The usage ‘Mango people’ by Robert
Vadra had me confused for a while. I didn’t know its meaning. Only after a
quite a bit of Internet search I realized that the phrase is a sort of
translation from Hindi meaning ‘common man’.
Vadra is accused of making a
lot of money in what appears to be insider trading. If, in the process, he has
broken any law, he should of course be punished according to the country’s
judicial system. The same goes for Nitin Gadkari and others who are facing
major accusations.
Bal Thackeray has a faster
solution – throw Vadra and family out of the country. In banana republics such
things are possible, I suppose. There was no mention of the bigger fishes that are/might
get caught in the net. But he did say that India is a nation of cheats. (Both
statements at Shiv Sena’s annual Dusserah rally at Mumbai on October 25.) Well,
the man is 86 years old.
Now about another old man –
Anna Hazare. Not many people seem to refer to him as Gandhian anymore. He makes
a re-entry into the limelight with Gen. VK Singh. This retired COAS who failed
in the Court and elsewhere to get one more year as Army Chief demanded that the
Parliament be dissolved.
This reflects badly on
Hazare as well. What Singh did was improper. He is still the Colonel
of his regiment and not just an ordinary civilian. Young officers and jawans look up to senior officers. I was
hoping that the former Chief would say something about the Rs.100 crores that the
Defence Audit recently found was overspent by the Army during the last two
years.
Now, about Narendra Modi, the
person who could try to be the next Prime Minister of India. His comment about
Mrs. Sashi Tharoor was not cricket. There is no point in saying more. The
Minister’s response to that had class. After all, he is from an aristocratic
family in Kerala.
BJP’s spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi says
that Tharoor is an ‘international love guru’. He also suggests that the Centre
should have a Romance Ministry!
During
the 1950s, there was a nice novel, Sorrowing lies my land by Lambert Mascarenhas. It was about Goa
under the Portuguese. Today the whole country lies sorrowing.
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