Jhumlasana, Hanko and Hypotenuse

“Accha, look,” my 11-year old son shouted from the tatami room. I turned back to see him lying supine on a pile of pillows with his head, arms, and legs stretched and dangling down. “Modiji’s yoga pose,” he said. He was doing Jhumlasana, a signature move that was conceived and popularized by Indian PM Modi. Modiji, we all know, performs his stunts on rough, inhospitable terrains such as on rocks and stuff, which is possible only through years and years of practice posing in front of cameras. So, ideally kids shouldn’t be trying those at home, but it has been a tough couple of months for my son. Ever since the coronavirus-related restrictions came into place and the consequent lack of entertainment, he has been restless around the house and frankly quite a handful – riding his RipStik blade inside, playing hoops with a small ball and toy hoop in the bedroom, making a metre-long straw to drink his juice, burning old birthday candles, remodelling his RC cars, and creating his own hip-hop bling jewellery with gem clips, one of which I had to wear on my neck for a few hours while working.

It’s been more than six months since $#it hit the Chinese fan in Wuhan, and almost four months since I started wearing a mask when going out. Back in early February, I remember driving my niece to a concert in Shibuya. On our way, we saw the infamous COVID-19 infected cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, quarantined in Yokohama port while crossing the Rainbow Bridge. Once we reached Shibuya, and after ensuring that my niece was safely inside the concert hall, we whiled away the time by strolling around the district taking in the sights, had coffee and cake at a café crowded with fashionable youth, and later just sat outside the concert place waiting for my niece to come out. The area was bustling as usual with hordes of people, many of them tourists, and mostly young. But one thing stood out. Most of them had masks on. 

This was in early February, as I said earlier. The pandemic was yet to overrun Italy and other European nations. Modiji, the masterstroker was planning to fill up a stadium later in the month for his phrend Trump the Two Dick (an honorary title bestowed on cowshed/stable geniuses; from the Hindi word Dho Lund). In fact, he won’t take out his next masterstroke, the one for saving India’s middle class, for another month and a half. However, based on a titbit of information released strategically in June, we know that Modiji was aware of the COVID-19 pandemic much earlier than anyone else on the face of the earth. Not only that, he had prepared a secret plan to tackle this crisis as early as January. He then secretly buried that plan under a neem tree in his backyard and, as is his wont, shot off a poetic letter to his mom. Neem tree, as per our ancient texts, has magical powers and on full moon days, when Jupiter is near Uranus and you feel the urge, dogs will pee on the tree at the stroke of midnight, imparting special powers on whatever is hidden under it. Anyway, after almost three months of keeping it hidden, Modiji pulled that magically-charged plan out on March 24 at 7:45 pm. That time 7:45, you see, is important. According to numerology, 7 + 4 = 11, and 11 + 5 of course is 16. Now comes the interesting part. 1 + 6… Voila, it’s 7. What comes after 7? Eight, obviously. So, at 8:00 pm on March 24, Modiji came on TV, secret plan in hand, and said “Mitrroon”. The rest, as they say, is history, as the country went into lockdown and slew that virus in 21 days. But, then there is the old Swedish Gir jungle saying, "Modiji hai to Moomin hai (Modiji is Moomin)," or something like that.

Sorry I got carried away by the Indian story. I was planning to write about what has been happening here in Nippon. The Japanese PM, perhaps taking a cue from Modiji, ordered a lockdown here in Japan in April. Well, not exactly “ordered”. Given his boob size, which is nowhere near 56 inches, all PM Abe could do was make a request. “Please try and stay home and do not go out if it is non-essential…”. So, many people kept going to work on crowded trains and buses, because they have to do this very essential thing called pressing a hanko on papers. The hanko is your personal seal. Everything in Japan needs a hanko. You may be tattooing 命 on your butt cheek or you may be buying a smartphone. All the relevant procedures will be completed digitally, but then they’ll print everything out and you have to press your hanko in at least 10 places to make it official. So, in modern, digitally-savvy Japan, workers trudge to offices in the midst of a lockdown to do this extremely “essential” act.

Anyway, we, as a family, decided to practice self-restraint and limited our trips outside to once a week to buy stuff. We switched from shopping at different neighbourhood shops to shopping at a big supermarket a few kilometres away. In the first week of lockdown, the place was crowded with people buying up things, and the checkout queue snaked around inside the store with waiting time of up to an hour. There I was, standing in a queue, thinking whether I should fart loudly if I have to cough for some reason, when a lady in the adjacent queue coughed. I immediately began making calculations – we are about two feet apart; she is four and a half feet tall; I am six feet; How do you find the frikkin’ hypotenuse of a triangle h = 1.5 feet, l = 2 feet? Fortunately, I’ve been teaching my boys and knew the formula for hypotenuse, ⇃(h² + l²)  i.e.  = 2.5 feet. Now, convert it…c'mon... my mind raced… 1 foot is about 30cm. Shit, the government said a minimum of one metre in social distancing and this is only about 75cm. Does the coronavirus float up like helium? Does it know about government guidelines and refrain from attacking sideways? I was not sure. Fortunately, going against Murphy’s law, my line moved and I heaved a sigh of relief. The next week was pretty much the same, but the shop restricted entry to one person from a family or group. And by the fourth week, nobody cared (except for masks and some social distancing). 

Right now, things seem to be under control. However, many new cases are being traced to hostess clubs, pointing to some guys losing control. Well, can’t help it, as they have been atmanirbhar (self-reliant) strokers for a while now. Meanwhile, nobody seems to know how this is all going to end. I too don’t know how to end this rant other than by chanting Go Corona, Go! 

Random Ramblings

My ancestor was a rishi and not some ape as I believed all along. This I learned during a visit to GOC for vacation a few months ago. I should thank the honorable MP Satyapal Singh (former HRD minister who used to be responsible for higher education) for opening my eyes. One good thing about me is that I am the questioning type. So, when Mr. Singh said this in the Indian parliament, I immediately decided to do some research of my own. That’s how I am. I don’t blindly believe something when someone tells it, unless of course it comes through WhatsApp asking for "maximum share" or from some website which has words such as “true” or “right” in its name. Then I instinctively know it is true.

The rishi thing turned out to be a pretty watertight theory. Rishis, as we all know, can do anything they want. For instance, they can impregnate pretty damsels with their minds. That’s what I reasoned, because visualizing the other option of rishis fornicating with damsels, which my pervert mind did imagine for a brief period, seemed blasphemous. So, I tried to wipe that image out of my mind and replace it with a rishi getting a lady pregnant just by thinking. #$%&, I can’t get rid of that. A Baba Ramdev-ish rishi having coitus with a damsel, hairs and bodies tangled and stuck together like Velcro, sound of conchs breaking and Acharya Balakrishna complaining of giddiness in the background. “Oh, rishis, forgive me. Don’t curse me. I have no control over my thoughts”.

Anyway, with that doubt about my ancestry settled, I went to sleep, sound in the knowledge that I have gained new old wisdom. Next morning, while washing my face I saw my reflection in the mirror, and wondered how frikkin ugly my ancestral rishi would have been (on the premise that rishis impregnate only pretty damsels).

Thank you, former HRD minister.

The exceptional thing regarding HRD ministers of late is that they’re a treasure trove of ancient wisdom. The new minister Mr. Pokhriyal, recently enlightened some misguided IIT students on how our ancestors built the Rama Setu sea bridge with ancient technology. I hope the IIT curriculum will be changed and kids taught these ancient methods instead of modern stupid engineering.

Speaking of education, I’m appalled that the government is straying from its stated aim of bringing back our ancient wisdom in all realms. Recently, the government offered bridge courses for AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) people to practice modern medicine. Suddenly, a whole bunch of doctors started protesting. I feel these are the wrong docs barking up wrong trees. The government, if it were to follow its own policy, should be offering bridge courses to modern medicine practitioners so that they can use AYUSH remedies. In that way, slowly we can ease out the cancer of modern medicine gnawing away at our nation’s health. There is still time, and we did see some positive signs with the budget papers being brought to the parliament in sacred cloth and all. Next up, no budget papers. Let’s hope next time it’ll be in good old palm leaves and delivered in a chariot.

Continuing with the theme of education, ideas are being floated to change the names of universities to reflect the current mood of the nation. Like changing JNU to MNU (dunno what it stands for except that the name involves Modiji). I think it is OK and any government should be able to change names as they please. The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), for example, could be renamed as NAMUNA (NArendra Modi University of NAutanki). The humongous body of work including television documentaries that he piled up in a short period of time deserves appreciation. Didn’t they make a movie titled “Crocodile Dandi March” with him in the lead? Maybe I’m wrong.

Food – now, this is serious stuff unlike the above drivel. Mallus in Frankfurt were in the news recently protesting against North Indians who prevented them from serving beef. I think mallus are being duplicitous in this matter. These are people who are self-censoring beef and pork out of their menus in resorts up and down the mallu coast to suck up to North Indian tourists. My school reunion was at a resort  in Kumarakom, Kerala that boasted a 150-metre long pool. A typical backwater resort, but not worth the hole they burn in your pocket. They served roti, daal, Chicken Kolhapuri and such stuff! It's preposterous! Forget Frankfurt, you don’t get no beef, no parotta, no kappa, no nothing even in the supposedly free southwestern tip of Faratham nowadays.

Nor is there pork anywhere. Domino’s Pizza used to have pork salami in their menu. That mysteriously disappeared some time ago. I wrote an e-mail to them, but never got a reply. Domino's probably wanted to suck up to a certain community, as they say in the news (or, Muslims, as they are commonly called). Anyway, I’m back in Japan, where a cup of instant noodle contains everything from pork, chicken and beef to things you don’t even want to imagine (Oooh, that image #$%&…..forgive me, my ancestral rishi!) disodium guanylate and autolyzed torula yeast, whatever they are. Bon Appetit.

Scroll Down You Heartless, Type Ahem

Most days I get up in a reasonably neutral mood. Get up, poop, shave, send out some GMs, get the kids up and ready for school, etc. Routine stuff, not necessarily in that order. Well, except for the first one. You have to get up first. Pooping and then getting up would be disastrous. Would like to kick the bucket before reaching that stage. Some days I am a bit cranky, but never once have I woken up in the morning in a euphoric mood. Never have I got up with a “Yay, I’m gonna kick ass today” spirit. Maybe I should get some of that kickass mojo somewhere, keep aside reason and scepticism and try going through the day in false high spirits. Maybe not.

I am also put off by motivational bullshit messages and stories. Especially stories, almost all of which turn out to be fake. Today’s “true” story was about a kid called Robby who played Mozart’s Concerto #21 for his mom who died of cancer. Conveniently, Robby died in the Oklahoma City bombing. Inconveniently, there was no person of that name among the dead. There is some profound hidden message in there from the Lord, which I am supposed to grasp to enrich my life. However, I never understand such messages. I need clear, simple explanations straight up. I am dumb.

For example, during the recent floods in Chennai, you kept seeing messages such as “Save them O God!” or “only God can help them now”. Based on the generally accepted definition of God, it would have been this very being who unleashed this floods on Chennai just some time ago. Why would he now want to save Chennai? For some prayers and offerings? What kind of a psychopath would do such a thing?

Then there’s the “Scroll down if you’re heartless; or type Amen” postings on Facebook with a picture of a child with no limbs or of a pregnant woman who is dying from cancer or a guy with an extra testicle. You see half a million people liking or typing amen. Heartless, I usually scroll down. How does this work? Suppose the picture gets a million amens, will the extra testicle disappear? I have no idea. I am yet to see a picture of a kid with a caption, “thanks to your million amens, this child has now grown back a full set of limbs”.

And, this just in - the Vatican has come out with an announcement saying that Pope Frank has approved a second miracle for Mother T, who is now in line for sainthood. Wow! A second miracle. Apparently, a Brazilian man was cured of multiple brain tumours by Mom T.

Is this reproducible? The Vatican’s benchmark for sainthood appears to be pretty low. If you’re doing a scientific experiment, you have to be able to replicate the results, many times over, for it to gain acceptance. Here, it is just two “miracles,” and you’re a saint. I hope the Vatican comes out with the exact procedure as to how to pray to this lady – go to her church, say some verse a million times, type amen on another cancer patient’s Facebook post, squeeze a goat’s balls, break a coconut … on a goat’s balls, etc. I’m sure people will do all these and more, as long as you give them some kind of guarantee. For instance, if your goat has only one testicle, your survival rate will go down by 25 percentage points, or something like that. But then, that would be science.

“Science is Life,” thus wrote our PM on a digital wall a few months ago in Abu Dhabi, one of the pit stops of his travelling roadshow. It was an excellent thing to say in one of the top non-scientific regions in the world today. He could’ve said “Vedic Science is Life,” but he didn’t. He is shrewd. He was in town recently, almost. The town was “grazed” by him. It was the most disappointing PM visit in my memory because the only good thing during such visits –the roads getting fixed– didn’t happen. He landed at the airport, flew out to a nearby town to meet some religious dudes and flew back and flew out. In between he gave a few minutes on the tarmac to the Chief Honcho and other ministers to discuss the state’s issues while he was walking to the plane. He is a busy man, and he also knows that these pols don’t have their fingers on the pulse of the people.

Because couple of days later, he had lots of spare time to sit down and talk with a person who definitely had his fingers on the pulse of all nations - Google CEO Sundar Pichai. His company comes out with that data every year and this year also the top searched person in India was the porn star Sunny Leone. The throbbing pulse of the nation.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all

 

Garv se Kaho "What?"

Foreigners new to Japan initially find it hard to understand the calendar here. According to the Japanese calendar, this is the 27^th year of the Heisei era, which started in January 1989 when Akihito, became the new emperor following the death of his father Hirohito. Hirohito’s era from 1926 to 1989 is called the Showa era and he is now known as the Showa emperor. This is used officially too, so you should know how to convert from the Gregorian to the Showa (I was born in the Showa era!) or Heisei when filling in your date of birth in some government form.

The Gregorian calendar has the birth of Jesus as the starting point. How did they come up with that date? Don’t ask unnecessary questions. We demand unquestionable faith. Coming to the current era, we, now have a chance to devise a new calendar.

I recently found out that I may not have been proud to be an Indian till 2014. This was revealed by our prime minister, who is now the “greatest leader of the greatest nation on the earth”. That sobriquet, till recently, was owned by whichever douchebag was the president of the USA at that time. So, at some point of time in the past Nixon and GW Bush were the greatest leaders of the “free world”.

Now that mantle has been appropriated by Mr. Modi, if you believe the noise in the Hindu web world. Global leaders are kowtowing to him (though it is our leader who is going around). Everybody is respecting Indians (except maybe Indians). We have reached superpower status where we can project our *#$% into other people’s affairs and get away with it like the USA (we could try Maldives? Maybe not). Canada gave Indians visa on arrival (VOA) status (Don’t try it. It is the other way round. We gave VOA to Canadians). Perhaps if we repeat it enough times all these will come true.

With nothing to be proud of pre-2014, we ought to divide our calendar as BM and AD, i.e. “Before Modi” was elected PM in 2014 (hereinafter “AD 1”), while retaining AD but altering its meaning to Anno Domini Nostri Modi.

“Hey, hey, what about Gandhi? Surely you can be proud of him!” You might ask. Well, what about him? Look at him. The man was walking around in a loincloth. Was it a designer langoti? Was it monogrammed with his initials MKG? In gold? No. I doubt whether the langoti even had the black dots and lines the dhobis put to identify clothes. On the other hand you won’t catch our PM in the same dress twice. Pretty soon he will have the RSS musclemen in designer khaki knickers (made in China).

“How about the Gupta period? Y’know, the Golden Age blah, blah we learned at school”. Stop asking questions. We’ll instruct you on what to learn, do, eat, think, wear, etc. in due course of time. Just follow our lead. The last time we were close to being proud was about 7000 years ago when we had intergalactic space machines and our gurus were doing head transplants. Got it?

So, now I am a proud Indian. Proud of things we are instructed to be proud of. Proud of the fake Macaulay minute of 2-2-1835 in sepia print floating around in the Internet, where he saw a super country when he travelled the length and breadth of India. Did he come down to Trivandrum? If he did, he could have seen my great-great-great grandmother walking nude waist up because it was a great period and feminists were having a “Free the Nipple” campaign of their time, and not because of some crazy caste rules, as the fake historians would make you believe.

(What Macaulay actually said)

There is a right-wing narrative being slowly scripted now, of what a super race we are (were), of how we had invented everything that had to be invented, of how all these foreigners looted us, etc. Some of it may be legit, but quite a bit are based on dodgy historical interpretations and on mythology.

And it is being implemented stealthily and incrementally. A beef ban here, a new history book there, a religious nut in an education board here, a dress code there, a false quote (Macaulay) in social media here, a fake Vivekananda smart-ass riposte to a white man there. It is slowly building up and at some point of time it will reach the critical mass needed to engulf a naïve public who is taught not to think for themselves and not to question authority. The modus operandi is somewhat similar to the right wing in the USA, where the Christian right (in some States) wants the Genesis to be taught as science along with evolution. So, it is possible that in the near future we might be taught there is nothing to be proud of Gandhi, Nehru or Tagore, or that we did the first live television broadcast of a major war thousands of years before CNN brought the Gulf War to the living rooms.

Any which way you look at it, we are screwed.

We will be screwed left, right and centre – by the lame and limp left; by the rabid, rampant right; and the corrupt and clueless centre. And, to rub it in further, we’ll be screwed all over by the corporates, for whom these three exist.

A prime example is Trivandrum. Mr. Modi, the Calendar Divider and the Generous, recently gave a billion dollars to Mongolia, which has a population about the same as Trivandrum district! At the same time, these three groupings (the left, the right and the centre) are falling over each other trying to screw Trivandrum, whether it is over a mass rapid transport system, the Vizhinjam port, a waste management system or any other development whatsoever.

My only hope is that one day Mr. Modi the Generous will throw some spare change our way from the air when he flies over our airspace to some distant land.

 

Paramour of the Nation, Earth Hour, etc.

When you live in what is essentially a police state, clumsily camouflaged in democratic garb, you have to be doubly careful about airing your views. Especially when that police state is slowly but steadily going down the theocratic path, as is happening in India. I think almost all countries are police states to a certain extent. Look at the USA, the biggest “spreader of democracy” in the world. Look at how a black person was shot dead from behind by the police recently in South Carolina. If it had happened in India, there would be big hue and cry about human rights violations, blah, blah by the foreign media. In the USA’s case it is just an officer “executing” his duty.

Well, I’m least bothered about countries whose democracy spreading fervor is largely dependent on access to oil reserves and other self-interest factors. It is the theocracy that is spreading its tentacles in India that has piqued my interest now. Every other day a new swami or swamini comes out of the woodwork with wacko solutions for the problems we face, and not all of them are from the fringe. Some are reigning ministers in the central cabinet. One guy, Baba Ramdev, who was caught cross-dressing once, has a cabinet rank in Haryana. His yoga apparently can cure homosexuality and even AIDS! I hope the Indian government lobbies for a medical Nobel for this guy.

Another guru said we have to make the cow as the mom of the nation. That raises interesting possibilities. We already have a guy as the pop of the nation. Now if a cow is going to be the mom, where does that leave the bull? The paramour of the nation? The bull excrement is hitting the fan and scattering around the nation rapidly. And no one can stop it.

Maharashtra recently banned beef based on questionable interpretations of our religious and cultural traditions. The Aghoris, who could perhaps be considered as the real spiritual guys in India for the way they renounce all worldly things, are said to eat human flesh. They smoke ganja and drink liquor too. They are a part of our culture, whether our globe-trotting, a/c-loving gurus and matas like it or not. An Aghori (harmless in most cases), eating human flesh, can roam around free with his skull and other ghastly paraphernalia, while a Malayali (harmful at times!) in his lungi in Mumbai might end up in jail for five years for eating some heavenly beef ularthiyathu. Go figure.

I hope one day we get a prime minister who is a devotee of an Aghori guru. National weed – Ganja; National flesh – human; National plate – skull.

A few weeks ago, Rinpoche, a close friend, posted a message in our WhatsApp school group asking to turn our lights off for one hour on March 28. Rinpoche, a bleeding heart liberal if ever there was one, always wanting to help the poor, the destitute and the old, posted that with good intentions, because, you guessed it, he is also worried about the environment. He was taking part in a global movement called the “Earth Hour”. This is one of those highfalutin ideas about which I am always sceptical. A group of guys in the developed world get together and do something symbolic accompanied by big hype. Then it becomes a global movement. The resources, not just energy, that these countries consume (waste) is what gets my goat every time I hear such gimmicks. Conceited grandstanding, that’s what it is, by a bunch of people who have wrought more than enough damage around the world through their imperialism and their meddling in other countries’ affairs. Per-capita power consumption in most developed countries are 5 to 10 times that of India. We are already enduring many “earth hours” a day in scheduled and unscheduled power cuts. So, let us know when you are ready to do an Earth Month, or at the very least an Earth Week.

Aisatsu-mawari – In Japan, when you move into a new location, you go around saying hi to your neighbours with a small gift to introduce yourself. A new person taking charge of a company or a department also does something similar by visiting clients and all other departments. This is called aisatsu-mawari. Our prime minister has been on an extended aisatsu-mawari, and at times it seems he is on a permanent aisatsu-mawari. Our man was recently sighted in India preaching to his choir. He said his government was for the poor. Well, we know that, don’t we? All governments are for the poor; i.e. the poor corporates and the poor oligarchs who fund their elections. In his speech, he asked whether it is wrong to think that each citizen should have a house to live in. I don’t doubt his sincerity (if it was a Congress PM, we would have laughed our freakin pants off). However, like his exhortations on toilets (see potties in Gujarat), his track record in tackling homelessness during his 13-year reign in Gujarat is nothing to write home about. Gujarat ranks 6^th by population and 2^nd by percentage of homeless people among the major States. Maybe, he would be better off adopting the Kerala model for everything else other than sucking up to industries and swamis.

 

P.S. In the meantime, back in God’s Own Cakkoos, the railway god appeared to complain that the high priest (our CM) and his coterie are denying him the chance to shower his metro blessings on the people of Trivandrum and Kozhikode. This blog knew that nearly four years ago in 2011 (see monorail, yay!).

In praise of Modi and Shashi Tharoor

In praise of Modi and Shashi Tharoor!? Now, that is one sentence I thought I would never write, not even in my wildest dreams. And believe me, I do have some real wild dreams. I don’t buy into the jingoistic propaganda of Modi and his machinery, and I am more or less disillusioned by Tharoor’s performance as our MP. So, why the praise?

 

In Modi’s case, it is for initiating the dialogue on the issue of filth and for launching the Clean India campaign (though we’ll have to wait and see how it pans out). And in Tharoor’s case, it is for agreeing to cooperate with Modi in that endeavour and praising him for it.

 

That praise, however, did not go down well with the local Congress honchos, who began baying for his blood, and got some consolation when he was removed from the post of party spokesman. These guys are following the tried and trusted practice of the political groupings in Kerala of not letting anything good by the opposing team to become a success. We, the people of Trivandrum, are the most glaring example of this. The garbage crisis here is now three-years old. The state government and the city corporation are blaming each other for the stalemate and we are getting royally screwed.

 

Well, “Inside every silver lining, there is a dark cloud!”

 

I have now hit upon this theory that these guys have a much bigger plan. Take a look at the link below:

 

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/55-dengue-deaths-in-kerala-in-3-years/article6213781.ece?homepage=true

 

We’re No.1 in dengue deaths and dengue cases reported for the three-year period from May 2011 to May 2014. In fact, we account for more than half of the reported cases. The man you see smiling in the left corner of the picture, the health minister, no less, represents our city. Look at the pride in his face! We also have an equally smug-faced Mayoress, who cooperated in this initiative by not collecting the garbage for the three-year period.

 

This, I think, is part of a secret plan to bring the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), for which a big tug-of-war is going on between different cities, to Trivandrum. “See, more than half of the sick people in this state are from here, so we deserve it”. Plus, we need a few more cancer centres because a whole bunch of people are expected to get cancer pretty soon as we are encouraging them to burn their plastic and other stuff wherever possible.

 

I am waiting with bated breath. The question though is whether I will have enough breath to bate!! Because, the Marxists (drumroll) have decided to “clean the city in a scientific manner” on Nov 1, 2014.

 

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/cpim-on-a-clean-city-mission/article6477367.ece

 

Is the Mayoress involved in this? I don’t think I will bate my breath for that. Not worth it.

 

The fact is, Modi has kicked these people in the nuts and they’re gasping for breath as well as grasping at straws, without realizing that in Modi’s Gujarat, which he ruled for more than a decade, 43% of households still don’t have potties. Not much of an achievement, is it?

 

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2014/06/05/how-indian-states-stack-up-on-access-to-toilets/

 

So, it is highly likely that all this will end up as the usual farcical photo-ops for dudes with brooms, whereas the need of the hour is to reroute rivers through our cities like Hercules did to clean up the Augean stables. If Modi succeeds in that, I will also readily chant Namo*, Namo*.

 

*Regardless of what he achieves, the asterisk is always going to be there against his name.