Telling tales

Barack Obama and L.K. Advani have something in common. They are among the few politicians to pen their memoirs while they are still in the thick...

Barack Obama and L.K. Advani have something in common. They are among the few politicians to pen their memoirs while they are still in the thick of active politics, rather than waiting for retirement. Advani’s just released book, My Country, My Life, makes for engrossing reading. The author has an eye for detail.

We all knew that Advani and General Musharraf were students at St Patrick’s School, Karachi, but we didn’t know earlier that Musharraf confessed to Advani that he had been caned several times, while Advani, a topper in his class, was always in his teachers’ good books. Advani and Vajpayee shared living quarters twice. Once, when they were bachelors, they lived together at 30 Rajendra Prasad Road, and later, in jail, during the early days of the Emergency.

In the division of labour, it was Vajpayee, an accomplished cook, who always looked after the kitchen. Advani, who says he puts little store by astrology, was nevertheless struck when the late Vasant Kumar Pandit in 1975 correctly predicted the Emergency, declaring that Advani would be exiled for two years.

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On Ayodhya, Advani says that V.P. Singh as prime minister was keen for a settlement and worked out an acceptable formula, but later backtracked after Mulayam Singh threatened to pull out of the government. Narasimha Rao’s attempt to reach an agreement on Ayodhya with the BJP was scuttled by Kamal Nath, who was acting at the behest of elements in the Congress party inimical to Rao. Advani candidly admits after his Jinnah remarks of 2005: “I was told I should step down from presidency.”’ He does not specify exactly who told him, though we know it was the RSS that issued the decree.

Judicial precedent

THE Delhi High Court has asked for pilot cars to be provided to all judges as they have received threatening letters. The request has been referred to a screening committee in the Union home ministry. According to the security drill, anyone who gets a pilot car is also entitled to an escort car. That would mean three cars per judge. If the Delhi High Court judges are granted this facility, the Supreme Court judges are bound to ask for similar treatment and other high courts will follow suit. Earlier, the Delhi High Court set the precedent of purchasing Balenos, at a time when the smaller Fiats and Ambassadors were the prescribed norm in the judiciary.

CPM drives wedge

THE CPM played its cards shrewdly and promised the Congress electoral support for a Congress Rajya Sabha MP from West Bengal. The CPM’s Mohammad Salim in fact produced the Congress nominee, the editor of an Urdu publication with old Congress links. The Marxists realised it was better to have a Congress candidate of its choosing, rather than have the Congress support Mamata Banerjee’s nominee, the articulate Dinesh Trivedi, who is keen on re-election. The Marxists used Pranab Mukherjee to prevail upon Sonia Gandhi by pointing out that it would mean one more MP in the NDA camp.

Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, who has been working to bring the Congress and Mamata closer, was understandably furious. Mamata feels cheated. She has been distancing herself from the NDA and did not vote for either the NDA presidential or vice-presidential candidate in the hope of an alliance with the Congress party.

Schooled by us

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CHINA’S efforts to teach English overnight to the residents of Beijing in the run-up to the Olympic Games has met with scant success. There is a dearth of Chinese who can speak English well enough to make themselves understood to the huge influx of tourists and spectators expected for the Games. The Chinese have not tapped the talents of the Tibetans, who ironically speak English far more fluently than the rest of the population. The reason why the Tibetans know English so well is that most of them were smuggled into India for their schooling.

Mug’s role

ON its Raising Day, the SPG brings out a memento every year which it gifts to special guests. This year the memento was a large tea mug with the recently coined SPG slogan, ‘Zero Error, Target is Major Terror’. Some government officials proudly put the mug on their desktops for keeping pens and pencils, only to be sternly informed that it was meant for drinking tea and not for use as a pen-holder.