April fools, all

It turned out to be an All Fools Month. When April one dawned as usual after March 31 exited as it happens every year from time immemorial, not even the brightest of prophets would have predicted that the month would break all records in all round fooling.

The All Fools Day itself passed off innocuously with barely any indication of what is to come, though some tremors were felt in Chennai, which were foolishly dismissed as just one of those things. But as the month progressed, the fooling spree gradually gained momentum and has eventually climaxed today leaving behind a trail of you know who. But the beauty is that no one fooled them, they all fooled themselves. But phew, what an April!.

And what an impressive array of victims!. Having got used to fooling the people all along, it is really heartening to see the line-up of all the politicians with mud on their faces. Not a single party has been spared and not one leader has escaped the fooling carnage. But what is more significant is that every politician worth his name has been caught in his true colours in all their double talk and hypocrisy, and bereft of policy or principle.

Not that the people believed them to be otherwise, but for the first time they have all paraded their spurious wares, read ideologies, en masse voluntarily. They cannot now roll back any of their actions nor withdraw their words, unless of course, they still believe that they can fool all the people all the time.

For once, even the scorching sun might have been fooled into believing that its role has been usurped and it is no longer the sole source of wholesale heat what with so many politicians generating it with as much efficiency and more intensity, though they themselves got burned in the process. There was no dearth of tall talk by all leaders, though most of it fell on deaf ears owing to considerations of self-interest, confabulations and conspiracies abounded and no one knew who was speaking the truth or whom to believe.

Every party claimed success, and even the office of the Rashtrapathi was not spared with each visitor declaring that the President agreed with him or her. Deadlines for the new formation were set and missed with alarming regularity till ultimately everything turned out to be a farce and everyone giving up. Why then were all the pretensions of success and optimism when all along it has been only empty talk?.

When the AIADMK pulled the plug, it never would have bargained for such an impasse as its leader firmly believed that a new dispensation would be in place in ‘two days’. But even after several ‘two days’ had passed there was no sign of an alternative which remained as elusive as the dubious Dr.Subramaniam Swamy. How the party was led down the garden path by this habitual wrecker will ever remain a mystery.

Though the alliance between the BJP and AIADMK hit rough weather from day one and the latter’s exit was expected all along, yet it was clearly Swamy’s pre-emptive actions that clinched the timing. His much touted tea party turned out to be a mere storm in the tea cup in hindsight from the angle of opposition unity.

Though it did embolden him to set the tone for the fall of BJP government, it was simply not adequate enough to rally the ‘secular’ forces behind Sonia. Swamy should have done his home work better and true to his reputation borne out by history, has only brought grief to all those who associated with him. Hope this is the last fooling encounter he ever indulged in.

For the Vajpayee government, it was a series of neat confidence tricks that did them in. Mayawati foxed them after initially foxing the secularists a day earlier, Saifuddin Soz suddenly remembered his secular credentials and a CM appeared out of nowhere to cast a fatal vote. But all this cannot hide the ruling party’s own complacence when all its stalwarts went to sleep the night before, happy and hopeful. It turned out that the opposition were just waking up.

To score a duck in the debut is considered a luck in cricket. Not so in politics. Sonia should have known better than to step out of the carefully cultivated aura of enigma which did keep all and sundry guessing and thereby her importance intact all these days. Not any longer for she also stands exposed as just one of those fishes in the murky waters of politics waiting to grab the bait of power.
And what a bait it has been that the keen Italian brain too got foxed!. And what a revelation it has been for the countrymen too, about our much touted first foreign made Indian Prime Minister!. She is now just plain Soniaji along with the other jis like Pranabji and Pawarji.

For the Left, who are already in a fool’s paradise, it is just one of those dummy exercises that eventually fizzle out like their ideologies by the passage of time. Basu once again became a prospective PM only to turn into a past prospective PM within hours though there were some hopes this time till the Congress dashed them.

Surjeet, the incurable self-appointed interlocutor of nobodis and the sole distributor of political yarn, found his own secular shadow disown him. He sounded the bugle to rally the secular hordes and found instead the ranks running helter and skelter as if taking the cue. The Left had been deluding itself with blind anti-Congressism in the past and has allowed itself in the present to be guided by a sudden passion for the enemy till the Forward Bloc and Co blocked them in their tracks.

And last but not the least, is the sad story of an Uncle and Nephew. Having carved out the State and Centre between them and thereby giving a new meaning to ‘Centre-State Relations’, the duo too has egg on the face. The prospect of a ministership for the nephew was too attractive a bait for them to let slip and the transition from secular to communal was effected in a jiffy, but of course, not without the trademark rationalisations by the Thalaivan. But alas, even the best laid plans of men, mice and rationalists too come to naught.

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