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Deep Throat

A regular column on the essential buzz

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Deep Throat
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Uttar Pradesh
Priest Power

If you’ve been mocking PM Narendra Modi’s several trips abroad, don’t. For, besides addressing rousing rallies, the PM has been busy selling Indian spirituality. A jaw-dropping 150 Kashi pandits will accompany him to Japan this October to give the Japanese a solution to all their problems: natural disasters, family problems and even the rising number of suicides. They’ll be performing a non-stop yagna in Tokyo for nine days to rid Japan of all its ills. The trip, to be funded by Japan, sources confirm, was requested by Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, who on his visit to Varanasi sought a Vedic solution for his nation’s ills.

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Sri Lanka
Special Appearance

Officials at the Indian High Commission in Colombo were flummoxed at an unusual request from the PMO: red carpet treatment, not to a visiting dignitary or a VIP, but to a Mumbai-based film company. In fact, the mission’s brief was to extend all logistical support to the crew shooting a film on Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. While the officials were surprised, cynical Congressmen think they have an answer. The film, they say, suggests that the conspiracy to kill the Mahatma was hatched not by the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, but by then PM Jawaharlal Nehru!

New Delhi
Antennas Up

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In a city where everyone thinks he or she is being snooped on, a mysterious booklet has made it to the hands of some MPs. Issued by the ‘Ministry of Truth’, it claimed to uncover secrets behind the WiFi and routers that all 750 MPs have been given by MTNL last year for their Delhi bunglows. The booklet pointed to the possibility of shell companies associated with the firm which won MTNL’s Rs 40 crore contract. Perhaps, more importantly for the MPs, the ‘Ministry of Truth’ asked why technicians were so insistent on installing WiFi boosters in all MPs’ bedrooms. Rumour has it that some MPs tore it off their walls immediately. They now prefer dongle internet!

New Delhi
Singer, Not The Song

From the outside, the world of arts looks like an idyll of peace. Inside, it is a dog-eat-dog world. In the PM’s home constituency, Varanasi—also the hometown of Ustad Bismillah Khan and Pandit Ravi Shankar—tongues are now wagging about the allotment of land to a classical artiste to set up an institute for music. Turns out several more senior worthies had been trying (in vain, it turns out) to convince previous governments to do the needful. But the fast-tracking of allotment to the younger artiste by the Modi government, accompanied by a Padma award, has left many seething.

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Heard The Big B cited his health to duck Chandrababu Naidu’s offer to be AP’s brand ambassador because he didn’t want to rub the Telangana CM on the wrong side. Ajay Devgan got lucky.

Overheard Phone recordings of a junior lawyer’s conversations with politicians and corporates are doing the rounds. The lawyer was advisor to a telecom company and close to a powerful UPA minister.

Contributed by Prarthna Gahilote, Meetu Jain, Anoo Bhuyan, Madhavi Tata and Pritam Sengupta

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