What would the Bharatiya Janata Party be without Atal Behari Vajpayee’s powerful oratory? However, his appeal is limited to urban areas where people can appreciate his shudh highf-alutin Hindi. Not so in the case of Laloo Yadav. He’s every bit as good an orator as Atalji, but scores over him by speaking in rustic Bihari dialect (which even Bihar-putra Shatrughan Sinha cannot match). He is not inhibited in the use of earthy, often abusive language which endears him to the poor illiterate masses.
They admire his arrogance, the way he walks with his head held high, his chest puffed out: he is like a bantam cock strutting onto an arena. They like his assumptions of leadership: he always uses the royal plural ‘We’ (hum) for himself, never the humble ‘I’ (mein). He is every inch the badshah of Bihar—poor Biharis acknowledge him as their monarch. They overlook the innumerable criminal charges of misfeasance (including appropria- ting money meant to buy cattle fodder), as something his enemies had foisted on him; they ignore the criticism that he paid no heed to family-planning norms himself by having Rabri Devi bear him nine children, or about having put her on the throne when he was in goal, knowing full-well that she was unfit to be chief minister.
They did mind his squandering money at his daughter’s marriage. But in their way of looking at things, kings are not bound by laws that apply to common folk. This may sound like an over-simplified explanation for the results of the elections in Bihar. It is not: the days of charismatic leaders with gifted tongues are not over.
I saw the resurgence of Gorkha pride under the leadership of Subhas Ghising. I see it in Laloo’s Bihar and in the BJP’s rise to pre-eminence under Mr Vajpayee. Without men like them at the helm, their parties would collapse like deflated balloons.
11 March 2000
Hometown Delhi
If familiarity breeds contempt between humans, it works the other way when it comes to the village, town or city in which one was born and brought up. See the passion with which Calcuttans love their Kolkata, Bombaikars love their Mumbai and Madrasis love their Chennai.
These three metropolises have little to boast about their ancestry or historical buildings, parks, or quality of life: they are congested, squalid and, to the outsider, unliveable in. By contrast, Delhi has a hoary past, ancient and modern buildings of great architectural merit, beautiful parks and gardens.
There are good reasons for Dilliwalas to love their Delhi: Indraprastha, Shahjahanabad (nee Dilli). The only minus point about the citizens of the capital is that the majority of them have not yet developed a sense of pride for belonging to it. Most of them are refugees from Pakistan who have yet to put their roots in Delhi’s soil, and continue to have nostalgic memories of their Punjabi homeland. Then there are civil servants from different parts of India who want to get back to wherever they came from.
Delhi has paid dearly for letting in people with no sense of belonging to it, and allowing them to smother many of its ancient and noble ruins with new housing colonies and slums. All the jhuggi-jhopris that have erupted like cancerous sores in and around the city are gifts of ambitious Punjabi mohajir politicians who wanted to create vote banks for themselves. They did so with a total lack of concern for the future of the city. Future generations of Dilliwalas will never forget them for their criminality.
25 March 2000
THE BEGINNING
Let the conversation begin…
Follow the Penguin Twitter.com@penguinIndia
Keep up-to-date with all our stories YouTube.com/penguinindia
Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your Pinterest
Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook.com/PenguinIndia
Find out more about the author and
discover more stories like this at Penguin.co.in
PENGUIN BOOKS
UK | Canada | Ireland | Australia
New Zealand | India | South Africa
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published by Penguin Books India 2008
Published in Penguin Books by Penguin Random House India 2017
This collection published 2017
Copyright © Naina Dayal 2000
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover Designer: by Bena Sareen
ISBN: 978-01-4029-832-1
This digital edition published in 2017.
e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-146-8
For sale in the Indian Subcontinent and Singapore only
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.penguinbooksindia.com
Big Book of Malice Page 17