Mr P.V. Narasimha Rao, despite his appointments with various city courts, has presented a grateful nation with a novel purporting to diagnose the national malaise. And Mr V.P. Singh, when not putting disparate coalitions together, is a furious and energetic painter eager to exhibit his talent. (Mr I.K. Gujral regularly quotes Ghalib and Faiz at CTBT-type seminars at the India International Centre, but, mercifully, he has spared us his own flirtations with the muse.)
Alas, our joy must remain short-lived. Atalji's poetry though well-intentioned and frequently rousing is considered by serious Hindi poets as embarrassing, and if he were not as eminent as he is, he would have difficulty finding a publisher. PVNR's much-heralded fictional foray encompasses banality and verbosity and presumptuous preaching in equal measure, and he too, had he not been a former PM, would have a desk-full of rejection slips. Vishwanath Pratapji's brush strokes may calm his nerves and yield therapeutic benefits for the patient; unfortunately they fall into the category of the rich, bored wife dabbling with paint and colour on free afternoons.
I hope my mild critique will not deter other politicos with time on their hands from assorted cerebral pursuits. If our political masters develop tastes besides defection and "illegal gratification", etc, Indian democracy will be qualitatively richer. Who knows in the next millennium, the benches of the Lok Sabha might throw up a Jnanpith or Booker Prize winner. In the meantime, however, a harassed electorate could in all fairness request its rulers to put poems under the pillow, fictions in a Godrej almirah (to avoid unauthorised leaks!) and paintings in a garage.
