|
He is the man in the white kurta with a whiff of horse
dung. All that this criminal-politician does is "to let it
be generally known...that if the local inhabitants wish to sleep
at night they would be advised to vote for them. This simple
straightforward appeal to the voters...is so refreshing that it
cannot be resisted."
He is the
proxy-politician who rules by, what else, proxy! And the first
rule of remote control is how to never give up power even if he
has to give it up. So whether it is a goongi gudiya who
becomes a raging Empress by rubberstamping the president or a
fodder-fed chief minister who rules from jail courtesy wife,
this type ensure the "marionettes do not suddenly exhibit
signs of independent life".
He is the
"mixer-fixer, the moneybag in spotless white, the security
hazard on wheels, the godman guardian and the never-say-bye
leader" for "after all what is a statesman if not a
politician who’s been brain-dead some ten or fifteen
years".
Wilde man Oscar
says what people call insincerity is simply a method by which
people multiply personalities. It is this multiplicity that
Laugh all the Way... explores. And it is Saurabh Singh who makes
you chuckle so very often with his absolutely brilliant
caricatures. His simple, lucid lines are the perfect foil to a
witty but wordy text. "Throwing caution and dhoti to winds,
he set about systematically displaying every one of his bruises
on thigh and buttock... Since the nation’s founding fathers
had not envisaged such impromptu striptease sessions in
Parliament they had provided little Constitutional cover for
such naked displays of injury..." Philipose describes
democracy’s zero hour and its sub-zero leaders.
Her
tongue-in-cheek treatment matches her subject but the style
muffles what could have been a scream of a book. And if you can
pardon the ponderous quality of this book, you might even
welcome it. After all, a political satire, like clean democracy,
is hard to come by in India. As a political columnist, Philipose
has brought to this work delicious irreverence. As a political
chronicler, she is incisive in her exposition of India’s
democracy. She cuts everyone and everything with her scalpel.
And gives them the naughty names they evoke.
So Indira Gandhi
becomes the Empress, Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi Pehela Puttar and
Doosra Puttar, Dhirendra Brahmachari is the thinly veiled
Deep-ender Acharya and Bap-Rebap is the master demagogue Bal
Thackeray. Computer Babu is, who else but Chandrababu Naidu.
From Emergency to
Ayodhya to Pokhran, from sarkari musalmaans to the trishul-waiving
political family of The Poet, from the leader who courts jet lag
for the nation’s sake to the one who floor-crosses for fun...
she canes them all with the cynicism so typical of a journalist.
And reminds you fervently of the 7th century Indian king
Bhatrihari, who shames politics as a prostitute. If that be so,
we all know what a politician is or has the propensity to be.
In that even the
subject matter of the book isn’t terribly new. But then
familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt. It is something of
the umpteenth Hindi film hero punching the villain and the
audience cheering wildly every time. So when someone socks our
bad ole’ politician, it fills us with a vicarious pleasure. Or
perhaps the pain of choicelessness…
Depressing though
it is, Philipose succeeds in pulling a farce one on her readers.
|
I
can’t say if I have laughed all the way as I read the book over a
fortnight, but I certainly began with a wail and a whoop. The very
first chapter that introduces the reader to the political city of
Indiaprastha brims with such unrelenting bulk that it leaves you
crushed under its weight. "Even the veneer of democracy, this
business of being voted in by the people through elections conducted
every once in a while, got subsumed by an insatiable and instinctive
drive to subjugate and augment." Or gasping for breath.
"If it did it would, indeed, not have been Indiaprastha, busy,
ever busy, snuffling in the dingles of the present, imagining as it
has always done that the future is its own to colonize." Phew!
