Lit fests are following one after the other. They play a key role in our lifestyle, make our great authors weep and their mothers eligible for national awards, according to V Gangadhar
The entire India was occupied with the visit of the Obama couple and their wonderful interaction with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Every single ministry worked overtime to keep the visit going at full stretch. Bureaucrats lost sleep, Ministers stood on their toes and well, India was wide awake all the 24 hours.
So busy was India that no one noted the departure of the sacked foreign secretary, Sujata Singh. It was so slickly handled that only the Prime Minister and the incoming Foreign Secretary knew this. Even Sujata Singh did not know she was out and learnt about it only when she could not open her cupboards, lockers or unlock her computer. It was the ultimate in high level secrecy which hit the other departments hard.
The worst-hit was the Home Ministry under Rajnath Singh. The multiple Intelligence agencies under him like RAW and COOKED were stunned. Mind you, it was not about something which happened in Pakistan or the US. The Foreign Secretary was in this minute but out the next and the Intelligence departments knew nothing about it. Rajnath Singh was stunned. What is the use of being No 2 in the Cabinet? If the Home Minister was not privy to such secrets, how can he function? He called for an urgent meeting of his Intelligence agencies to assess their views on the great miss-out.
One Agency director lamented that the agencies lacked co-ordination. “We missed out on the names for the National Awards because they came late. Had this not happened, our list would have had more ‘meat’ in it. I am sorry, I mean more ‘masala’ in it”? “How?” asked the Minister.
Explained the agency director. “Sir, there is some criticism that our recommendations for the national honours list are heavily influenced by the RSS and the Bajrang Dal. If the process had speeded up we could have avoided this and made the awards more people- oriented. For instance we would have included the name of writer V.S. Naipaul’s mother for a posthumous Padma Vibhushan and the world would have applauded us. I mean, more than all the ‘Lit Fests” which are sprouting out everywhere.”
The other Intelligence agency directors were puzzled. “How is that?” they wanted to know. “Do you know it was because of his mother that Naipaul stopped writing about India? Replied the Agency director, “His earlier books on India ‘The Area of Darknesss’, ‘India, the Wounded Civilization’ and the rest created a feeling of revulsion because they focused only on Indians defecating habits and the odour of shit everywhere in India. Even his mother could not bear this anymore. At Trinidad, mother used the only Hindi word she knew to chastise son VIdya, “Beta, please leave India to the Indians.” I had to obey her and this was when my books had became popular in the west. I know how much Indians admired their mothers and this would have induced some of the best Bollywood film makers to make a film on my mother. It would have been full of wonderful episodes from her life.”
Rajnath Singh nodded. “I agree with you. If the Agencies had been more alert we could have made a moving film on Naipaulji. Imagine such a film with Bachchanji as Amitabh and Jayaji as his mother, a remarkable casting coup!” which we missed out”
(V Gangadhar writes satire, a special form of humour. Incidents and anecdotes in his column are purely imaginary)
