Thursday, March 14, 2019

'Hi, Rahul'?

Rahul Gandhi asked a gaggle of college girls to address him as 'Rahul' rather than 'Sir'. 

I have no quarrel with his personal preferences - maybe, as one commentator has suggested, pushing 50, he enjoys teenagers dealing with him more like a peer than an uncleji - and democracy is all very well, but is that how an aspiring prime minister should behave? Does it not take away much of the gravitas which has always been considered essential to the position? Should a president or PM aim at being a passing celebrity with overgrown children like a cricketer or pop star?

Even in the US, where they are very informal about most things, they habitually say 'Mr. President' or 'Sir' when addressing the Chief Executive. Are we trying to become more Yankee than the Yankees?

I am a mere small-town private tutor. But thank God no current or ex-pupil, or their parents, unless they are much older and close to the family, would dream of addressing me as 'Suvro'!

Sunday, March 10, 2019

A certain winning slogan for Didi

My daughter and I were discussing the madness of vegetarians/vegans (my suggestion is just send them to Siberia and let them find out how many days they can survive), when it occurred to me that Mamata Banerjee needs only a one-line brahmastra to annihilate the BJP in this state at least during the coming Lok Sabha polls. She should just tell all Bengalis that if the BJP came to power it would try its damnedest to prevent them from feasting on fish and meat... if the alarm spread, I doubt whether any BJP candidate would get more than one vote: his or her own.