Kerala, as we all know, ‘emerged’
when Parasuraman threw his parasu (axe) from Gokarna to Kanyakumari. Why
Gokarna? Why not from Ratnagiri, or Porbandar? He must have had his reasons. Some
guys, however, didn’t see eye to eye with Parasuraman on his tomahawk-launch
land-grab. They took their parasu to Kaliyikkavila and slashed all the
way south to Kanyakumari, and then to Kasaragod and cut off all the way north to
Gokarna, essentially thumbing their noses at Parasuraman. To be fair to those
guys, Parasuraman, unlike Sardar Patel, didn’t have any clue of linguistic
divisions. Otherwise, why would a 200-odd kilometre stretch of Tulu and Kannada
speaking land be a part of Mallu-land?
The fact is that Kerala had already ‘emerged,’
though the exact date of the axe-launch is not available. At least, that is
what I believed until I saw the words “Emerging Kerala” recently. This suggested
that we, after all, haven’t ‘emerged’ and it is still an ongoing process. So, what’s cooking? Were all those parasu stories,
well, just stories? Are these people ridiculing the beliefs of millions?
From what I gather, this is again a
new-age land grab. Like the 64 brahmin families Parasuraman brought from
outside, this time around we’ll see Arabs and others being offered land and
other sops to stay put. We don’t know if weapons are going to be thrown around for
the sea to recede or whether existing land will be carved up. What we do know
is that someone is going to take a hatchet to that green cover we have, or
whatever is left of it, pretty soon. Incidentally, no one mentions about the
local population, their needs, their lives; neither Parasuraman, nor our new
lords.
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We often lament about the lack of
do-gooders in our society. Accident victims bleeding to death in front of
hundreds, people not helping others in distress, etc. Well, guess what? There are still a
few of these good Samaritans around, though they only come out of the woodwork
once in a while. Recently one such guy came out of nowhere. My guess is that
this is the guy who always drives in front of me at 20 km/hr speed while
blocking both lanes. He is the guy who follows the Kerala rule of “line
driving,” which states that if there are two lanes in one direction, you drive
on the dividing line so that both the left and right side mirrors (folded) of
your car are equidistant from that line. He was so aghast at the thought of
seeing an F1 car zooming at speeds above 40km/hr through Kawdiar that he
immediately pulled a rule out of his posterior sphincter and filed a PIL against it. The government was stunned and
dropped the idea. It didn’t matter that no one, not even unhealed cripples sitting
on boards with wheels, traverse that stretch below 100 km/hr.
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Cabotage: A thick creamy soup made
from cabbage and potage, originally developed by the Kerala government to fool,
sorry, feed the public during famines (“Let them drink soup,” the government
was supposed to have said when told that the people didn’t have potable water
to drink).
Cabotage law: This law states that
any ship arriving at a physically existing (Cochin) or never-to-exist imaginary
port (Vizhinjam) is allowed to dump 10 lakh TEUs of cabotage soup into the sea
as long as the ship’s captain and cook are Indians and there is a rave party in
progress on the deck.
The government decided to relax that
law to allow foreign captains also to join the party as long as they are not
Pakistanis or Chinese, and they have a three-year relationship with a native.
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Other recent events that entertained me:
Other recent events that entertained me:
- The impromptu romantic evening of
candle-light dinners gifted to 600 million Indians by the government, which
deliberately switched off the power grid, in a bid to increase the population.
- The dope Hazare giving up on his
fast-unto-death stunts.
- Another hartal, which is essential
in cleansing our air, as vehicles don’t run on that day, and kids and workers
get a day off.
- Our CM declaring that his government
is taking a scientific approach to garbage. I think he was talking about using
gas masks to approach garbage and go around it. He will also throw in a pair of
gumboots for good measure.
- And our Olympics – when are we going
to see reason and import some African athletes?
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