When Sham Mohammed laughed hilariously whenever somebody picked the booby prize on his show, when there was a thousand dollars in one of the pans to be chosen but the person, blighted, picked the one with the old shoe instead, it made his Mastana Bahar day.
Well, today was a retrospective of Mastana Bahar, but not at the musical level but at the political, satirical level. This, however, was not something for Sham or any one of us to break out into uproarious laughter – even though the analogy of the old shoe in this situation is quite beckoning.
Reshuffles are usually seismic in nature but this one paled in comparison on the Richter scale causing less vibration than cars with boom-boom boxes – which often cause your house to rock and roll when they pass by. You see, this turned out to be just distraction not a reshuffle as those who might and should have been removed are still safely ensconced in their Ministerial ivory towers.
People, this country’s economy is down the bottom of the abyss and the culprit in this scenario Is Imbert (and Rowley) and they remain untouched. Our roadways have deteriorated to the extent that we should just call them tracks and traces when in days of old they were more passable than they are today and yet the blight in this Ministry remains sacred and untouched.
So what reshuffle this was? Manning used to call such theatrics, playing smart with foolishness. Persisting with Imbert and Rohan Sinanan is telling the population look the other way when you see these two old shoes (washycongs) passing because they might just be the ones that kick you/us back into the stone age – which is this government’s objective.
In Sham’s pick a pan, what would Camille be, the dry mango seed? Not one of these persons involved in this reshuffle would come near to being picked – even if the question asked for qualification was, what is the Hindustani word for a two legged Donkey in government and the person rightly answered but was disqualified because everybody in the country shouted in unison: “Gaddaha” breaking the rule that there should be no prompting from the audience.
The entire country joined that chorus knowing that there are so many bright and able persons who could help pull this country out of the downward slide it’s in, but when they see that it’s only intellectual paraplegics Rowley has on his radar, ensuring that they/we know for sure what birds of a feather mean, and why show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are is so true, Gaddaha, became for them the word of the moment.
L. Siddhartha Orie