Offence Of Honesty

India That Is Bharat

 Citizen Satiricus is patriotically happy to see that there are those among our united progressive rulers who are particular about maintaining standards of conduct at their lofty level. Take Hon’ble Central Minister Shri Beni Prasad’s spirited defence of Hon’ble Law Minister’s alleged unlawful act of embezzling more than 70 lakh rupees. “I believe,” he righteously declared, “that Khurshid could not have embezzled Rs. 71 lakh.” Why? For a reasonable reason “It is a very small amount for a central minister. I would have taken it seriously if it had been 71 crore.” Satiricus fully agrees with him. After all, leaders of our country have to set standards that us puny people have to follow, so they cannot demean themselves. With the 2G super-scam and the Coalgate super-duper-scam, how can a paltry sum of 70 lakh rupees qualify as graft? “It is not even small change,” agrees Arun Jaitley of the opposition appositely. It is peanuts, says Satiricus. So in his considered opinion the Congress leadership was wrong in declaring that it does not agree with Beni Babu and Beniji himself going back on his (wise) words and later declaring graft is graft, whether it is of 7 Rs. or 7 thousand or 70 lakh or (Satiricus may add) 70 lakh crore. As a matter of fact, Beni’s backtracking has belittled the UPA and the country it rules to a criminal extent and he should be prosecuted for the crime. After all, it’s a question of the country’s reputation the enviable international reputation of being one of the most corrupt countries of the world.

Not that Satiricus does not know it is no easy thing. Forget the cussed Kejriwals, an ever-present in-built impediment is the occasional honest Babu like, for instance, this Khemka. That this finicky fellow was promptly shunted out for his temerity in probing the shady land deals of the “Nation’s Son-in-Law” was too small a step. Even transferring him 42 times in 21 years, as has been done, was not enough punishment for his pernicious probity. What is needed is a law against the offence of honesty. And who better suited to make such a law than Law Minister Khurshid?

Heavenly Box

As a joke goes, once a clergyman walking along the street stopped a boy and asked him the way to the post office. The boy stared at the padre and replied, “I heard you telling us in church the way to heaven, and you don’t know the way to the post office?” Jokes apart, devout Christians of secular India seem to have found one more way to heaven a coffin called Swarga-peti (heaven box). And the Christian god seems to work in wondrous ways. For this heavenly box is made in godless China. A coffin-making firm in Kerala has entered into a tie-up with a firm in Shanghai for the manufacture of these coffins, and an assignment of 170 such coffins has already arrived in “god’s own country”. Well, now, what does Satiricus think of that? He thinks it is time for the god of “god’s own country” to decide which religion he follows. Is he with the Christians, who are so rich that they are building Indian churches in America? Or is he with the Muslims who are making Kerala a Muslim country, as the Chief Minister said not long back? Or is he with the Marxists, who murder Hindus by night but join them by day in processions of Hindu deities? It’s a difficult choice, a confusing choice. So it would be no wonder if in this divine dilemma Satiricus and God share the same confusion worse confounded.

Foul Finding

When is Satiricus unhappy? He is unhappy when he finds his coffee is not hot enough. He is also unhappy when he does not fined somebody’s writing that is worthy of plagiarising for this column. Satiricus thought he was bright enough to identify these fell factors of his unhappiness. But now wretched researchers of London University have come up with the foul finding that people with low intelligence are more unlikely to be unhappy than those who are bright. Good God! This damnable discovery would make Satiricus perpetually unhappy. The researchers say low intelligence is often linked to low income, which makes for unhappiness. Well, Satiricus is not exactly wallowing in wealth, but can this columnist not argue that Satiricus’s unhappiness is caused not so much by his low-level intelligence as by the editor’s low-level cheque? And in any case who says journalism has anything to do with intelligence? Nothing. Ask journalist Satiricus.