50 Things We Don't Need

Vajpayee’s Poetry

SCRATCH an Indian worth his salt. Chances are you will find a poet who’s itching to burst forth into pentameters of pain or pleasure. But since every Bharatiya bloke isn’t a Prime Minister, he’d have to make do without the kind of play that Atal Behari Vajpayee’s mushy, meandering madrigals—his much-hyped ‘ekyavan kavitayen’—get in the media. The PM’s puffy paeans to pacifism and patriotic pride sound pleasant enough to the naked ear, but to discerning minds—and evolved tastes—they can only come across as verse that is singularly devoid of substance—and worse. The line that separates profundity from piffle is dangerously thin; our neta, the man who’s honed pregnant pauses into a fine art, doesn’t seem to know where to draw it. Vajpayee’s poems are much like his prime ministership: all style and virtually no impact. His I-have-miles-togo-before-I-sleep and mera-desh-mahaan brand of poetry, to borrow from Dorothy Parker, runs the entire gamut of emotions from A to B. Indeed. The Prime Minister would do the nation a world of good if he concentrated on putting some zing into the task of governance and went a little easy on the iambic inanities.

Subservient Babu

THOSE safari suits of sycophancy, bending the bureaucratic steel frame on jelly-like spinal chords, replacing integrity with an unctuous "yes minister", genuflecting to successive ‘feudal democrats’, from Indira to Narasimha Rao. Babus were once Nehru’s dream. Today they are too civil to be civil servants.

Prohibition

THE merry waltz’s starting to get our spirits down. First the sociological and feminist arguments are trotted out, then the voters are hoodwinked with promises of an alcohol-free utopia. A few months later , a new bootlegging industry takes root, the exchequer dries up and we are back to square one.

More Television Channels

AT last count, there were 45 channels jostling for mindspace over our skies. By the time this gets into print, five more could be joining the race, adding up to a nice round figure of 50. Choice is fun, so is channel-surfing. But when all you get is more of the same, it’s time to stop. For God’s sake!

Regional Chauvinism

DOWN with India, up with Uttaranchal, Vananchal, greater Tamil pride, Kannada self-government, Kayastha kinship, not to mention Naya Bharat’s cow belt czars. Civilisations will clash in the new millennium. "Where are you from?" is no longer a simple query, it’s a declaration of war

Jayalalitha

"I hate being bullied or browbeaten. The only way to get anything done from me is to cajole me, pamper me and talk to me softly," wrote Amma with heart-wrenching literary flourish years ago. Ha, you’d be entitled to harrumph if you were poor old Atal Behari Vajpayee! Or any other reasonable, peace-loving citizen for that matter. Since the 12th Lok Sabha was constituted, the Lady from Poes Garden has kept the entire political class on the edge with her ear-splitting tantrums. And atrocious manners...just ask George Fernandes who put all his defence worries and activist passions on hold and spent the better part of last week seeking an audience with her. Is it too much to ask that she go on a well-deserved sabbatical for a year? Perhaps to take a creative writing course and embark on the next instalment of her autobiography.

Agony Aunts

WHETHER it’s incest in Ghaziabad, sibling romance in Thrissur, serial-killer-looking-for-love in Patna, agony aunts dish out new age wisdom gleaned from pavement paperbacks. A vast class difference yawns: cocktails and crisps are advised for the distressed Guntur housewife.

Canned Laughter

CORNED beef. Chicken soup. Tomato puree. Canned laughter.The procedure is almost the same for all these. You take it out, reheat it and lump the stuff. The first three, if one beats the expiry date, is largely edible. The fourth is not. Apparently the canned laughter used in Indian sitcoms has been doing the rounds for a decade.

TV Antaksharis

THE great Indian family unifier. Addresses every occasion from Independence Day to Holi.Raksha Bandhan to Diwali. Annu Kapoor and Pallavi Joshi’s show on Zee is the undeniable auntie of all antaksharis. Nephews and nieces on other channels are far too many to contemplate.

Plastic Bags

YOU have to be a blind votary of the throwaway culture not to notice its seamy side.Plastic bags never die. So they’ve begun to clog our lives in ways that are becoming too difficult to contain. This is a collective wake-up call: if we don’t do something post-haste, it could be too late.

Black Cats

THINK about it, these cats have nothing special about them. At best, they are (hopefully) agile cops without a paunch who can (hopefully) shoot on target. They also abuse well. That possibly makes them the fittest cops around. But they are the biggest pain in the neck—after politicians, that is. Of course, all play (life in the shadows of Indian politicians, foreign junkets, shop till you drop) and little real work makes them very dull boys. So they come up with such hare-brained ideas as closing the Norway-Sweden border when Rajiv Gandhi was in Stockholm or shutting off the Davos-Zurich Road when P.V. Narasimha Rao was driving through in Switzerland. (They were rebuffed soundly by flabbergasted authorities in both these countries.) Then hear them abuse the citizenry. Hear, for example, the choicest four-letter words that securitymen in Jyoti Basu’s raucous 13-car convoy shower on Calcuttans remotely getting in the apparatchik’s way every day. Even India’s best known bhadralok is a mute spectator. VIP security is a happy racket: politicians get the airs, the cops-in-the-shadows get a good life, and we tolerate the nonsense. Blame it on our feudal genes.

Phoney Crooners

WE love music. But who digs the noise it makes these days? Dump the ragas. It’s the era of Raags and her tuneless tribe. The swelling ranks of Indipop exponents—from Bali Brahmbhat to Nitin Bali—could give croaking frogs on a rainy day a massive, confidence-shattering complex. Sadly, the recording industry thinks otherwise. It’s a free-for-all country after all.

Governors

GOVERNORS are viceroys for New Delhi’s elected Raj. The Congress, of course, started it all. The BJP-led government is carrying on down the same road. Even modern India’s great democratic hope, Nehru, used the office of the governor to dismiss the world’s first-ever elected Communist government in Kerala. Romesh Bhandari sabotages BJP game-plans, S.S. Bhandari unabashedly swings the

Pseudos

BAN religion, shout the jho-lawallas. Ban the minorities, yell the knickerwallas. The pseudo factor rises, silencing debate. Nuance is out, you must be either ‘for’ or ‘against’ in this deafening dialogue of the damned. Soon the moderate middle ground won’t hold.

Morality Cops

SELF-styled gatekeepers of Indian culture. Hawkers of fictionalised sanskriti, shadowboxing with the phantoms of alien invasion. No kissing, it’s too western, says Pramod Navalkar. No skirts to school, says Delhi’s health minister Harsh Vardhan, if you want to escape malaria! And definitely no play titled Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy. Ban or burn anything that threatens the holy cows of convention. The thought police creates an India that doesn’t exist, beyond the prurient imaginings of middle class morality.

Sansad Samachar

IF DD News doesn’t kill you with boredom, Sansad Samachar, read by disinterested, constipated newsreaders, sure does. It records the lowest TRPs among all prime-time shows. But who cares? The public needs to be educated about parliamentary polemics. The attempt to inflict SS on a viewer settling down to a hard day’s night suggests a strange streak of sadism.

Govinda’s Wardrobe

JEETENDRA is close to being history. Thankfully, so are his white shoes. Unfortunately, while Jeetu ran amuck on his feet, Govinda leaves his mind out when he dons his designer wear. Red shirt, yellow pants as in Coolie No. 1. Or the newspaper number in Gambler. Or multiple sunglasses. Bizarre, bewildering, baffling.

Anorexics

A fallout of the beauty and fashion mania. It first affects the mind and then batters the body.Superthin structures chiselled not by hunger but by an obsession. And obsession with one’s body. Do anorexics realise that ultra-slim bodies are out? Recently, a fashion mag refused to print pictures of

English Theatre

NO problem with the language. It’s now pretty much a part of our setting, but the themes are too way out. High time India’s English Theatre grew out of the shadow of the Neil Simons and The David Mamets and embraced Mahesh Dattani and Manjula Padmanabhan. It’s simple: speak the people’s lingo or perish.

Voice Mail

TALK is cheap. So are voicemails in office phones in India.Thanks to Sam Pitroda and his ilk, getting a number is no big deal any longer. But getting to the person you want to talk to is a tough task. Real operators are infra-dig, so blame it on the ubiquitous, brickwall-like voicemail in offices. They can drive you crazy, they truly can.

Fake Godmen

THEY tout the virtues of spartan living but think nothing of speeding away in a Mercedes Benz to sylvan holiday spots. Like Satya Sai Baba often does. He can produce Rolex watches, no less, out of thin air. Just as ostentatious is Balagangadharnath Swami, who drives around in a flashy BMW. He could swing difficult deals for his disciples when H.D. Deve Gowda was chief minister and then Prime Minister. Such are the ways of our Gods.

Bhatt Inc.

FOR every if, there are many Bhatts. Two generations of movie buffs have been subjected to celluloid tales of the exploits—and sexploits—of the brood. From Vijay Bhatt to Pooja Bhatt via Mahesh, Mukesh and now, Vikram. No full stops here!

Autorickshaws

WHO’S worse—the uncouth drivers or their back-breaking machines? Tough choice. He’s a terror on the road. You can’t force him to take you anywhere you like: the destination must suit his convenience. Then, his meter, rigged massively, could beat Ben Johnson hands down. If you factor in the cost in terms of your rattled bones, choked lungs, watering eyes, it is the worst ride you can ever have. Without any workable alternatives, these three-wheeled monsters have almost become a necessary evil.There is no way these rickety, poison-hissing vehicles can drive the nation into the 21st century. What our cities need are efficient transport systems that can bear the load of a growing population.

Dynasty

NOW, there’s probably nothing wrong in wanting to step into daddy’s, not to mention grandpa’s shoes, but proving one’s credentials on the basis of the right DNA speaks of a distinct lack of imagination. Perhaps this is a South Asian thing, not just the House of Nehru, but the Bhuttos, and Bandaranaikes have created the first ever "dynastic democracy". Dynasticism pervades all segments of public life: politics, cricket, tennis, literature, music, bureaucracy, law and even the underworld. Whatever happened to the fine ideals of self-made men and women, struggling from obscurity to fame on the basis of grit and talent? Here’s what we submit: the caste system should be turned upside down, inside out. It should be illegal to take up any profession pursued by either parent.

Nuclear Patriotism

A TNT-powered fission bomb of nuclear pride broods over the Mahatma’s land. Chests bared and fists clenched, the nuclear patriots claim their place under the mushroom cloud. Radioactivity is an elixir. Patriotism is testosterone, a Bharatiya war-gasm, not meant for wimps. Forget all the wishy washy stuff about pride in a literate and healthy populace: "Tameez se baat karo ab ham nuclear hain," goes the war cry. We wonder why loving the country can’t be more peaceful.

Non-Retiring Men

FOR evidence look at Russi Mody, T.N. Seshan and Amitabh Bachchan. Does Mody fade into an ex-corporate sunset? No, he stands for election (and gets routed). Does Seshan, the great middle class hope, become a sagacious elder statesman? No, he anchors talk-shows and expounds self-righteously on everything that’s wrong with everything. Does AB become cinematic history? No, he stars in a queue of flops.

Butter Chicken

IN Ludhiana, or elsewhere, it’s a terrible thing, arguably the nastiest inflicted by Punjabis on the world. A mere hundred-odd kilometres from Delhi where wondrous burras and kebabs were created by Mughlai chefs was manufactured this monstrosity of Punjabi rustic reductionism: a tandoori chicken flung into a tomato curry. Insult to both man and fowl.

Pre-School Exams

WHAT happened to Peter Pan? He’s sitting for his exams, his laughing innocence drowned. Three- and-four-year-olds outswot each other in competition that starts cruelly early.

Remixes

REVISED, recycled, reeking of the past. Not a single hum from way back when has escaped the remix rajas. Shweta Shet-ty’s Purda hai Purda, Apache Indian’s Choli ke Peeche, numerous singers rehashing Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram and Alisha Chinai with Om Namah Shivai set to disco. Bally Sagoo’s Chura Liya is now the catchline of THE rhythm robbers. Hear today, it’s yesterday once more.

Moody’s

WE don’ need no Moody blues, we’ve got the bomb it turns us cool, our economy’s real sound an’ strong an’ one day, Moody’s you’re gonna be horribly wrong. First this discredited credit rating agency burnt its fingers in Asia, then it panicked and downgraded all those near enough the former Tigers to catch the disease, now it’s dawdling about Japan. Given volatile economies, it’s bound to get things wrong again.

Partisan Historians

AKBAR was a 16th century Nehruvian, says the Left. Evil Muslim rulers have exploited good BJP voters through the ages, says the Right. One set of ideologues vie with another and the young don’t get their own history. Instead, they get political manifestos, with competing orthodoxies of "class struggle" or "Hindu revival", written either by irreligious Marxists or religious Hindus. The past was fun, when did it become ideological?

Official Secrets Act

EVERYTHING’S official about this open secret: it’s a classic smokescreen which has allowed rulers to conceal their bunglings from the public. Decades-old files remain locked in musty archives. Information is at a premium as students and researchers scrounge for the scraps the Establishment will grudgingly yield. The demand for the right to information is gathering momentum but the anachronistic Officials Secrets Act continues to obfuscate and impede.

Cricket Commentators

ALL of us who grew up on the silken elegance of Berry Sarba-dhikary and A.F.S. Talyarkhan, cannot help cringe at the resounding cliches and vapid garrulity of the new lot of television-talkers. Time was when AIR’s ball-by-ball commentary kept us glued to transistors. The new soundbyte-driven horde end up saying nothing.

I & B

THIS ministry outlived its usefulness long before Sushma Swaraj weighed in. Who needs a Goebbelsian administrative entity in an "independent" democracy anyway? I&B in the age of the information superhighway is redundant. Especially if it’s headed by a lady who thinks nothing of launching into a tirade about "autonomy with accountability" every time CEO S.S. Gill blows his nose.

Hinglish

THEEK hai, yaar, what does it matter if there’s no lingo-shingo left anymore? Humko Binnie’s Mangta! Ads are the vehicle of Hinglish and Shobha De is its queen. In the ’50s, intell types spoke with grammar-shammar and all, yaar. But now giving it those ones is the thing. So what if it’s the end of expressive articulation and all that lafda, yaar. Let’s make hungama!

Beauty Contest

BEAUTY, we have heard, lies in the eye of the beholder. So why these Darwinian contests of natural attributes? The Beauty Myth oppresses generations of young things as they strive for firm breasts and waspish waists. Silicone boobs, slimming pills, age-defying complexes proliferate.

MEA

POKHRAN II was the chance. South Block could have silenced all opposition by lofty policyspeak. Instead, what? A stunned trance, a reluctance to rise above petty debate. About time to turn MEA into an adjunct of the Commerce ministry, let it bring in foreign investment if it can’t make policy.

Sensex

SHE’S as sensitive and touchy as a heart in need of a pacemaker. The smallest sneeze, the slightest exhaustion leads to frantic waves in the electrocardiogram of the business community. No finance minister has ever understood her. Utilised by some and worshipped by all, the Grand Old Lady of Dalal Street may have to retire soon.

Political Correctness

MAKING a joke? Stop. You could be arrested for sexual harassment. Going on holiday? Don’t. You could be endangering the dying forests.Keeping a pet? Never. You may be exploiting dumb animals. Feminists insist on an apology after every ad, environmentalists look endangered at the drop of a coffee cup.

Porn Mags

TAKE a fat hero, a heroine bursting at the seams, roll them in the haystack, interpolate some dimly-lit wobbly footage from phoren blue movies and voila! you get an Indian porn with names like Kacchi Jawani.Desi porn is embarrassing even to those loyal to page 28 of The

Socialist Claptrap

THE bleeding-heart liberals and poverty mongers may have meant well at some point in their pinko lives but now they only instigate labour against management, sour industrial relations and destroy work culture. Look at Jyoti Basu’s Bengal and shiver. A haunted industrial wasteland, the leftover baggage of 90s India, polluted cities, locked out factories, socialist rhetoric where there should be food and jobs. Spurious swadeshi of the saffron men is part of the same intellectual poverty. The BJP’s swadeshi is a bad yarn too.

Gas Bags

THE kings of newsprint and founts of soundbytes. Whether disuniting United Fronts, going on grape-and-avocado fasts, or deifying the legacy of Rajiv Gandhi, these are the garrulous hangers-on in the media and outside, prophesying when there’s nothing left to prophesy, stating what’s already been stated sometime in B.C. Their credibility dives as the verbiage swells, on and on. Theirs are the unnecessary profundities of the congenitally conversational.