Subir Roy: Taking the shine off India

OFFBEAT/ The elections made fools of us all

My drinking buddy looked a little expectantly at me. We belonged to the school that believes there is always something over which to celebrate or drown your sorrows.

But still, he needed to know what exactly I wanted to toast or feel miserable about. Not wanting to prolong the uncertainty, I grandly declared, grinning from ear to ear, the election results say India is not shining.

Being somewhat perverse and most often wanting an argument for the sake of one, my friend predictably countered, are you planning to become a non-resident Indian (NRI)? Why should India not doing well cheer you up so much?

Not wanting to lose my patience and not seeking to acknowledge his opening gambit, I deflected it by replying, I always want to celebrate when the party of baniyas and halwais who feel that the place of the Bharatiya nari is indoors and not on the kursi, is defeated.

But still, what is there to celebrate if India goes down, he insisted. India is going to do well, now that the mandir brigade is gone; I simply want to celebrate the fact that the India Shining campaign got it all wrong.

Not one to let me off the hook so easily, he persisted: so you are saying that India was not shining but now that it has been proved that it was not, it will begin to shine?

I know how to ignore those who think they have to prove all the time they are great wits, and changed the subject. Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram are the fathers of reforms and you will see where they will take the country, I declared with great confidence.

But this only livened up my friend further and he quickly retorted, how can you say they will take the country forward with reforms when these past six years Congressmen have been cribbing that it is the reform agenda that cost them the gaddi and it is the poor in the villages and the not-so-poor in oil companies and banks who mattered. Even Manmohan Singh's wife has said that LPG prices should not go up.

Don't bring wives who are merely wives into this, I said with some irritation. Sonia Gandhi is there in her own right, not as Rajiv's widow; the party lost under him in 1989 and has won under her in 2004. I knew no one could counter that and sat back to relish the punch I delivered.

I should have let it rest there but the overconfidence from the last bout made me add, we all learn as we go along and this is a new team that is wiser from having sat on the opposition benches for six years.

The dim-witted wit guffawed. I know I have a sense of humour but prefer to know when I have delivered a good joke and so struck a pose halfway between curiosity and dismissiveness. What is new about Pranab Mukherjee and Arjun Singh? he asked as rhetorically as he could.

If someone had not told me, I would have imagined that Pranab Mukherjee had been trampled at the grassroots by Trinamool "" forgive the pun, he added as an aside conceitedly "" and had not someone told me I would have imagined that Arjun Singh had become a victim of all the harmful gases he has unleashed on Bhopal over the years.

I know they are not young, I retorted and decided to go on the offensive by adding, Vajpayee and Advani will be 80-plus by the time 2009 comes around and see what Rahul and Priyanka do to them then.

It was my friend's turn to go on the offensive by changing the topic and he snorted, you couldn't predict the election results five days ahead and you want to predict what will happen five years hence.

There was contempt on my face for the low level to which he had sunk by getting so personal. But I was not going to reply in kind and deflected the argument by saying dismissively, I am not a political soothsayer, I am a business journalist.

I talk politics only when I am boozing with friends. He should have called that bout a draw and seriously begun to enjoy his drink but there was glee on his face and out came his devastating repartee, so you predicted the Sensex meltdown of Monday?

India was sold short by the baniya and the foreign institutional investors, I countered and added, see how things will shine henceforth.

I will not respond to your personal jibes since the verdict has been one in favour of amity and friendship, emphasising the oneness of India, I declared grandly and picked up the bill as my friend showed no interest in it. The sparring had been good, the liquor genuine and who cared if you could not win the argument when it was your side that had won where it mattered.

The good feeling was still there by the time I got home but one look at my wife's face and another at the watch spirited away most of it. Her nostrils flared ever so slightly, indicating she had smelt the liquor and was not even going to ask why I had been drinking.

But I wanted to make a point, explain that it was one of those occasions when you had to celebrate. India Shining has lost but India has won, I declared grandly. You obviously haven't been seeing NDTV, she said. The DMK is not joining the party as some Poojari "" trust the man to have a name like that "" had lied to them about portfolios. That is just a hiccup, I said and hiccuped.

The irritation on her face grew stronger and she delivered the punch line as she always does, why don't you learn renouncement from Sonia Gandhi and drink a little less.

(sub@business-standard.com)