘Trishanku’; E-mail your secret diarist: vgangadhar70 [AT] gmail [DOT] com