Many happy chamchas

Sycophancy, rather than evaporating in the sunlight of globalisation, appears to be enjoying a long twilight, with faithful retainers breathlessly herding up truck loads of eager voters to wish the birthday boy, sorry, birthday grandad. Thrones are designed, crowns are ordered and images of the leader in question are seen floating by on chaitanya raths, swans and posters, even as the party faithful party all night in a bid for favours. Prime ministerial birthdays are marked by singers putting the premier’s songs to music. Other ministers have ‘multi-hued’ birthday parties complete with their own birthday chairmen. Political marginals from Bhondsi have also created extravaganzas to celebrate their own birth. Maratha strongmen with declining political careers still stage parties of such chilling power and opulence that a near-curfew had to be declared in the city. And not to be outdone by the marathas and the brahmins, it is learnt that the monarch of the bahujan samaj is all set to celebrate her own entry into ‘political birthday-hood’ later this month. While sycophancy is as old as Deb Kanta Barooah’s famous statement, ‘India is Indira and Indira is India’, the new birthday culture signals a new phase in our high monarchical ruling style.

Whether it is the Special Protection Force providing household services to the infirm and the important, or the torment of the people on the road every time a people’s leader decides to go shopping, in India a politician has always been a raja. No wonder their birthdays take place in the same style as the 18th century monarchs of France. And as for the common people: as Marie Antoinette asked, why can’t they just all eat cake?