The liberal onslaught does not seem to abate. Despite Senas obliging them with sumptuous stuff, the appetite of this starved crowd of intellectuals with their manufactured outrage is getting insatiable by the day.
Browsing: POINTBLANK
Now to the matter on hand. Why all these precautions? Millions and millions of Indians, majority of them belonging to the, well, ‘majority’, subscribe to the above, not just as a Constitutional obligation but a core conviction too. The average citizen is as much aghast at mob violence or for that matter, any legal or value transgressions as his/her neighbour, cousin and uncle and aunt.
As a true citizen of TN alias Tinsel Nadu, I am always deeply agitated whenever a calamity befalls a beloved cinestar. The ‘calamity’ could range from something as simple as a pimple on an otherwise spotless cheek to WhatsApp memes to serious financial troubles to censor woes to IT raids. The last is now my prime concern. Why Vijay? But more disturbingly, why Nayantara or Samantha?
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’
That’s Shakespeare-speak from Hamlet. Forget heaven, which at present sights, looks well beyond our reach; there are enough things to not dream, but dread, just on this earth. ‘Good’ may have won many battles, but ‘evil’ has so far won the war. And it owes this unassailable historic lead to just one single, strong and supremely reliable source: The human mind.
Ideally, I would like to thrash that guy smoking with relish and spewing toxins in style on his kid sitting on the lap. But that, thrashing someone and not smoking, is a criminal offence. It’s difficult also to resist the temptation to trample on the tippler sprawled on the street after a busy evening at TASMAC outlet while his family is starving back home. But again, booze is a birthright, dispensed by welfare States too.
Agitations top the charts presently. From ex-servicemen to Patels to trade unions to small groups to families to some isolated individuals, the landscape is littered with agitationists of all hue. Suddenly, strikes, sit-ins, dharnas, fasts or some such sort of protest are all over the place.
TN alias Tipplernadu may often be water starved, but rarely thanni starved. Ever since the bottle was uncorked in the early seventies, liquor has flooded this rational-cum-religious State as much as flattery, freebies and foul cash. The addiction looks set. The State budget is banking on booze and the bulk of populace are beholden to Bacchus.
I am one of those who staunchly believe that Chennai predates its official birthday, chosen by some ‘colonial cousins’, by several centuries. I am pretty certain Mylapore and Triplicane, to mention just two areas, were not ‘founded’ by the British nor can Chennai be confined to the walls of Ft St George, which the Brits did build over whatever structure existed earlier. But let me go with the crowd as it happens in city railway stations (not the new metro ones, sadly) when we seamlessly move in and out without aid of our limbs.
For most, ‘Made in Taiwan’ is more familiar than Taiwan itself. It therefore turned out to be a journey of discovery for me during a week-long visit to the island as part of a delegation of Asian journalists.