#TheDailyToast: The Constitution on an elephant
I have, since yesterday, been wondering if it might be a good idea to put my story for this week on an eagle and fly away ahead of it or will I do my job and defend what it stands for? You may not know exactly what I mean, and sometimes, I must confess, neither do I, but Rahul Gandhi, I assure you, knows. Like the students of Mt Carmel, I too have this faith in the never-ending development of his potential, like that vintage car you repeatedly repair in the hope it will start some day. This is the true hallmark of a canny leader: The ability to lead movements that very few comprehend but join anyway. Would MK Gandhi have had only 80,000 people join him on the Dandi March if he could not convince at least some of them that some sacks of salt would be mounted on elephants and distributed for free, even as the salt-thirsty crowds walked in front of them? Do not underwrite the Indian public's ability to walk in front of things, good sir. The Parsis did not come up with the "What Goes of My Daddy" for nothing. It in fact, hit them in the face the minute they set foot on this sacred, salted earth fleeing persecution with the escape velocity of Jupiter. As opposed to that of Mars, with which they might have ended up in Australia, which would have saved them a lot of time and money in immigration lawyer fees anyway. "Mere liye kya hai?" and "Mera *** ka kya jaata hai", "What's in it for me?", and "What goes of my daddy", are the two flips to the Indian coin, now being tossed in parliamentary abandon like a match-fixing record hitting platinum in the hall of shame.
Thus, in Rajnath Singh's hands "secular", by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar's sin of omission, is now a liability, Sugata Bose bears witness to "akhlaq" or ethics, our non-existent legacy, viewable only as a speck on the lenses of politicians' self-aggrandising spectacles, the late Ashok Singhal speaks from beyond the grave stirring up Parliament on Hindu kings and kingdoms, Zairul Hassan Lari has coined "constitutional morality", just in case the RTI-wielding general public came up with a comparison to all other forms of the damned inconvenient thing that would force politicians to be as law-abiding as the citizens they circumvent. As Supriya Sule, whose entire personal wealth is built off the sugarcane farming industry, now sucking the earth of Maharashtra dry of water reserves, an immense contribution to the plight of farmers, suggests, wants to know what the agenda is. Right. Meenakashi Lekhi tried to fling numbers at the Parliament, but those got mounted on a giraffe by the new anti-data liberal front and try as she could, she could not get ahead of it. Cattle-class affinity-finding Shashi Tharoor finds it safer, naturally, to be a cow in India. He would. It's infinitely safer than being his wife for instance. And Kirron Kher found the removal of her husband Anupam Kher by the UPA a far more intolerant act, because at least nepotism is now respected, and can be set upon elephants and walked in front of. Asaduddin Owaisi complained that he's not being allowed to make his hate speeches anymore. And everyone pretty much agreed dogs, and pigs, and piggy banks, along with cows, are turning this country into a zoo.
As Obama fiddles, the Tamil Nadu sinks, such that The Hindu shuts its local editions, and the swanky international airport fills with ankle-deep water, and probably, given the government's penchant for sitting on and walking in front of elephants, it's the animals and much-maligned religion, as even drowning snakes discover, that are the only things can deliver us now.