Sorry to bother readers with so many of my names but there is a reason. If my ‘secret diary’ is recovered posthumously, the masses must know the kind of person I was. My sole regret is that unlike Ravan who had 10 heads and 20 hands, I do not have 10 pairs of legs. I needed them because I had to hop from one stool to another. Look where I started from and where I am likely to go: chief minister of Delhi! That will only be the beginning. The idea is to look around and latch onto people who have caught the public imagination and ride on their glory. First, newspaper editors and then TV bosses. Once you figure in TV debates, where you sit apart with a brooding expression, speak slowly and ‘reflect’ on the views of the people, you are in. Ha, I could even make TV bosses like Dr Prannoy Roy and loudmouth Rajdeep Sardesai eat out of my hands, thanks to my sombre, intellectual looks. The poll surveys in their company were exhilarating, my rural looks and ‘specialised’ knowledge of intricate rural politics charmed anchors and the dumb TV audiences who would swallow anything from anyone connected with any ‘Centre’. Who bothered if our poll predictions, which were supposed to have great intellectual depth, turned out to be as shallow as Mumbai’s potholes?
Then came the Anna-Kejri-Kiran gang and I decided to fight corruption. For months it offered national tamasha on TV, I even thought Anna would have made an ideal head for a Centre for Frivolous Fasting. As usual, I started off as one of its spectators but as the TV anchors decided it was the Greatest Show on Earth, I had to join. The rules of the club were simple. Barring us, everyone else was corrupt. We insisted on a Jan Lokpal Bill with retrospective effect, from August 15, 1947. We learnt something here, you could shout ‘anti-corruption’ and get away with anything. Kejri was our verbal cannon. You would not believe how stupid our TV channels were, they had to have Kiran Bedi at each and every anti-corruption discussion. No one remembered she had inflated her airfare and travel bills while travelling to address anti-corruption club meetings with lunch and dinner thrown in. Ultimately, Anna faded away, I joined Kejri’s aam aadmi bandwagon to provide some intellectual stimulus.
Phew! Now that ingrate Arnab is blasting us. Like all other parties, the AAP candidates were put under scrutiny, even the glamorous crorepati Shazia Ilmi (I dare not say anything more, I could be accused of verbal sexual molestation!). Like the other parties, our candidates denied the corruption charges, and Ilmi’s ‘dramatic’ resignation remained on TV. How I wish the Delhi polls was conducted only on TV!
The Mumbai-based satirist is the creator of ‘Trishanku’; E-mail your secret diarist: vgangadhar70 AT AT gmail.com
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