The Spanish decided to explore the world and build ever larger ships in the 15th century and were rewarded in the next few centuries for their troubles. The Dutch and the British realised that they were culinary barbarians and needed to get some spice in their civilization. The Americans decided to, well what can you expect, make bombs. These were course changing decisions for nations.
Now, all of us at some point or the other have heard, and oft repeated, that the 21st century will be India’s. (China? Err... they are disqualified from this Inter-national domination Olympics because they misreport their GDP).
With my unquestioned and unparalleled knowledge of international diplomacy, politics and cricket I submit, Ladies and Gentlemen, that the 21st century will not be dominated by India.
Before you jingoistic patriots renew your call for hanging Mr. Kasab from Faridkot and invading Pakistan allow me to elaborate.
The grave moment, the ‘time’ so to say for India was in March 2009. This was the month when India threw away the opportunity for securing the well-being of future generations of Indians, of world dominion.
This was the month when Mr. Palaniappan Chidambaram (PC, may our children forgive him) decided that for our society entertainment was more important than enterprise, hard-work and opportunity. This was the month when PC decided that the General Elections (GE) were more important than the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Now, I am the first one to admit that the Indian GE is the most evolved, complicated, and involved; is the grandest in scale, has the largest cast and is the most entertaining art form ever developed by any civilization in history. And PC being a literate South Indian is a patron of high art. Note: A South Indian art patron is one who wears leather chappals and attends all sorts of concerts in Ravindra Bharati, a north Indian art patron is one who donates millions for art but largely stays away from it after that, although the North Indian art patron is prone to lobbing gleaming Nike sneakers at the South Indian art Patron at times. Being a North Indian Art patron (minus the millions), married to a South Indian art patron, I advice all to keep these two types of patrons as far away from each other as possible.
Getting back to the bailiwick of this post, it is all very good to promote art and drama (GE). But if you noticed the common thread in all the decisions taken by nations who have gone on to dominate the world is that they were difficult decisions.
The Spanish gave up leisurely baths for salt-water open-air toilets on their way to the Americas. The Dutch and the British actually started cooking their food because of the spices they got from faraways. The Americans built WMDs on cash, without using their credit cards!
And what do we do? We chose GE over the IPL- the very epitome of a world-dominating India, the emblem of India’s entrepreneurship, the symbol of India’s supremacy over all else. (Does Pakistan have a PPL, no Sir they don’t, China likewise, no CPL only).
To those who still think that what PC did was right let me compare the cast in the GE and IPL.
1. Manmohan V/s Sachin: Sachin wins it hands down. Especially in the voice department. Admittedly the Prime Minister has a booming baritone, but can he beat the Sachin special ‘Visa Power: Go get it’ with his ‘Advaniji greenflagged Kandahar terrorists’. The PM hasn’t even got a wax statue in congress headquarters, forget about Madame (ouch, unintentional!) Tussauds. And by the way do you know Manmohan’s phone number? We all know Sachin’s.
2. Sonia V/s Shilpa: You be the judge. HUH. Nobody has invited Sonia even to Big Boss.
3. Mamata V/s Preity: Go ask Ratan Tata.
4. Karat Parivar V/s Harbhajan: While the Karat Parivar is steadfast in its ideology and intellectual integrity, nobody in the country can be smarter and more upright than Harbhajan, who is the only one to know what should be done with people as diverse as break-dancing mallus and aussie fishermen.
5. Narendra V/s Lalit: Lalit, ah! that lisp. Those pink ties.
6. Rahul V/s Rahul: This is a tough one. One doesn’t want to be PM, the other captaincy. But giving up the captaincy is a bigger sacrifice anyday.
7. Laloo V/s Entire Kolkata Night Riders Team: The KKR team will easily lose more matches than Laloo-Paswan combine will lose seats in Bihar.
8. Buta Singh V/s VVS Laxman: At least VVS gets to travel to South Africa.
9. Mayawati V/s Sreesanth: Both pretend to represent the repressed, but Sreesanth is definitely the one representing the ‘slapped’.
10. Pawar V/s well... hmm... err... Pawar: Now we all know that Sharad Pawar wants to be PM, but it will be like Bill Clinton on a lecture series post Presidentship as Pawar has already been the President of BCCI.
11. Varun V/s Dhoni:
two men look through the same bars,
one at the mud below, the other at the stars.
Wouldn’t it have been better if instead of shifting the IPL to South Africa, PC would have shifted the GE to South Africa. In fact South Africa had its own Elections in April and it would have definitely led to synergistic cost optimization if the Indian GE was also outsourced to SA. I do not see too drastic a fall in the quality of outcome as the South Africans have elected a great leader medalled with sex scandals and corruption. Do we really expect to beat that!
Tailpiece: someone told me yesterday that the Sri Lankan government is the only one in the world that is bent upon destroying Tigers.
Tip of the Tailpiece: It seems Mr. Zardari told all those who still listen to him that 'India is not a threat to Pakistan'. If India is not a threat to Pakistan then Prince Charles is the Queen of England.
