Reality Bites: The nation’s bully, the big brother and Bihar

The BJP wants to be everybody’s big brother. Not a supportive big brother who ruffles your hair and stands by you, but as a big, fat bully who kicks you around and steals your chocolates and your votes.

The Shiv Sena learnt this the hard way: After decades of being the senior partner in their alliance with the BJP, they were squished to pesky junior partner status, and would have been stomped on even further and thrown into the dustbin if the NCP’s Sharad Pawar hadn’t charged towards them on a white horse, and swept them out of the BJP’s suffocating clutches.

The entire nation watched agog as this thrilling drama played out, so you cannot blame ignorance for Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s great fall. He was so smug, he thought that this would never happen to him. But it did—and how! The BJP got their useful Hanuman Chirag Paswan to light flames under Kumar’s favourite CM kursi, and boom, Kumar is now their pesky little brother.

Ooh, it will be fun to see how Big Brother squishes Nitish Kumar—I lost all sympathy for him when he played turncoat and dumped the secular Mahagathbandhan for the bigoted BJP because Antar Atma (his pet name for Amit Shah) ordered him to a few years ago. I’m dead sure Kumar’s got binoculars trained on the horizon 24x7, hoping to catch sight of a saviour on a white horse. He’s so desperate, even a brown ass would do.

Paswan the Spoilsport won nothing himself (tut). His party’s name suddenly vanished from the Election Commission’s website after it was clear that it was losing. Towards the end of the day, however, an act of God happened (they’re pretty frequent in the Modi era), and Paswan miraculously received a gift-wrapped disputed seat—one that a Left party candidate had apparently won.

However, our great, democratic, fair, transparent, and amazingly independent Election Commission refused to recount any of the disputed RJD, INC and Left seats—were they just feeling lazy or did they get orders from Antar Atma? It’s a pity, because that could possibly have changed the results of the neck and neck Bihar election.

The BJP celebrated the NDA’s Bihar victory in its usual tacky and extravagant manner—now if only they had splurged the same amount of money on Bihari migrants during the draconian lockdown they imposed, I would say that they deserved to win!

However much the BJP may pat itself on the back and gorge on laddoos, we all know that the real winner of the election was Tejaswi Yadav—he was a feisty David to Modi’s growly Goliath. His charisma made the RJD win the coveted status of ‘single largest party’, and I repeat, if only the disputed votes had been recounted, Bihar may well have had a young chief minister. It’s just too bad that an old man snatched his glory. The old man’s beard is inching towards tummytickle level, and I have yet another theory on it. See, he would love to be acknowledged as the Father of the Nation, but Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi beat him to it. Try as he may, he knows he will never be able to usurp the title.

His many PR teams were probably put to work on it and voilà—he has been refashioned as the Grandfather of the Nation! He has also hastily appropriated the title of Grandmother of the Nation, just in case a female politician tries to compete with him. This explains why he has started wearing fuddy-duddy shawls that are available only in the Ladies’ section of Khadi Gram Udyog outlets. Deadly masterstroke, innit?

Meanwhile, things in India are getting grimmer than before—hate politics reigns supreme, and the RBI has announced that the Indian economy has entered into a recession for the first time in history. Nothing makes us smile anymore—not even the slapstick Tom and Jerry games between Drama Queen Arnab Goswami and the Maharashtra Government.

Goswami now is such a regular at the Supreme Court that he’s often mistaken for an employee. This has prompted fears in the public that a Kangaroo Court division may be inaugurated soon by a man with a long white beard. It is such a relief that Canada has announced that it loves immigrants and will warmly welcome more.

(Any resemblance with real people and events is a coincidence)