I am rather love-struck this week. I ought to be because the season is such and I will likely lose the license to live on this lovely planet if I am not in the love-loop. At least, that’s what the cupid-hit media and its equally smitten consumers have led me to believe. So if the words that follow fail to make sense, blame it on that omni‘potent’ aphrodisiac that has gobbled the globe this weekend, namely, Valentine. Not that this column is otherwise shining symbol of sanity. Only that this time around, there is a valid excuse for me to go a bit off tangent and still hope to get away with it. The reason is, I am love struck … oh, there I go again! So how do I begin? How else? Love all!
And it’s Advantage Politics, right away, with commerce, which originally launched Valentine’s day as one more marketing gimmick, coming a tame runner-up. Indeed, all is fair in love and politics and small wonder the political fare this week is all about love. Rather, never before has love dominated politics as it has this year. A welcome relief, no doubt, for us, calumnists, pardon, columnists, otherwise sunk neck deep either in the unromantic powerplays of the likes of Ks, Js, Sonias and MSinghs or the explosive realms of Jihadis and Tigers or the dull world of economic recession, inflation and stagnation. So when politics arrives sugar coated with passion, nothing like that.
It all began with an obscure group answering to the name Sri Ram Sene based in Karnataka. Its activists, besides evicting women revellers from pubs, also promised to marry off love-lorn, unwed couples listlessly loitering the lanes of Mangalore and beyond. All heaven broke loose with the ‘liberal’ media taking up the all too legitimate cause of the lady drinkers in right earnest. Not to be left behind, womens’ lib groups too have lumped their lots; and the issue is now not just about your adolescent cubs quenching themselves in pubs but also their ‘right’ to roam around with whomsoever they wish with nary a compulsion to marry. Moral of the story: Moral policing is bad even if immorality parades in public. And here’s the latest: Ram Sene’s chief is being paid back in a higher currency. A national Pink Chaddi (‘jatti’ in chaste Tamil) campaign has kicked off and he is being inundated with, er, Pink slips, so that he sort of goes out of work. But that lion of a man seems unfazed by the loin largesse: He has promised to return the unsolicited compliments in kind. Sarees, to be precise. But the moot question: who is a bigger nuisance, the senes or the libs? Nevertheless, let’s say a ‘hip hip hoorah’ to both for the engorossing albeit a bit embarassing below-the-belt battle!
But let lingeries linger. Loftier things are happening at the official front. No … the Government is not dispatching banians or blouses to any one … not yet. I am rather alluding to the sterling statements being issued by none less than the Union Minister for Child and Women’s Development, Renuka Chaudhary. This leading light has landed with all her official might to the rescue of pub goers, particularly, female ones. For the record, she is a champion liberator with a marked disdain for moral shackles. She has now exhorted all the ‘kudimagans’ and ‘kudimagals’ of this ‘vintage’ land to launch a spirited ‘Pub Bharo’ agitation even as her cabinet colleague Anbumani is on a ‘Pub Bandh’ campaign. In her exalted opinion, a fitting response to the Sena would be for all and sundry to fill the pubs and then fill their own tubs. In other words, pour into the watering holes and then pour yourself a stiff one so that the moral police are put in their place. Aah, what a way to promote women and child welfare. The lady deserves a pat … and a peg too for giving a pride of place to liquor as the national drink! Right choice, baby!
In all fairness, it is actually St Valentine, whoever he is, who should be celebrating. Official ratification of his school of thought is pouring in from all quarters this season. For instance, according to reports, the Haryana Government is in the process of appointing officials to conduct instant marriages for couples who have eloped. Amendments to the Haryana Compulsory Registration of Marriages Act are in the offing so that those bitten by the love bug need not feel shy, once or twice or thrice. The law will protect them from being bitten by their angry parents or relatives too. The Pondy Government has declared that its Tourism department would do everything under the sun … even after sundown … to ensure that V-day is ‘celebrated’ undisturbed by spoil sports. Well, you celebrate Deepavali with crackers, Dussera with dolls or Christmas with cakes. Now how do you ‘celebrate’ Lovers’-day? No …this is a family newspaper!
And there is some news on the judicial front too. Even as the war rages between vigilantes and voyeurists over expressions of love in public, the Delhi High Court has struck a middle ground very recently. It has drooled …sorry, ruled ( pardon the slip of the lip) that the act of kissing between two individuals in public will not amount to obscenity if the said individuals are man and wife. Thus the law as it now stands is: Your spouse cant smoke in public but can certainly smooch so long as it is you who is at the receiving end. Got it? But on who, when and where does the onus of proof of wedlock lie? Since the law is silent, those who have such public projects in mind are advised to carry their marriage certificates along. The law does not also clarify on acts other than kissing. Those seeking enlightenment … and some entertainment … can file a PIL for some legal light on this dark spot, ideally before the next V day. Statutory warning: Unwed couples can be arrested and locked up, surely in different cells, for any public act of physical intimacy on a complaint by anyone. And you can bet, someone will what with too many jilted Romeos roaming the roads. What lands on the cheek may not be a lip but a lathi!
Morality may be a huge grey area all over, but there is crystal clarity in rational TN politics. The coalition ground rule for conjugal bliss is: No permanent valentines. Political promiscuity is actually a virtue with engagements and estrangements as easy as a change of towel. Here political love is totally blind. That probably explains the pervasive penchant for dark glasses!
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