Ajith Nair

The accessories of the Father of the Nation have been rescued by the Frother of the Nation. I wonder if the great man in Khadi would have approved, cared, laughed or just shrugged it away. In true jingoistic fashion, the nation is celebrating the return of the treasure that ‘truly belongs to us’. It helps that our Knight in shining armour also happens to be the most flamboyant face of emerging India. For some, the paradox of the event is not lost. Beer baron, sybarite, ladies man, uses lucre to buy the belongings of someone who was anything but all these. There is a bigger question that needs to be asked and I dare to. Why is it that the urge to reclaim something that is ‘rightfully ours’ emerges only when an outsider attempts to capture that space. Slumdog Millionaire with all its generalizations and fantasies, made India suddenly sit up and want to stake claim for its street kids and urchins. Otherwise shoo-ed away or summarily dismissed without rolling down car windows, these kids

These are tough times for the sub continent. Sri Lanka thought it had won the war against the LTTE but then realized that it’s not over until it’s over. The Bangladeshi rifles went berserk, India went through 26/11, Pakistan is under ever increasing threat of falling to the Taliban and now the Lankan cricketers have been targeted in Pakistan. The Govt of India is reviewing feasibility of IPL given elections in April, May. Rubbish. Terror wars are creeping to our doors and the ploy now seems to be around doing the unexpected, taking by surprise and making the unexpected happen. I sympathize with the average Pakistani and the average Lankan. They probably don’t have too much to do with the reasons why an LTTE was born or why Taliban entered their country. Yet they seem to have been unwillingly cast in the dramatic chapters of how the terror war will ensue. They are props who will play corpses, maimed strugglers and terrified by standers. Some might go beyond their ‘designate’ roles and