The flavour of the season: Mango!

I had sworn I wouldn’t write on politics ever again on my blog but I’m thrilled to eat my words now that Aam Admi Party has given both the major political parties a licking they’re unlikely to forget as long as they live, in the Delhi Assembly polls. And just when you thought it couldn’t get more bizarre, we now have all 3 parties holding the door open for one another to form the government. If all that the AAP has managed to do is to civilize the Congress and BJP whose high-pitched snarling has made this pre-poll season one of the dirtiest ever in living memory, it’s worth it. Serendipity couldn’t be sweeter. The BJP and Congress are now referring to each other as (get this!) “friends”, “my good friend”, “my colleague who I hold in high esteem” (insert joke here) and other such wonderful sobriquets. On television channels: the same television channels, the same anchors (who used every ounce of their own lung power to keep the two parties straining on their leashes, in their corners), the same TV audience whose dinner was ruined night after night by these same “friends” who behaved like they’d forgotten to take their anti-psychotic medication before coming out in public.

The most curious outcome of AAP’s win is this new found romance that is amusing the hell out of news anchors and viewers alike. From being a warring couple who couldn’t agree on anything, the two parties now can’t seem to disagree on anything. And they’ve teamed up to try and rush the Lokpal Bill through as well. All this is rip-roaringly funny of course. But the funniest of all is the position that the “mango men” find themselves in; when you make your bed, you have to lie in it. They remind me of a stunned guy with the deer-caught-in-headlights look, suddenly pushed out on stage from behind the curtain before the actual play starts. And the newly married couple (Congress and BJP) are like the real actors who can’t go out there and pull him back. But they can’t come out on stage and begin their play either. The guy who is on stage has gone into deep freeze. The spotlight is on him. The audience is cheering wildly. But the audience is equally confused and scratching its collective head (“Tell me again, what exactly is the guy doing?”) So, nobody knows what to do. Everyone is waiting to see who blinks first. There has been an election but nobody wants to rule, everyone wants to sit on the bench, so there’s no one in the driver’s seat.

This has to be the best make-it-up-as-you-go story.