Fading Sindoor

your-face smarmyness of Vasant Kunj buried it under heaps of oblivion. A BJP fastness of solid middle class support—the air-hostess neighbour works with Indian Airlines not Jetair; the ubiquitous bank manager is a dyed-in-the-wool SBI rep not a twentysome-thing Citibank executive—hemmed in by the Marxists of JNU on one side and the eclectic Jat-Gujjar-Dalit-Madrasi mix of Munirka village on the other. Stop panicking, this pop socio-demographic profile does have a point. It is this: Sushma Swaraj's welcome was but a pale shadow of that meted out to BJP worthies last time around. Nearly an hour before her impending arrival, party activists were going beserk in close proximity to an array of microphones, egging a somnambulistic Sunday morning citizenry on to the streets—yourSISTERhascometomeet-youSushmaBehnishereplease-COMEOUTNOWandwelcomeherPlease...."

It didn't really work. The buildings disgorged their occupants in dribs and drabs. My neighbour, who stuck his chest out and talked of nothing else but our "nuclear arsenal" for weeks after Pokhran II, didn't even make it to his balcony. More ominously for the BJP, if you will forgive the dialectical digression, it is the economic underclass—comprising Munirka's army of jhadu-pon-chabais —which is seething with discontent at the spiralling cost of living. And these are the women who used to tell me "Sushmaji" was their ideal woman because she worked outside the house but never forgot to wear her sindoor (vermillion mark).