A guided tour of our politics (in May)

The truth is that as we wait for the moisture-bearing monsoon winds from the Indian Ocean to reach us, temperatures on the Indian land mass touch boiling point and our brains turn into soft-boiled eggs (which is about the same thing as having pituitary glands where our brains should be). When this happens, we go stark, raving bonkers and you should expect the unexpected. So, in the west of the country, the stock market—which is really a mythical centaur-like creature, half-bear, half-bull, with soaring political ambitions—suddenly decides that it wants to choose the next prime minister and finance minister and snorts and kicks in response.

In the south, the heat gets to Jayalalithaa, who promptly does a somersault. After spending half her term filing FIRs and putting her political opponents in jail, she now rushes to release them. When last heard of, she was out shopping with Sasikala for the right brocade shawl with which to greet M. Karunanidhi, when she next runs into him. Which also means that the subcontinent is in danger of being cruelly deprived of one of the most enduring revenge dramas ever made for the political box office.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the Madhya Pradesh heartland, rising temperatures forced a man from the Stone Age, called Govindacharya, to emerge from his cave. He also carried a club, in case Sonia Gandhi is made prime minister. Coterminous with this, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti—in her Sonia protest—retreats into her cave in the mountains after posting a resignation letter to the President (of the BJP, that is, so that it can be directed to the dustbin for follow-up action). At that precise moment, the heat forced Sushma Swaraj to consider the Michael Jordan look and the Atkins diet of high-protein gram. She said that she was doing this because she was deeply disturbed by Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origins, but in reality it was just a way to be trendy. The desh ka swabhiman spiel was a clever diversionary tactic.

The heat and hurt of it all soon got to Prime Minister-designate Sonia Gandhi, who promptly went into a sulk, refused to become prime minister, stood on a high moral mound and refused to come down. This sent thousands of Congress workers into an orgy that could only be termed as soniamanio, sorry, make that soniamania. They wept and they crept (on all fours), they wallowed loud and swallowed deep, they went down on their knees and they climbed up on trees, they threatened to kill themselves and pulverise the BJP’s furniture, but to little avail alas. Whole armies of angry men occupied every inch of space outside 10 Janpath. Three days later they were no longer to be seen. This was because they had just melted into the asphalt without anybody noticing.

As for the east, the infernal temperatures pushed Laloo Prasad Yadav into deep dementia. He began entertaining thoughts of becoming the deputy prime minister and fulfilling his ultimate fantasy of turning India into Bihar.

You will ask, whether there will ever be an end to this insanity. All I can say is, be patient. Let the ritualistic mania of May pass by, let the kindly southwestern winds bring rain and allow good sense to sprout like young paddy. Then, perhaps, we will all be finally able to trade in the boiled eggs in our heads for more conventional thinking apparatuses.