Frontlines 038; Footnotes

Next evening, at the Central Hall of Parliament, Ganesh drank milk. Gallons of it. The rumour had turned into fact. The atmosphere was funereal. And at 7.05 pm IST, the biggest news story of the year decade? century? aka 8216;The Great Sacrifice8217; unfolded as Sonia Gandhi told the party faithful that she would always follow her 8216;8216;inner voice8217;8217; and that 8216;8216;voice tells me that I must humbly decline this post8217;8217;.

For the next three hours, Congress MPs cried and wailed and implored 8216;8216;Madame Prime Minister8217;8217; as Mani Shankar Aiyar addressed her to forget her inner voice and listen to their collective anguish instead. 8216;8216;The inner voice of the people says you should become Prime Minister,8217;8217; intoned Aiyar. 8216;8216;Only you can lead us,8217;8217; cried Renuka Chowdhury. 8216;8216;In your leadership, we see motherly affection and I request you as your child to please lead the country,8217;8217; added Hero No. 1 Govinda.

The televised spectacle received higher TRP ratings than all the K serials put together. The apotheosis of Sonia Gandhi was complete.

GOLDEN TURKEY

BJP8217;s soap opera
Even the most inveterate 8216;8216;breaking news8217;8217; junkie has begun to find the BJP8217;s prolonged post-poll nervous breakdown8212;playing on a television screen near you8212;one long yawn. At first came the stray soundbytes. Uma Bharati let it be known that she didn8217;t think much of 8216;8216;power brokers8217;8217; getting plum posts in the party. That prompted Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to speak out also on camera against leaders talking out of turn to the media. That in turn led to Uma loyalist Shahnawaz Hussain to take a swipe at Naqvi. And finally8212;on November 108212;the big show. L K Advani, desperate to revive his sagging lohpurush image, decided to give a dressing down to party colleagues8212;and called in the TV crews to record the event for posterity. 8216;8216;There is a limit to how much departure from discipline can be tolerated,8217;8217; Advani said, and before he could spell out A-N-U-S-H-A-S-A-N, Uma Bharati decided to stretch the aforesaid limit. In a scene that was played over and over again on every news channel, the fiery sanyasin attacked 8216;8216;four-five8217;8217; Rajya Sabha members for their 8216;8216;off-record briefings8217;8217; against her8212;and challenging Advani to take action against her8212;stormed out of the meeting.

But unlike the Sonia Gandhi drama, the Uma Bharati soap refused to end. She wrote letter after letter, read out one on television, couriered another, and denied having leaked the third. She even inspired soap queen Smriti Irani to display her own brand of indiscipline. At the end of it all, Uma8212; the 8216;daughter8217; driven out of home on Diwali-eve8212;was brought back into the party fold on Christmas eve. The Uma Bharati drama, in which Messrs Advani, Naidu, Mahajan, Jaitley et al played important roles, was about the most hackneyed story of the year. You would have been better off watching Cartoon Network.

SILVER BULLET

The Sensex sillies
THE Sensex had always been reputed to hate surprises. But on May 14, even as the country reeled under one of the most unforeseen election results ever, the BSE sensitive index sprang no surprises: It simply headed south.

The 8216;Feel Good8217; factor, which the NDA had diligently pumped into the market, had suddenly turned into a nightmare. As the BSE panicked and investors followed, the economy suddenly went cold. And even people like us, who were in and out of the North Block virtually everyday, didn8217;t know what to make of it.

After the May 15-16 weekend, the Sensex went into a downward spin on May 17, Black Monday. With no one in the saddle to give directions to the economy, the Sensex hit two circuit-breakers to prevent a complete free-fall. For the first time in years, trading was suspended to prevent the markets from a total collapse.

It didn8217;t help that CPI leader A B Bardhan was on every television screen in the country, saying, 8216;8216;Bhaad mein jaaye disinvestment.8217;8217; Sitaram Yechury was almost as quotable, saying no FDI would be allowed.

Then, two days later, the familiar, unflappable Dr Manmohan Singh took charge of calming the frayed nerves of the stock markets and India Inc. Still pegged as the next Finance Minister, his words served as balm for the bleeding markets.

But it wasn8217;t till two more days had elapsed and Singh had actually landed up with the top job that the Sensex felt safe. And then the PM played his trump card: His A Team, comprising P Chidambaram as Finance Minister and Montek Singh Ahluwalia as deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. The Sensex was on its way to recovery.

GOLDEN TURKEY

Family drama
FOURTH Floor, Maker IV, Nariman Point, Mumbai. Three years ago, Dalal Street and even business barons used to look at the Reliance group HQ for trends and signals. So when I was summoned there for a briefing on a controversy involving other industry houses, I went promptly.

I sat silently as a senior official of the group ranted about the scandals and mismanagement in various other family-run business houses. He listed their misdeeds one after another. 8216;8216;Look at these guys8230; they mismanaged their companies. They diverted institutional funds,8217;8217; he said about a leading business group. 8216;8216;They8217;re destroying what they created,8217;8217; he said about another.

Cut to November 2004. The tussle between the Ambani brothers had spilled out in the open. Friends and associates of both camps were playing the media. 8216;8216;He has been doing this8230; This is the outcome of that,8221; said an associate of one of the brothers about the other.

As I tried to figure out where Dhirubhai Ambani had gone wrong, I remembered the Bible: As you sow, so shall you reap.

SILVER BULLET

Sporting fraternity
IT happened every evening. As a densely guarded convoy of vehicles bearing the cricketers zipped through Grand Trunk Road, the pavements from Multan Cricket Stadium to Holiday Inn would fill up. Quietly they would emerge from the shops and dusty bylanes, and watch the Indian and Pakistani cricketers retire after another day8217;s Test cricket. 8216;8216;They are here for a glimpse of the Indian boys,8217;8217; our taxi driver would shrug.

Curiosity remains the most undervalued factor in India-Pakistan relations. Unfed and unchannelised, it has sustained our schizophrenia, swinging us from weepy bhai-bhai meetings to virulent hostility, charging our encounters with an emotionalism that blurs all nuance and complexity.

This year in March-April that may just have changed. The case has been made that cricket straightened bilateral diplomacy. Perhaps. It validated a nascent peace process. In the stands, in stray encounters in bazaars, the message was: leave us to our devices, and we ordinary folks can be extremely well-behaved.

Pakistani teenagers in the stands completed the argument: look, they told reporters seeking proposals for the masterkey to solving 57 years worth of spats, isn8217;t this enough? We are sitting here together, Indians and Pakistanis, having fun, why must the diplomats8217; agenda intrude?

That8217;s what cricket did this year. It began the process of separating different strands in India-Pakistan relations. Friendships struck at Lahore Food Street may not have provided solutions for the diplomats. But they were not part of the problem either.

GOLDEN TURKEY

A bombshell from the blue
GOING into October, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his foreign policy advisors were a very satisfied lot.

Singh had just concluded a productive, week-long visit to the US with a stopover at Britain. Signing a long-due bilateral declaration with Tony Blair, following it up with a couple of inspiring speeches on India8217;s reforms agenda, taking credit for sealing the first phase and signalling the start of the second phase of the NSSP along with US President George W Bush8230; the PM and his government seemed to be getting it all right. For Pak-watchers, there was even some plainspeak on the margins with President Pervez Musharraf, emphasising there could be no redrawing of maps.

The Singh-Bush joint statement on September 21 welcomed the removal of ISRO HQ from the US Commerce Department8217;s entities list, agreed to strengthen cooperation in high tech commerce and start a new era of 8216;8216;cooperation and trust8217;8217;.

A little over a week later, on September 29, the Bureau of Non-Proliferation in the US Department of State dropped a bombshell. Barely four days after his return from US, Singh learnt that the Washington had blacklisted two nuclear scientists8212;YSR Prasad and C Surendar, both former CMDs of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India8212;for allegedly supplying Iran with sensitive technology and equipment.

The news broke on September 30 and the next day the party was dampened. It came to light that Surendar had never even visited Iran and Prasad8217;s trips to Iran were under the aegis of the International Atomic Energy Agency. An upset India protested and demanded a review. A decision is still awaited.

The incident was embarrassing and cast a shadow on future bilateral exchanges. And ever since, South Block is constantly on the lookout for the name of yet another Indian or Indian agency in an evil-doers8217; list brought out by Washington. There are rumours that Washington could be planning to blacklist an Indian laboratory8230; The doubt lingers.

SILVER BULLET

Rathore8217;s parting shot
ON the windy afternoon on August 17, the Markopoulo Shooting Centre in Athens became a giant magnet attracting almost every Indian in the city. They came in droves, in buses and cars, journalists and junketeers.

Major Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore had qualified for the final of the double trap event. A medal was within smelling distance. No one wanted to miss this8212;not Randhir Singh, Indian Olympic Association general secretary who even ensured it was he who would be presenting the medals; not Priyaranjan Das Munshi, chef-de-mission of the Indian squad, who I8217;d last seen on the flight to Athens and next saw in New Delhi.

The day ended well. Rathore fired a silver bullet, almost literally, without losing his nerve. Before his last four shots, he later told a friend, his mind was in a frenzy. He thought of Milkha Singh, of P T Usha, of Indian sport8217;s innumerable also-rans. Then he picked up his gun and shot four out of four. The medal was his, the tears were ours, the joy was India8217;s.

That was, of course, the happy climax. The minutes leading up to it, as Rathore fought a taut contest with three other contenders8212;Ahmed al-Makthoum had already run away with the gold8212;was tense stuff. Used to the raucous atmosphere of cricket or hockey, I found the shooting range strangely calm. The serenity made the atmosphere all that more overwhelming.

The chap who bore the brunt of it, at least at my end of the media seats, was the hapless Doordarshan correspondent. He was guilty of an old Indian habit8212;he had kept his cellphone on! In a movie theatre, it would merely have irritated; with an Olympic medal at stake8230;

As Rathore prepared for his two final pairs of shots, the Doordarshan blighter8217;s phone rang. It was his editor from Delhi. Here8217;s the conversation, as I heard it: 8216;8216;Kya ho raha hai? Accha. Kuch nahin. Event chal raha hai. Shooting kar raha hai8230; Nahin nahin, live nahin ja sakta 8230; Abhi to ho raha hai.8217;8217;

Finally, I could have none of it. I stared my ugliest stare and whispered, 8216;8216;Boss8230; if he loses his medal because of your cell phone8230;8217;8217;

The phone was switched off, Rathore won his medal and maybe, just maybe I ducked a murder rap.

GOLDEN TURKEY

The pitch that pinched
EVEN before I left for Nagpur for the third Test between India and Australia, his words were ringing loudly in my ears. 8216;8216;I won8217;t change for anybody,8217;8217; pitch curator Kishor Pradhan had thundered to my colleague who pointed out that the Vidarbha Cricket Association VCA pitch could be a bit too green for some tastes.

Finally in Nagpur, all my attention was firmly focused on 22 yards of land. The VCA pitch looked different from most Indian pitches, sporting a touch of green8212;not much, just a little. It had live grass and was being watered regularly to retain moisture8212;and was all we needed to distract our minds from Sachin Tendulkar8217;s comeback after a three-month hiatus and a series nicely poised.

8216;8216;Don8217;t come near the pitch!8217;8217; The stentorian voice that had made such an impression on my colleague was now directed at me. In his light shades and sun hat, though, the 65-year-old Pradhan looked more like a match umpire than a groundsman.

8216;8216;Don8217;t put words into my mouth,8217;8217; he barked as we chatted about his baby, looking more Australian than Indian with every passing minute, even as he explained why the pitch wasn8217;t about to change for anybody.

Despite the embargo, most of my colleagues had managed to sneak a peek at the pitch, and it wasn8217;t long before I managed to get a feel8212;or figure out why the Indian camp, and especially its captain, was fuming.

Pradhan seemed oblivious to the debate he had stirred up, and quite comfortable with his sudden in-demand status among journalists, players and officials. He could be surprisingly frank, telling me once, 8216;8216;Yes, Ganguly did ask me to shave off the grass.8217;8217; The next moment, he would play evasive, refusing to commit himself to the simplest statement.

The match started on October 26 with Ganguly down with a fever. But Pradhan8217;s pitch played true and tied up the Indians in knots. The Aussies were thrilled, but Pradhan seemed to be the most satisfied. 8216;8216;Don8217;t blame me,8217;8217; were his last words to me as he walked deep into the ground, the only dark figure in a field bathed in the light of the setting sun.