Reality Bites: get ready for the three-week long birthday bash for the dear leader

Members of the BJP are terribly busy. You see, the Dear Leader's birthday is coming up, and he will be “Entire 71 Years Old”. Yeah, I know—he lies about everything and looks like a thousand-year-old gnome, but why argue with his troll army over little things?

Anyway, they’ve got this 3-week celebration planned. Not just for his birthday, but to commemorate twenty years of the persecution of minorities since he became chief minister of Gujarat (note: they love euphemisms, and call it service).

Here’s what’s on their to do list for the Birthday Boy:

1. Donate 14 crore ration bags with the Dear Leader’s picture on them. Why ugly ration bags? Considering the money he’s got from his PM Cares Fund, Covid foreign aid, electoral bonds, big money from alleged scams like Rafale, etc., he can definitely afford to give all 1.39 billion of us stylish Louis Vuitton bags, and still have enough cash left over to fill every single swimming pool in the nation! I strongly recommend LV suitcases with rollers (strollies) so the next time he shuts down the nation without notice, people can wheel their luggage as they trudge thousands of miles to their home towns. While I’m sure LV won’t make special suitcases with the Dear Leader’s mug shot on them (they have high aesthetic standards, and wizened gnomes don’t make the cut), his boys can put stickers on them, right? Peel-off stickers are best, because as West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee astutely pointed out, many of us don’t like him—over 60 per cent of us, at the very least.

2. They will air videos of beneficiaries thanking the Dear Leader for help during the pandemic. Eh? What help exactly? The poor are meant to be grateful for a titchy bit of ration that did not last over a week? Better to air videos of the real beneficiaries themselves, starting with all those specially selected Gujarati firms that made faulty ventilator machines!

3. They will clean 71 rivers to mark the Dear Leader’s age. If you ask me, they should concentrate on the Ganga alone. Remember the horrifying sight of the bodies of Covid victims floating during the second wave? It needs a thorough hygienic clean up—that’s for sure.

4. They plan to send 5 crore cards to the Dear Leader, pretending to be poor people expressing their gratitude for god knows what. Now, if they used that money earmarked for the cards (and the people hired to write them) as aid for the poor instead, perhaps people would actually have a reason to be grateful?

5. Seminars on the Dear Leader’s life and work will be held. I sincerely hope that all his real achievements will be covered, like the 2002 Gujarat riots, his electrifying bigoted speeches like “Hum do, hamare pachees,” and “You can tell them by their clothes”—oh, you can fill a fat telephone directory-size book with his verbal attacks. One must not leave out his inspiration to Hindutva mobs, videos of Muslim bangle sellers and Muslim dosa wallas being attacked, nuns being dragged off trains and accused of conversion, etc. That’s why his supporters love him, after all.

6. They plan to get foolish people to bid for mementos the Dear Leader has received like that snigger-inducing “first-ever” Presidential Philip Kotler award, given not by Kotler himself (he was far too busy, we were told) but by some Hindutva chap called Jagdish Sheth, who received a real Padma Bhushan award a year later for giving the Dear Leader the dubious Kotler award, heh. The nation is waiting with bated breath to see which sucker buys it. Heh.

7. They will arm-twist citizens who receive Covid-19 vaccinations to record videos thanking the Dear Leader for the vaccines. BJP chief ministers like Tripura’s infamous Biplab Deb have actually gone on record saying that the Dear Leader invented the vaccine—they want us to be as mentally-challenged as him!

And, of course, gushy articles will be written by his bigoted supporters, eggless and tasteless birthday cakes will be baked in Surat, and he may even visit his mummy with a camera crew. Yawn. Is it only cynical old me, or do other people find the Dear Leader’s constant PR assaults deathly dull and boring too?

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