Ulta pulta tributes to Ulta Pradesh

• If we didn’t have Ulta Pradesh, we wouldn’t have Mulayam Singh Yadav. And if we didn’t have Mulayam Singh Yadav, we wouldn’t have had Amar Singh. And if we didn’t have Amar Singh, we wouldn’t have had Amitabh Bachchan wooing crowds in the boondocks of UP.

• If we didn’t have Ulta Pradesh, we wouldn’t have ulta pulta politricks — which is politics in which everything is stood on its head. If you thought the BJP hated the SP for hating the Hindus and attacking Hindutva’s foot soldiers, think again.

If you thought the SP hated the BJP for hating Muslims and attacking the Ayodhya mosque, you don’t get it. If you thought the BSP loved the BJP till death did them part, perish the thought. If you thought the Congress hated the SP since it refused to support its bid to form a government at the Centre in 1999, forget it. Love flowers in unlikely places in Lucknow’s magical air and makes estranged bedfellows of them all.

• If we didn’t have Ulta Pradesh, we wouldn’t have had the Taj. And if you didn’t have the Taj, we wouldn’t have had the Taj Corridor. And if we didn’t have the Taj Corridor we wouldn’t have had to grapple with the greatest puzzle of our times: Just who sanctioned this strange project?

• If we didn’t have Ulta Pradesh, we wouldn’t have the Babri Masjid. And if we didn’t have the masjid, we wouldn’t have ten years of wrath-and-rath politics. And if we didn’t have wrath-and-rath politics, we may not have had riots and blasts. And if we didn’t have riots and blasts, we may not have had the Modis and Togadias. And if we didn’t have the Modis and Togadias, we may have all lived in peace and harmony like any other normal, boring country.

• If we didn’t have Ulta Pradesh, we wouldn’t have had Rajju Bhaiyya. And if we didn’t have Rajju Bhaiyya, we wouldn’t have had his arrest under Pota. And if we didn’t have his arrest, we may never have fished out all those skeletons from his lake. Also, if we didn’t have Ulta Pradesh, we wouldn’t have had Amar Mani Tripathi. And if we didn’t have Amar Mani Tripathi, we wouldn’t have the Madhumita murder case. And if we didn’t have the Madhumita murder case we may never have discovered that the dead poetess had the door key to International Cricket Council Chairman Malcolm Speed’s hotel room, although the poor man insists he doesn’t know how it reached her handbag.

• If we didn’t have Ulta Pradesh, we wouldn’t have refined our theories about caste politics. And if we hadn’t refined these theories, we wouldn’t have had those weird acronyms to mouth during elections, from MY (Muslim-Yadav) to YOU (Yadav-OBC-Upper castes) to ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ (is a concept too complex to be explained here). And if we didn’t have these acronyms, we wouldn’t have all those psephologists talking incessantly on TV.

I could go on and on, but the newsprint seems to be running out on me. All I will say in conclusion then is this: Let’s thank Ulta Pradesh because it bring our most talented thugs, cheats, liars, charlatans and dons together in one place, so that we can keep an eye on what they are up to.