Scamsters Anonymous

I had better be careful. These are tricky times when even a simple word in print, tweet or whatever, delivered in utter angst or legitimate frustration, could land you in trouble with the long arm of the law. Powerful people and their pampered sons and sons-in-law are on the prowl with feigned righteous hurt and they know the law. Correction. They know those who wield the law. Correction again. They control, and dictate to, the ones who wield the law so that while those who abide by the law are hounded, these VIPs themselves remain above law. So, while the former can’t even use the law, even if only in defence, the latter can abuse it at will.

But let’s quit all the blah, blah about law. After all, it is difficult to resist the natural temptation to bend the law in your favour if you have parents or, for that matter, in-laws in power. There is no point of us, mango people, cribbing about all that. A more ‘fruitful’ pursuit would be to see how we can have the cake, rather, mango, as well as eat it. That is, speak freely without landing in jail. Particularly on the web, where the laws, though vague, are still strangely stringent. Internet experts claim that a wrong word can be deemed criminally offensive and yield a prison term longer than for causing death by negligence! An abridged alpha-numeric line on Twitter or FB can get you a full sentence in chaste legalese. Bad bargain!

Now, this poses a huge challenge. How do we talk of all the scamsters and their shady shenanigans without getting into the wrong side of ‘their’ law? Geniuses that they are, the tribe of scribes have developed a tradition of writing without getting caught, barring the occasional mishap: The Gossip Column where names are never taken while initials are passé and the person is hinted through a ‘convoluted’ description. Of course, many an aggrieved film star or socialite had felt that it would have been less damaging if their names had actually been mentioned. The allure of this kind of juicy stuff is that readers get a vicarious thrill and even pride in guessing the obvious. Also, in a scenario where scams flow and blow faster than the Cauvery or Cyclone Nilam, it is high time their reporting is shifted from the breaking-news but boring front pages (or primetime) to the salacious inner ones (or mid-night masala hours).

So, who is the most visible mastermind of the 2G scam? He is the southern ‘King’ in karai veshti sans any kingdom on earth but who however ruled the airwaves with absolute abandon. And who are the smart financial wizards in power who winked at the spectrum king’s (non)action of no auction? First, there was this other veshti, with the karai on his palms instead, who, till date, has evaded all attempts at enquiry. He is like a PC that never crashes, come what may. And then there is this former reformer, an honest hoax and an honourable humbug, at the helm albeit as proxy, under whose eminent watch the nation’s treasury and all natural resources vanished from public realm. The name of this PM, meaning Puppet Minion, reads like ‘sing’. No, the missing ‘h’ is not a print error.

The puppeteer? It is a ‘she’, a spurious saint known for sacrificing without exactly losing post, power or pelf, and hails from the land of Pisa, Pizza and Pasta. Unlike those medieval conquerors of Bharath who laboured through the treacherous Khyber passes or the turbulent high seas, this neo-foreign invader colonised this clueless country rather in a jiffy, by first infiltrating the first family and then pocketing its kept political party. At best, she can be credited for the pains of going to the nearby snowy Swiss streets just across the Alps and other havens by taking a dreary detour through India. While her compatriots have always ‘Q’ueued up for the spoils here, her own family is on a roll in this land of plenty, ever a plunderer’s paradise. While her son, an R-name (with a missing ‘h’ again, mind you) is deemed a natural heir to own this slaveland, her son-in-law, another R, with a marked allergy for mangoes, and a law unto himself, has been adopted by the Government of a State (that begins with, you guessed it, an ‘H’) adjoining the nation’s Capital under a unique and exclusive ‘Land-loot’ scheme with the capital coming from his creditors themselves! None can ‘rob’ him of his acute business skills! The leading lady’s first name rhymes with ‘mania’ which somewhat sums up her partymen’s self-serving fad for her. Incidentally, it rhymes a bit with ‘mafia’ too which somewhat … no, no more clues. Omerta!

Readers can now carefully conjure up their own verbal contraptions. Like, for instance, on the Indian President who was spotted mostly abroad or only in exotic locales inland and who set a precedent as the greatest PP, parasite President. Or take a shot at an able Union Minister who pinched funds meant for the disabled and actually got rewarded for it. His first name is the same as that of a bollywood star for whom deer are not dear. Now, does the ‘man’, Tamil for deer, in his name mean anything? You see, this is what happens when you get too gossipy. You trap yourself or get wrapped up in all kinds of contrived ill-logic and rhetorical riddles that you forget to talk clear or see straight.

Now, who am I? I know my name begins with a J and is sadly reminiscent of the man who let loose that nasty dynasty alluded to above on this hapless people. But that’s no reason for anyone to take pot shots against me. I know some law too. Beware!

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