Reality Bites: Hope springs eternal

After seven years of relentless misery in the Dear Leader’s Electoral Autocracy, this week has brought a little hope. India’s farmers, who have protested for a year against three “black laws”, finally made the Dear Leader do exactly what he makes the media do—get down on his creaky knees and crawl like a worm in a lemon and spoon race. The protests have now been called off, but the farmers have warned that if their other demands are not met, they will be back in full force.

A few days ago, the Dear Leader’s courtiers in Parliament insisted that they had no data at all on the farmers who died during the protests—weird, considering that the Dear Leader and his courtiers spend most of their time spying on citizens who disagree with them.

His courtiers stuck their fingers in their ears and shouted “Can’t hear you!” when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tried to jog their feeble memories and read out a list of the names of the farmers who were killed/died during the protests. Eventually, though, the farmers forced the Dear Leader to acknowledge that over 700 of their people died, and he had to agree to pay compensation to their families—oh the things he’s willing to do to win elections in India’s most populous state!

Trust me, the list of deceased farmers would have run on for pages and become as fat as those old telephone directories if the Dear Leader had listened to his Principal Economic Advisor’s wife and ordered his goons to shoot farmers at protest sites. The Dear Leader might even have had to sell his toys (his Rs. 8,000 crore planes and a new Maybach car among other expensive goodies) to pay the compensation, seeing that most of India’s assets have already been sold to his friends.

His extensive Great-Wall-of-China to Great-Wall-of-China wardrobe may even have had to be sold. I know many grannies who positively lust over his girlie shawls! Drama companies could do with his army costumes, tribal costumes, monk robes, etc. All they will have to do is hire an army of alteration tailors to cut them down to normal sizes. It really is about time the Dear Leader went on a Keto diet.

On to the next bit of good news: After spending three years in prison with no charge sheet filed against her yet, lawyer and activist Sudha Bharadwaj has been granted default bail, whew. The Dear Leader is gnashing his teeth and has got the NIA to make the bail conditions as close to house arrest as possible. He abhors activists who fight for human rights and the poorest of the poor.

We are aware that the Dear Leader moans frequently to his henchman Omit Sour that more people should be like him: Violate human rights and fight for the richest of the rich instead. He has a great track record—during the pandemic, he worked very hard to make his human piggy banks Mr A and the other Mr A rise and rise in the ranks of the richest people in the world.

To ensure that Indian citizens reject activists like Sudha Bharadwaj who only fight for the miserable poor—a burden on the exchequer blah blah, the Dear Leader has ordered his creepy-crawly media stooges to change the very definition of activists. They have sweetly complied and now refer to Bajrang Dal and VHP goons as “activists”.

In the Dear Leader’s mind, the best activists are those who destroy mosques and churches, attack inter-faith couples, vandalise schools run by missionaries, etc. I haven’t read his book ‘Exam Warriors’ (pronounced ‘Eggjam Worriers’) but I strongly suspect that it’s about chucking stones and shouting threats outside schools run by India’s minorities while trembling students inside are giving important examinations.

The third piece of news is not about hope, but a reluctant admission of guilt. Former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has finally conceded that he was wrong to have been part of the bench that heard the sexual harassment case against him, but brushed it off with an airy “We all make mistakes”, statement. He continues to be his usual brazen self, and most Indians would be overjoyed if some “activist” stuffed him in a “sealed envelope” and posted him to Mars.

(Any resemblance to real people or events is a coincidence)