#TheDailyToast: The Golden Mean escapes us

For a country this devoted to extremes, our affinity to gold is quite the paradox. The golden mean the desirable middle ground, has always escaped us. We have either extremely little, or, like the man in the gold shirt, we have way too much. Or as the current state of public discourse exhibits, we offer to do too little, like eating beef instead of using policy in our hands to protect those who do and countering, by, um, offering to behead you instead of, I don't know, taking away your plate. And these are just our official representatives speaking publicly. The less said of the heartlands the better.

As much gold as is bought in this country, it is sold by women to save either family honour, the husband's ailing business, or the embattled self. Streedhan, as it is labelled, is a patriarchal free for all. But the PM is right, that when a woman can protect her wealth, it remains the only thing she can call her own. So when the PM launches a gold monetisation scheme, clearly given the timing, a big boost to the pre-Diwali shopping bullion markets, it is not clear whether this is for the empowerment of women, or for the empowerment of men who will profit off the women, in more ways than one.

But at least the average Indian liberal is able to find great humour in the women who stand in front of a pawn shop or lascivious jeweller and pawn their net worth. 

Women of India, got it? You "don't own anything" - gold is your power. https://t.co/KY7HidhTi9

— Salil Tripathi (@saliltripathi) November 5, 2015

Because, I dunno, it is liberal and feminist to tell women who genuinely don't own anything, given that barely one in ten women own land, that they should not make a fuss about it, but then hold seminars, hopefully manels, to discuss why women are financially disempowered. No wonder we're going off data.

In the meanwhile, even as the Delhi juvenile rapist is freed from jail, and RK Pachauri of TERI gets a plum posting after the woman who complained against him quits, elsewhere, online, liberal, centrist and Right-wing trolls alike unite and women continue to be held up as trophies, the spoils of war.

But the important thing here is Modi. Let's just never lose sight of that all encompassing issue that burns all other issues up here in India.

What is Modi's agenda with Chhota Rajan given that case papers have now gone missing? What is Modi's agenda with Bihar (because let's not forget that being the prime minister of India is incidental to "his" win in Bihar)? And what is Modi's agenda with Jayalalithaa's agenda with Kovan? While we are at it, why, I would want to know, was Modi at Harbhajan Singh's wedding?

But there is more than one way to suffer "intellectual malnutrition" in this country. So while one #AwardWapsi has nothing to do with the Congress or BJP, it's now time to ask Nayantara Sahgal whether the whole shenanigan was staged dissent or not. But hey, look on the bright side: Rahul Gandhi is showing signs of life we are told. Has he wiggled his big toe yet?

Oh goody. Maybe we will be neither here nor there on everything when he comes to power. That's as Golden Mean as we can get.