Mother of all soap operas
By Manohar Malgonkar

I wanted to call this piece a star performance, but remembered that the very sound of the word ‘star’ is like blasphemy to the person whose theatrical skills I am paying a tribute to: President Bill Clinton. "That man is evil!" Clinton is quoted as telling a friend. ‘That man’ being Kenneth Starr.

I want to record how bowled over I was by the performance of Bill Clinton in a recent episode in the ongoing soap opera that has taken the entire world by storm, and which deserves to be called ‘The Monica Mahabharata’. The episode I am referring to is the one in which Clinton made a dash to Israel and Palestine.

An impatient channel-surfer, I sat through the entire episode watching as though hypnotised, conscious that before the eyes of millions of TV watchers, history was being created. The head of the world’s mightiest power was making a first-ever visit to a land torn by warfare for 50 years to settle the dispute between the diehards of two faiths which have been at each other’s throats since the dawn of history. And yet my principal feeling as the episode ended, was one of starry-eyed admiration for the sheer histrionic brilliance of the main character, Bill Clinton. Here, I told myself, was real class, of the calibre of Sir John Geilgud or Laurence Olivier.

For the past three months his most intimate sexual preferences and performances had been openly discussed and he had been shown as someone who had fudged the truth even when under oath. His numerous adversaries, scenting blood, were closing in for a final assault; and such friends as he still had among his party colleagues, were seeking terms for some face-saving escape-hole that would save the country from the trauma of impeachment proceedings and let Bill Clinton limp along as President for another two years; censured, humiliated, but let off on parole.

It was against this background that President Clinton had set out on a mission which even he could not have believed would succeed. But if, by some miracle it did, he would be able to return home to a hero’s welcome and to such an overwhelming outburst of popular acclaim as would send his adversaries scuttling for shelter. It was a gamble against history itself.

So here we were, looking in disbelief, at a Palestine the like of which we had never seen before: No urchins with masked faces hurling stones and abuse at grim-faced riot police, no howling mothers holding up bleeding bodies of their infants, no ranting men in headscarfs foaming at the mouth, but a gathering of sober, well-dressed middle-eastern statesmen and even a few ladies wearing no veils. All of them waiting expectantly, speaking in hushed whispers.

Those gathered in the hall were believers in violence as a means of achieving their political goals, stalwarts of the Intefada who were used to sleeping with AK-47s by their side and live hand grenades under their pillows. They were obviously overcome by an awareness that here, before their eyes, history was going to be made to change course. Surely, I caught myself thinking, that they, too, as I was, must be wondering to themselves how this man who was neckdeep in his own troubles, threatened by the dishonour of having to face impeachment proceedings, could face up to his tasks as the chosen head of the planet’s mightiest power. After all, he was, human, too. How could he prevent himself from betraying his anger and despair and shame? Would he look crushed and wear a hangdog look? Falter in his step or fumble in his speech? Would he be wearing ink-black glasses to hide his red-rimmed eyes?

Clinton was 30 minutes behind schedule, which was ominous, for that showed that his negotiations with the Israelis had not gone as smoothly as he had anticipated. The added anxiety made the crowd feel restless but, if anything, more silent — even the whispers had died down. They sat absolutely still, but twitching. Then even the twitching stopped and they sat as though motionless, staring in the same direction.

Bill Clinton strode in; his bearing jaunty, his step light. The tension in the room visibly evaporated. This was not a hounded man trying to put on a brave face but a world statesman facing up to a challenge of his times. So might Lord Louis Mountbatten have come to address his first assembly in India, charged with the task of winding up the Raj. Here was a man presiding over what, for Israel and Palestine, would be a Tryst with Destiny. He nodded and grinned at acquaintances and waved a hand; he wore no dark glasses; his eyes were not red-rimmed.

The speaker of the house read out a brief address of welcome, in Arabic; as Clinton listen with bent head to its English translation, he was busy making notes on a pad — with his left hand. I for one had not known that he was left-handed. Then something else struck me, Clinton’s thick mop of stylishly silvering hair. In an assembly in which most of the male members were either balding or onion-bald, it presented a stark contrast.

Then Clinton rose to speak. If he was reading out a prepared speech, he had obviously rehearsed it so well as to make it out that he was speaking off the cuff, and he even making jokes, based on some aspect of an earlier speech. It was a polished performance which had his listeners nodding in agreement and bursting into spontaneous applause. As the camera hovered over the faces of the Arab celebrities, it was easy to see how swayed they were by Clinton’s performance. For what seemed to be a long time, the TV screen framed one of the Arab world’s star performers: its one and only spokeswoman, Hanan Ashravi. Only I had to look again to make sure that it was her, for here she was smiling — beaming! And whoever had believed that this stern-faced Iron Lady of Palestine could permit herself to smile?

That smile said it all; the mood of those gathered in the hall to listen to Bill Clinton was jubilant. His manner and body language even if not his words could only mean that he had come with Israel’s agreement to the terms of the peace process in his pocket. After all, he had spent a whole day in Israel before coming to their land, and there would have been no point in his coming to Palestine at all, if his discussions with the Israeli decision-makers had not been fruitful.

It was only a day of two later, after Bill Clinton had gone back to America and the euphoria had died down, that it began to dawn on them that Israel had not agreed to the terms that the Palestinians has put forward; that the peace process remained stall exactly where it was before Bill Clinton’s historic visit.

There are those who argue that many of the things Clinton has done over the last year or so have been a part of his strategy to deflect media attention from his private troubles. His much publicised dashes to Russia, to China, to Japan, his overreactive tantrums against India and Pakistan for daring to break into the apartheid of the Nuclear Club, the punitive bombings of Iraq, the missile attacks into Afghanistan, and finally this ‘mission-foredoomed’ caper in Israel and Palestine — all were, no matter how indirectly, a fallout of the impeachment proceedings.

Maybe that is an uncharitable view. Still, the fact remains that they kept millions of TV watchers glued to their sets. The plot thickens, and the future episodes promise to be even more dramatic. The way things are going, Monica-Mahabharata looks as though it is heading to be a world-beater: the Mother of All Soap Operas.

Stay tuned.