“She seemed to pause at the right places, emphasised the crucial points and spoke with a becoming passion. Though she had a prepared text, her delivery was impressive.”
You are wrong if you mistake the above words as the proud utterings of a doting father on his kindergarten daughter ‘ s recent performance in an elocution contest held at the local school. Rather they are the effusive praises showered on the daughter of Italy but daughter-in-law of India, one Ms.Sonia Maino Gandhi, the President of the Congress Party, for her speech at Parliament special sitting yesterday.
And you will be doubly mistaken if you think these paeans had sprung from the bottomless sychopantic well-spring of the Congress parivar, in which case you could be forgiven. On the contrary such supreme encomiums hit you between the eyes from the front pages of India ‘ s National Daily which has in all seriousness embarked on this unique assignment of promoting the nation ‘ s sole source of survival and succour, namely Soniaji. Wrong again, if you are under the impression that Soniaji is being ‘ groomed ‘ for the post of a primary school principal. The race for Race Course Road is well under way with its rightful resident raring forward with, ah, well, missionary zeal!
Blessed indeed are we Indians. We have a prospective PM who could not just speak, but speak good english, that too with consummate ‘passion’ and the appropriate ‘pauses’. And wonder of wonders, she can read and not just that, but read with such impressive, impeccable delivery that the restive opponents got floored on the floor of the House. So what if the text was a prepared one? Sonia herself is a prepared stuff. What ‘ s vital is that the great leader is also a great reader.
Now if you get impetuous enough to ask what is so great about reading from a piece of paper, a feat which schoolgirls round the country perform day in and day out, then curse your criminal ignorance. Try reading out just a para in the badly lit Parliament precincts with the ‘ dhracoanian Pothththo ‘ hanging above your head and you will know the real measure of Sonia ‘ s supreme achievement. Otherwise, why would a secular and impartial newspaper declare that it was the lady ‘ s best parliamentary performance? Did not the speech, though parrotted, bring out the Parliamentarian in her, as the newspaper has so joyously claimed? We are now eagerly looking forward to the newspaper also wrenching out the PM in her so that the entire nation too gets floored.
Now, what is Vajpayee ‘ s fifty years of parliamentary experience when compared to the fifty-minute eloquent exposition by the reader, pardon, leader of the opposition? Has she not in one stroke demolished the formidable persona of the PM by her religious rendering of the written word that the spontaneous and extempore Vajpayee got provoked into a personal diatribe?
Alas, what a democratic travesty that the most prolific politician of our times has to be at the receiving end of a one-time-wonder, that too a dubious one! It is really most unfortunate that the poor PM had come to be pictured as a cribber while the reading …leading lady of the Congress gets projected as a performer non pareil? Who can complain if the fourth estate has voluntarily pulled the wool over its own face, not to speak of the readers it serves? Small wonder that their jaundiced eyes magnified a dwarf even while trivialising a titan.
One should pity Vajpayee for being forced into an unequal battle and then made to pay for his courteous and self-effacing demeanour. For all his stature, experience and abilities, it was certainly beneath his dignity to be talked to by such rank novices, but still he had the grace not to put up any airs about him and on the contrary was accommodative to the core, all through.
But what a misplaced sense of goodness? At first thought, one does feel that Vajpayee should have kept his cool at being confronted by such an undeserving opponent whose mediocrity needed no unmasking. But come to think of it, how else could a poetic and intellectual PM take on such cooked up intelligence hiding under the respectful garb of an opposition leader and pelting pebbles from under the cover of Parliamentary privilege? Ducking would have been declared as cowardice by the motivated media and in any case, his was righteous indignation that deserved to be recorded for posterity.
Sonia may not merit a response, but the leader of the opposition does, at least for the sake of parliamentary protocol. For those who think that Sonia should have displayed some humility as all her ‘ sterling qualities ‘ are actually those that one must really be humble about, it would be presumptuous on our part to expect so.
Congmen ‘ s sychopancy and Soniaji ‘ s ambition have no room or regard for such niceties. A French writer once said: No person is exempt from talking nonsense; but the misfortune is to do it solemnly! The PM ‘ s plight today will be the country ‘ s tomorrow, particularly if India ‘ s national dailies have their way. The prospective scenario is quite threatening as well as shameful. Watching her on the tube ranting ceaselessly on morality and ‘ paththriothism ‘ , one was forced to speculate what this person was doing in our land. We are indeed a very hospitable and tolerant nation.
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