No har har for Modi

Some of Narendra Modi's supporters were shouting the slogan 'Har hare Modi, gar gar Modi' till recently. Then a priest objected, saying 'har har' should be used only for god Mahadev. Modi's men have now dropped that utterly catchy slogan, and are a bit lost. Meanwhile, Modi's detractors, who often call him Fascist, want to revive it with a change in spelling. In their minds, it's 'Herr Herr Modi'. And other supporters in urban India, who have heard of Modi's celibate ways, are wondering why anyone should say scandalous things like 'Her her Modi'... 

And on that note, a happy Ugadi to all the bitter-sweet people in politics who make this column possible, and all the lovely mango folks who read it.

B.Pac biscuits and brickbats

BT queen Kiran Majumdar and other members of the new Bangalore royalty had invited Nandan Nilekani and Ananth Kumar for tea and biscuits on Saturday. They took care of the chai pe kharcha. The idea was to discuss Bangalore South. Workers from the Congress and the BJP also trooped in for the 'interactive' session. Soon the two groups were at each other's throats, making the point that this was serious parliamentary politics, and not some mosaru kodbale Rotary Club get-together. How Marie became maaro, and how interactive became hyperactive is something the hosts are now trying to understand. (Management consultants from the US are wondering if they should pitch for an analytics project).

So what happened? Ananth Kumar, sitting MP, actually stood up and started saying sharp things about Manmohan Singh. This naturally angered the Congress workers, who gave the BJP workers a taste of their lung power. Soon it was tu tu mein mein, and that turned into thoo thoo mai mai. In other words, a spat and a roughing up. The JD(S) is fielding women's activist Ruth Manorama for the same seat Nilekani and Ananth Kumar are coveting. Good she was around. Without her, the event could have become Ruthless, no?

B.Pac, the official hosts, told everyone to go home after 45 minutes, and started talking about changing the format of such tea-and-biscuits events. Perhaps they'll encourage the candidates to do a round of kusti while their supporters cheer them on? May the best Sandow win.

(Satire column Full Drama with Ayyo Rama appears every day on Page 5 of The New Indian Express, Bangalore)

No Dull Kunita in Bangalore Central

In Bangalore, Deve Gowda has just issued a ticket to Nandini Alva, famous these days as mom-in-law of movie star Vivek Oberoi. Nandini, who has declared assets worth Rs 80 crore, is a bharatanatyam dancer in her own right (and no, she didn’t learn it via correspondence). With kajal-lined eyes, jhan-jhan steps and a pining heart, she is approaching Bangalore Central. Her husband, the late Jeevaraj Alva, was to 1980s chief minister Ramakrishna Hegde what D K Shivakumar later became to S M Krishna: a muscular right hand, of the sort you see in teleshopping ads for protein products. Voters in Bangalore North are eager to see her campaign. Nandini’s classical mudras, Deve Gowda’s folk steps, and Vivek Oberoi’s Mumbai-style dailoguebaazi are sure to provide fusion entertainment of the sort that drives Bangalore’s cosmopolitan crowd crazy. Talking of dance, Deve Gowda may look like a practitioner of dollu kunita, but he has never let his kunita become dull. Allva, Alva?

Srini, Sonny-in-Law and Funny Sunny

This is a politics column, so what is cricket doing here, you ask? Well, N Srinivasan is the kind of cricket administrator politicians deeply, deeply envy. So. 'Once I tell means thousand times I tell, mind it!' is a motto revered Srini Sir could have coined. Many have tried to drag him out of his BCCI chair. Tried, avalathaan. Time and time again. Pullingam. Pushingam. But always failingam.

Meiyappan is Srini's daughter's bettor half. And bettor he is. He has confessed to some 'friendly betting' with the help of a certain Vindoo Dara Singh. All this has landed Srini Sir's team, the Chennai Super Kings, in a spot of trouble. The Supreme Court, which wants the team barred from the IPL, has whiplashed Srini, telling him enough is enough, move it and let the cops check out who was doing what during the matches.

That's not all. The court's suggestion that Sunny replace Srini has sent pleasant shock waves in cricketing circles. Our resident cricket fan mistook Sunny to mean Sunny Leone, the movie star who fields in the slips (and sometimes without slips, too). When realisation dawns that the replacement is the avuncular Sunny Gavaskar and not the stunning Sunny Leone (born Karenjit Kaur Vohra), much disappointment lies in store. These cricket fans can be wicket, er, wicked, no?