Opinion Vandita Mishra writes: If life gives oranges make marmalade

It may well be carefully choreographed, it almost certainly has a coded political messaging. And it isn’t entirely new. Rahul has tried something like this before — the making-of-Champaran-mutton video with Lalu Yadav in September 2023 could be said to be its forerunner. And yet, a day after the BJP’s grand show on the Ayodhya stage, and ahead of the much-publicised consecration of an imposing Ram temple later in the month, the Congress’s mother-and-son home-video is unexpected and eye-catching.

Orange marmalade is being made from the tiny fruit plucked from the Gandhi garden and gathered in dainty wicker baskets. Even though the camera is more on Rahul, who stirs the pot, and takes out the froth from a liquid the colour of the T-shirt he is wearing, the women are in charge, the recipe is Rahul’s sister’s while the jam is described as a favourite of his mother.

Sonia’s journey as the outsider who came home to the flavours of India is artfully invoked — her favourite meal after a visit abroad is chawal and arhar ki dal, she says. Rahul’s Italian grandmother is described as the best cook in the family, and mention is made, alongside, of the culinary prowess of the Kashmiri side of “dadi’s” family. Amid banter, Rahul is given an affectionate pat on the back. He is “ziddi (obstinate)” like her, says Sonia, and caring too. Rahul’s laugh at the mention of the BJP seems to ring without rancour.

Of course, it can be argued that the video is another instance of a Congress self-goal, that it brings more attention, not less, to the “family” — after all, as in the kitchen so also in the party. It could be seen as an example of let-them-have-marmalade condescension. Or, at the very least, as the party’s retreat into the trivial in the face of large and uncomfortable questions posed by the BJP and its own political standstill.

But it could also be a sweet-nothing that shows a party experimenting, if very belatedly, with new ways of communicating. And with a tone that is a little more relaxed and not always-already apocalyptic.

So far, Narendra Modi’s BJP and Modi himself have taken the lead in expertly deploying social media to make a political point, using its ability to travel instantly and widely, and make the small moments large and the large events intimate. Modi, in fact, is the politician in the fray who has recognised best how the new tools and technologies of communication are changing citizenship, and why politics must change too if it wants to keep in step, or take the lead.

Modi has understood, most of all, the importance of a messaging that is air-brushed and good-looking, positive and optimistic, for a nation that is currently transfixed by its own videos and selfies. A nation constantly posing for the cameras that have entered millions of homes through mobile phones, as it goes about the daily business of living and working and playing.

If the country has any hope of having a strong Opposition to take on a strong government, so necessary for a healthy democracy, the Congress too needs to find ways of engaging and addressing this changing nation differently. It needs to learn to both work and play more imaginatively — currently, on both counts, it is being comprehensively beaten by the BJP.

In this context, the mother-and-son video may be only a small step, amounting to nothing. But having said that, the if-life-gives-oranges-make-marmalade spirit in it has possibilities. In the new year, as the BJP prepares to unveil the temple in Ayodhya, and with the second phase of the Bharat Jodo Yatra scheduled to begin later this month, a little bit of can-do blitheness stirring in the Opposition pot may not be a bad thing.

Wishing you and yours a very Happy New Year!

Vandita