Dinesh Trivedi

Ever since I resigned as railway minister, the people and the media have been asking me embarrassing questions. My stock reply was “you have to ask the leader of the Trinamool Congress”. But as far as this secret diary was concerned, it had to be my own thoughts and I cannot ask my Great Leader to write it for me. That Devil, I mean Devil’s advocate, Karan Thapar, grilled me to make me confess to statements like “the additional taxes in my Railway Budget were to rescue the Railways from the ICU”. Of course, I would not admit to any such thing and Karan was beaten. But in this diary I would like to admit that the Indian Railways is not only in the ICU but in one at a Calcutta hospital, a most dangerous place.

I do not deny I was let down by my Great Leader. I do not believe in marks or grades but how can she give the state finance minister Amit Mitra’s budget 100 marks out of 10, just because it had no additional tax proposals? Let him run the state on such a budget for some more time and then he’ll know what is what.

There was a media report that the Great Leader did not want me as rail minister and that I would have been removed even if I had presented a taxless budget. This is not true. She even ‘trained’ me to be the railways minister. Twice or thrice, she even provided me with a railway guard’s white uniform, a red flag and a green flag and made me run around my office room, occasionally blowing a whistle. Once I completed five rounds without huffing and puffing (rewarded with six roshogollas) and I would like to know how my successor Mukul Roy fared in the test. She told me that the railway minister should have both brawn and brains. The Great Leader always stuck to the basics, and I believed I would be in for a long ride.

Yes, I did read media reports that the Great Leader told her pet reporters she could get rid of me with a snap of her fingers. Twice I even noted the Great Leader snapping her fingers but did not think much of it. You see, these hints were so difficult to interpret. Recently, at a party meeting, she asked that quizmaster-turned-bigshot Derek O’ Brien to include this question in his next quiz show. “If Saif made a sequel to his thriller Agent Vinod, what should it be called?” The answer, I came to know later, was ‘Double Agent Dinesh’.

As to the Congress opening its doors to me, what would I get boarding a stalled train? Of course, PM Manmohan Singh never wanted me to resign. In fact he sent me a lovely toy train named ‘Eternity Express’. I am afraid that in the absence of additional resources, the railways will soon grind to a halt. Our huge population could then be used to push trains to their destinations. My Great Leader would be in the forefront in this people’s movement and I suppose I could lend a shoulder. Of course, the railways would need brand new time-tables.

The Mumbai-based satirist is the creator of ‘Trishanku’

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