When I look back, I cannot believe how I could have fallen for all that saffron nonsense! Well, realisation dawned on the very day the results rolled out. A voice inside me, sounding quite like Teesta Setalvad screeching in a TV studio, told me how I had got my script all wrong. And lo! All of a sudden, the BJP, in my eyes, became a party with a flawed ideology and ineffective air-conditioning at its headquarters, the rss an organisation which doesn’t know its knickers from its stockings and the nda a paper tiger which will soon make it to the World Wildlife Fund endangered list. Interestingly, in 1989, it was a voice inside me which sounded like Advani that urged me to go saffron. And see where I have ended up.
For me, at this point, to Congress or not to Congress is not the question. It is the only answer. Ahh! to be serving the Gandhis. Rahul baba will surely benefit from my speech writing skills. Why, I have already drafted a speech in which praise is lavished on slain LTTE chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran. It will have the same impact as my Jinnah speech, which brought so much excitement into Advaniji’s life. And Soniaji, I can certainly tell her what’s wrong with her party as and when it loses elections.
Predicting victory and assessing defeat is the great Kulkarni trick that I learnt while I was with the Left. Aah, those were the days! But with the Left left out and the right not right in, it’s best to be exactly in the muddle. Kulkarni ka haath Congress ke saath.
(As imagined by Ajith Pillai)
