Time (Again) for the Show

Now that the elections are over in India, it is time again to show fingers. After each phase of this long-winding cluster-f#*k of an election, the interwebs were flooded with pictures of many people with ink-stained fingers. Well, voting got over couple of days ago. It is time for the result. This time around it will be the politicians who will be displaying their fingers—the middle digit to be exact. The people are eager to see that. They know it, like it, and derive some perverse pleasure from it. That, I believe, is one of the reasons the current ruling dispensation has an upper hand in this election too. They’re upfront about it. The supreme leader says something and later his sidekick comes and tells it is all an election jumla. People like that honesty. They even accept corruption as long as they know who owns their derrieres. That was the problem with the previous regime. Nobody knew who was in charge of the corruption. Those guys, to be frank, were not honest in their corruption. Now people know who has bought and paid for your favourite leader, and that makes a big difference. People are like the wife saying “ours is better” when the husband says he has a mistress just like his business partner.

It also helps that el supremo upgraded himself to divine leader. India is a country where god people can literally get away with murder. Not only that, god persons also get millions of people to follow them and listen to them attentively when they preach bullcrap about how sambar gets affected by Pluto or something like that. So, el supremo promoting himself to godhood was a masterstroke that completely took the wind out of the opposition’s sails. I hope we will have another mega temple for the new god in the next few years.

That is another thing that impressed me recently after the new mega temple was opened by divine leader. I saw a program in some YouTube channel where children from poor neighbourhoods were asked whether they would like to see more schools rather than places of worship. A majority of them replied they wanted places of worship (temple, church, or mosque depending on the child’s religion). This warmed my cockles to no end. Kids know what they want. They know that the whole scientific temper thing is a sham. Anyway, one of the richest persons in the world, who is attentive to the needs of the poor, probably heard these kids and built more than a dozen temples in Jamnagar recently. The future is bright. Kids don’t have to waste time scientifically analysing things like I do. For instance, why do you fart more when you lie on your left side? You just have to say god deemed it that way and that is it. As they say, degrees are worthless. Some 38% of IIT grads couldn’t find jobs this year. Religulous tourism, on the other hand will never run out of steam. All these grads should be looking at building pakora and other businesses around such religious places.

At the same time, I see some future conflicts because of the supreme leader and, by virtue of that, the country gaining divine status. We already have the US of Amreeka, which, in its Pledge of Allegiance, says “one nation under God” about itself. It, however, doesn’t specify under which god. Could be Yahweh or his son. Or is it the Sioux god Haokah? Nobody knows. Then there is the white-robed person in Europe, with a hotline to god, distributing sainthoods. We also have other areas where people ask the age-old question of “do you believe in god?” and then fight each other. So, we will have to wait and see how all this divinity plays out around the world.

Well, I’m planning to travel to the US of Amreeka later this year in August. Unfortunately, the currency in which I earn my living, the Japanese yen, is following the path of the Indian rupee in falling to dismally low levels. I was wondering whether Sree-to-the-power-of-two Ravishankar said “it is refreshing to know that the yen will get stronger at 80/- per dollar if Kishida comes to power” like he said about the rupee. Yen is trading at close to 160 to the dollar. At this rate, I will have to get tempo-loads of currency notes, similar to what Ambani-Adani sent to Raoul-ji, before I embark on my trip to Amreeka.

It is not a pleasant thought. Perhaps it is time for me to go to Okinawa and meditate. For peas. Green peas. To put in my pav bhaji. Hopefully, it will generate some gas that I can release to the outside world with the confidence and comfort that I’m doing (some) god’s work.