I am reading India Today. No, I don’t love Prabhu Chawla. I am reading India Today to…well get to know what “India” is doing “Today”. On a more sincere note, I have figured (with absolute sorrow) that my knowledge about current affairs is at an embarrassingly disgusting level. For starters, I do not know the name of the Third-level General Secretary of the Cabinet-level Minister in the Ministry of Urban Legends. Heck, I don’t even know if a post like that exists.

That’s the background then, and they tell me I am supposed to “have a clear understanding of national current affairs; an in-depth knowledge about international issues; and an exemplarily perspicuous opinion about everything under the sun” in order to be in a position to make sensible contributions to Group Discussions. Group Discussions, unfortunately, happen to make a scarily significant contribution to any B-School’s admission procedure. And incidentally, a good B-School is where I want to see myself in the immediate future.

Towards that objective, I am smashing my skull against problems of a rather bizarre nature. Classified under “Logical Reasoning”, these pearls of gibberish have to do with “Family Trees”. An almost frighteningly long passage talks in considerable length about Sita, Sunita, Suparna, Aparna, (notice the literary rhymes, these paper-setters, I tell you!) their husbands, fathers, uncles, daughters, aunts, in-laws, and dogs. No, no cars in there. What one is expected to do is come up with an ingenious little tree structure – the catch being that the structure is seldom “little”. What follows is a set of questions that would have flabbergasted Albert Einstein in his absolute prime. As the entire family is dissected, trisected and multisected to a level of depressingly miniscule granularity, one can’t help but scratch one’s head in disbelief. But hey, there’s no time to scratch heads during the examination, 40 seconds a question is all you get. No no, there isn’t enough time to scratch anything else either.

Kinda reminds me of the script of “The Bold and The Beautiful”…now in its quintozilliotriplionic episode. A path-breaking television series that ushered in an entire generation of laterally interconnected family trees; that placed absolutely no restrictions on who could sleep with whom (they don’t get married there you see, its not fashionable enough); that single-handedly motivated the powers that be to introduce a hitherto unknown category of questions into the CAT, “Family Trees”!

Then again, why look across the seven seas at a fictional television series, when we have a live display of partners flitting across beds faster than famine-tormented butterflies let loose on a blooming orchid. All of it, here, in India. On national television, across the few thousand news channels, its all being broadcast 24 X 7 (pun unintended) – straight into your homes. It’s the real story of the “The Boldly Shameless and The Disgustingly Ugly”. It’s the story of dirty Indian politics that unravels itself every minute on the telly. It’s the shameful story of a few thousand prostitute-esque political parties that is so disgusting, it needs a “Grandparental Guidance” certificate.

It is really quite difficult to choose the worst of the lot. But the Congress being in power (with able support from its motley bunch of idiots) will have to tentatively take the honour. With the mind-numbing number of parties in the coalition at the center, it wouldn’t really come as a surprise if the Congress lost track of who is giving it support at the Centre, who it is supporting in which state, who is it against in which district, and whose dog is lost…err, almost. With coalitions in command in every other state (I refuse to provide statistics, because the thought of having to research about these buffoons is enough to put me off completely), the Indian voting masses are clearly a confused lot. (Things came to a head when the Congress fought the Bihar elections. From my limited know how, I figured that it was fighting with the RJD in certain constituencies, with the JD in certain others, and in some it was fighting itself. I also figured it was best to know little, or suffer permanent dementia). I hope the use of the word “Prostitute-esque” will not be frowned upon hereafter; rather, in light of the Congress’ conduct in recent months, will seem only adequately appropriate.

India Today then reports in its cover story of this month (forget it, I am not quoting the name of the article and the date; being politically incorrect is so bling) that the Congress has decided to drop cases against Mayawati. Don’t even move to asking “Why?” It’s purely because the Congress, in its Uttar Pradesh honeymoon in Nainital wants to feature (“sleep with”, in un-euphemistic terms) Mayawati (and others). Correspondingly, it has decided to reopen all cases against L.K.Advani, cases that were unsurprisingly dismissed when the BJP was in power…ugh. It goes on to say, and I quote – “Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav inspires even more hostility that L.K.Advani, despite the Congress’ support to his government”. Looks like he’s not performing in bed. Last heard, the Congress had set up a high-level committee to efficiently determine WHICH case against Mr.Yadav was to be reopened. (Oh c’mon, can’t you spot a joke in the trash!) And yes, lets not forget Amitabh Bachchan’s latest arm-candy, Amar Singh. A four-year-old murder case against him is likely to be reopened. Just one? Sigh.


A minute fraction of the extent of the The Great Indian Political Lunatic Family Tree

Don’t even get me started on the BJP. There’s enough in-fighting in there to ensure that any kind of criticism from outside sources is only supernumerary. Much less from a self-confessed ignoramus.

No wonder I am not reading India Today anymore. I figured Sita, Sunita and her sisters were waiting for me to help them out with who their husbands, sons, uncles and fathers are. Give me my super-complicated “Family Tree” problems any day. There’s no partner-swapping, no illegitimate children, no divorces, and no multiple-parentages. And yes, it’s all fictional. The Great Indian Political Lunatic Family Tree has all of those. It is for real. And God knows it stinks to the mighty Heavens!