An open letter to Anna

Dear Anna

We are here right now. 65 years after democracy came to us, I may add – On a platter, we are right where we started - Protests forming what they call a second fight for independence.

Look around you…WE ARE FREE…In as much as a modern society can be without completely descending to anarchy. We are free. That freedom is reflected in the protests of the civil society, in the voices that hit you from the television sets, when you see people take to the streets and wave slogans and banners, when you see people drive on the wrong side of the road, when you hear of elected representatives raping minor girls and poor people staying anywhere that they fancy.

Tell me, where else in the world would you find a country more independent.
Anna, please note that curbing of corruption has to start with the definition of corruption. Corruption and I am only assuming here, in the present context is ‘Using of one’s office for personal advancement over public interest in a way that is illegal and unconstitutional’.

(I do not know if that is the right definition. I don’t know what the Indian constitution or the Indian Government says about it…but nor do at least a billion of my compatriots. I say Anna, I am the majority.)

However, going back….If that is (or at least comes close to) what corruption is, then there are any number of bodies that have been instituted by state or center to fight it. There is the CVC, the Vigilance cells in each large body, the ACB etc etc that have been set up to do exactly that. In fact you have the entire Police department, that stalwart of nepotism and petty bibery, which has been there for donkey’s years for crying out loud.

I say, Anna, and I say it in a tone that represents request - Shouldn’t we first run a movement that fights for the effective implementation of policy! Shouldn’t we make the existing bodies effective rather than imposing yet another huge organization with its own bureaucracy? Shouldn’t we insist that the legal system be galvanized into doing what you are trying to take in your own hands?

Annaji, look around; there are people around you who are not exactly the stuff that idols are made of. Of course there are guys who mean well and are above personal reproach, but hey, I don’t wanna take names, there are a few who may have Swiss accounts as well. Its political Anna and you know it.

Tell me Anna, what are the odds of you and your all India movement standing for elections, coming to power and then raising this issue?

That would be the constitutional way really. That would be the victoriously right way….That would be the way to go rather than give soaring TRP to unscrupulous channels, who exist because of people like you Anna. They make your mind up for you, no escape.
Imagine, if you got a true majority in the house, you wouldn’t have to fight on the streets…You could actually do this without the Tamasha…

But for that Anna, this needs to be a truly mass thing. A thing that almost ensures you a walkover in a democratic process. Are you sure of getting that Anna? Are you really sure this is a mass movement?

If you are, then rest assured I will vote for you….I love this country and for years if we have given buffoons the chance to be leaders, we may as well give a few years to you…..Let you institute your Civil Society Government with your Jan Lokpal. Let’s spend a few thousand crores more on salaries and scrubbed bathroom floors. Anna, let’s have you as the Prime Minister.

Till then Anna…just a small reminder – Years back a society not as free as ours rose up in protest. They were butchered with tanks in a picturesque square that represented people power.

Anna….We are Indian…Thank God for small mercies

Warm Regards

Yahoo...Suku Suku

In the heart of political sensationalism and pouring rains, there was an incident of great import to people like me. The passing away of Shammi Kapoor was and will be a matter of sadness for me and millions of his fans elsewhere.
His contribution to coming of age is great. Greater than what Anna is doing and great than what Manmohan uncle unleashed in the 90s. Back in the 60s, before I was born, before my parents were married, there was this man…Fat, obnoxious and very good looking who went to town with his swagger and sexuality. In the days of Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and Dilip Kumar, here was a guy who was unabashedly different….extremely unconventional….very loud…very funny…..

He turned his lack of dance skills into a fine art, he made his stocky frame break into pieces, negating his fat with constant random motion…He made rock n roll mix with Bhangra…Desi style and he made his leading ladies go weak in their knees with one ill timed scream …..Yahoo….

I believe he gifted us Mohammed Rafi…in as much as Rajesh Khanna did Kishore Kumar.
When we were growing up, in college, up near and close with the opposite sex for the first time, it was their jugalbandi that gave us confidence. Sitting on the college steps belting out ‘Diwana Mujhsa Nahi’ with gullible feminine eyes looking at us, we so wanted to be him. We wanted to drive an outsized American car on thin mountain roads with brooks flowing by. We wanted to play drums the way that made our hair spray all over the place and dance the way that only un danced the floor…”Baar Baar Dekho Hazaar Baar Dekho” was pretty much the story of my first girlfriend. She was sucker to fall for it and I was not even a half decent singer.

And then there was the inevitably urbane and obviously sophisticated Sharmila in Kashmir Ki Kali…in a Kashmiri villagers dress (no less)….being romanced by a large if good looking man who couldn’t stand straight. He jumped into the Daal Lake and lip synched with passion that lent Mr Rafi a whole new dimension altogether…..An entire generation after the 60s, in the late 80s, Shammi Kapoor was still dictating the way we thought of romance.

It was not about candle lit dinners and long drives….It was that and much more. If the object passion showed too many nakhras even after the songs and the dinners and the long drives….you just did things the Shammi Kapoor way …… Yahoooo

It was not only when he was romancing them, but also when he was being romanced. His is the image that comes to mind when one thinks about a archetypal spoilt brat giving a tough time to his dearly beloved for some flaky reason or the other…So when Asha Parekh of the big behind and bigger eyes fame, sang Sona Re to a pouting Shammi Kapoor, we youngsters went into raptures…’that’s exactly how we want our GFs to behave’ ….. It was wow time. In a country where men never cried or pouted, it was Shammi’s pout and ready tears and general persona that defined the birth of the Indian Metrosexual. A persona that was not related to the overriding problems of the Indian diaspora, but a man who was and will be forever a symbol of urbane sophistication that is however rough around the edges….that can play a guitar and a drum and scream out loud when cornered …Yahoooooo. And this long before the 1990s when the word in question came into being.
Shammi Kapoor, Good morning. You are as alive as you were in the 60s. We are fast approaching the middle years and yet your voice still resonates in our ears and reverberates around the heart walls. Yahoo….Shammi (Once born…never dead)