Black humour
‘Make in India’ is surely a stupendous success in one sector: Unaccounted money. Financial policy is a mockery because much of the economy is still outside the system. And political sleaze is the biggest source, topping the charts, but rarely tapped, while hard-working but careless citizens get routinely raided and officially ripped.
In real federal and coalition spirit, the corrupt culture(?) centralised at the, well, Centre has devolved to the States in the last few decades. Only this week, the CM of ‘neglected’ North Eastern Nagaland is in the dock for allegedly keeping Rs 80 crs in Swiss banks. But forget the foreign fad, what of the stashes of cash right within our borders, the obvious low hanging fruits?
For instance, visits to the various residences and estates of TN politicos, councillor upwards, who have been in some official post for a minimum of one year, in the last twenty years can itself fill the fiscal gap! A back of the envelope math of the multiplier effect for all of India will expose a hidden iceberg bigger than the Himalayas.
The FM should have ideally gone to Srirangam for a first-hand darshan. That he went elsewhere makes all lofty talk on black money a laughable Jaitley joke.
Blue skies
‘I have met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence. Every one of them was deeply involved in pornography … porn can reach in and snatch a kid out of any house today. It snatched me out of mine’: This is the protagonist’s title post of a recent Hollywood movie on internet porn. Several surveys and studies confirm the trend across age, gender and social standing, making www really a wicked, wide web.
Ritzy gadgets and high data speeds have turned the Clouds a deep ‘blue’ hue, raining sleazy stuff in torrents on perverts and impressionable alike. Controls won’t work what with smart whizkids at work as we have seen with the BBC documentary that was uploaded and downloaded millions of times before the Government can spell ‘Ban’.
The din on crimes against women has touched a crescendo for Women’s day. The blanket tarring of ours as a nation of rapists has also evoked legitimate protests. But little will be achieved unless the bandwidth of the debate takes on this looming monster.
White lies
White stands for purity. So why would anyone sully it by attaching lies to it? Well, we learn that white lies are harmless ones and so the former actually sanitises the latter of any sin that may accrue to the liar. But really are all white lies that innocent? And who is the arbiter of absence of malice? In this part of the country, even thousand lies are quite in order to consummate a marriage.
Apparently, burden of moral proof lies with the liar, though the one lied to may think differently. And there hefty shades of grey here as Yudhishtra demonstrated vis-a-vis Drona.
But does the exoneration extend to politicos who have made the white wear their formal attire? Sadly, it would appear so because of the way they seem to get away with lying consistently. Some can indeed lie to all all the time!
White also stands for renunciation. Rahul wears white. And he vanishes in bouts with no clue of his whereabouts. Has he renounced or is he on a recess? Whatever, but its all whitewash, not white lies!
The palette
After hitting a purple patch with the Delhi poll victory, the AAP is going through a discolouration phase. The recent Budget paints the economy in the pink of health. But the rosy picture pales as one sees red in several sectors. Barring the bourses where it is all a fertile green! Saffron as usual keeps raising the hackles of self-styled secularists of all party and ideological hues. Not to be left out, yellow looks all set to reign at least in the DMK here, with that tell-tale towel very much in place for the CM race in 2016.
Why all this contrived display of colours in prose? But how else can a colourless columnist celebrate Holi?
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