Balance Performance

India That Is Bharat

Variety is the spice of life. At least that is what advertisements assure Satiricus. For instance, there are soaps and soaps, shampoos and shampoos. Take your pick. Exactly similarly, there are democracies and democracies. One brand is called parliamentary democracy, another is called dynastic democracy. Which is your favourite brand? It depends. Depends on what? On whether you are an aam aadmi like Satiricus, or a khaas aadmi like Rahul Gandhi. Come election time Satiricus votes to elect a parliament that he thinks is an important instrument for the people’s welfare. Actually this is an aam simpleton’s sweet supposition. Had he been a khaas aadmi   he would have known better.

As, for example, Rahul Gandhi. He too votes to elect a parliament, but does he have time to waste in participating in its business? Of course not. How can he spare his precious time to attend Parliament and contribute to its deliberations when there are weighty dynastic decisions to be taken? And even when he sits in Parliament why should he waste time listening to speeches rather than spend it in the pleasant pursuit of chatting with his friends, followers and fiefs?

So that was exactly what he did during the recent special session of Parliament. Except for his mom’s speech (naturally), the illustrious Amethi MP was busy chatting constantly not only with his friends sitting by his side but also with those sitting behind him. Veterans in the house silently watched because they realised that his chat session was more important than the Parliament session. To quote a tongue-in-cheek newspaper report, in the first three years of his tenure in the current Lok Sabha, Rahul’s performance reads: one Special Mention and one Question.

Well, now, Satiricus does admit these are only two things Rahul Gandhi did in three years he should have done one more. Three things in three years would surely have proved his “balanced” performance as a believer in parliamentary democracy. The rest of his time is, of course, too valuable to be spent on anything except devout diligence to dynastic democracy.

Admirable Aids

The other day, when Satiricus read in the papers that the president of China has called on his fellow-countrymen to protect Chinese culture from Western onslaughts, Satiricus thought the Chinese were as old-fashioned, even outdated, as us Indians. But he stands incorrect. For lately he has seen some signs showing that the Chinese are as modern as Americans. The surest of these signs is the news that studying love and sex is now a must in China. The Chinese Ministry of Education has issued an order saying all higher educational institutions must teach a compulsory course in “Love and Sex”. The reason, says the government, is that these days most of their university students need psychological help because of heavy pressure of studies.

Well, now, what do you know? This illiterate journalist would have thought that an easy way to relieve the pressure of study is not to study. Of course studying love is a lovely idea, but would not this additional subject in the course add to the pressure of study instead of reducing it? Oh, well, Satiricus wouldn’t know, for he has studiously avoided study and depended on his teachers’ grace and the grace marks they gave to push him and shove him up the academic ladder.

But study of sex? Good God! Are they going to set up “practicals” labs for the students? God alone knows. Satiricus can only say, inscrutable are the ways of God and of inscrutable Chinamen. Still he fails to understand why the Chinese government should bother to teach sex when state-of-the-art educational facilities are not only in place but proliferating and flourishing. For it was reported in 2007 that there are not only thousands of Chinese websites that sell sex, but some of them also teach how to rape women. There is also a “date rape drug” on sale on the web in China with helpful instructions on how to use it for facilitating the rape.

The progress achieved with the aid of such admirable aids is naturally tremendous. It is that pre-marital sex has become common in China, single women have multiple abortions some as many as six and public hospitals are busy providing abortions. Having been in the news business all his life Satiricus cannot understand how the Chinese government has no news of all this especially when even the official New China News Agency is in the game. For while the top of its pages carries staid political news, the bottom often displays soft-porn photos. So it seems to Satiricus that on the subject of sex the Chinese government cannot teach Chinese students anything the Chinese students can teach the Chinese government many things.