The Maanga

There is no reason not to flirt with the driver. He’s young, new and terrified of losing his job. And this arrangement of being driven around is appropriate for flirtation. The rear view mirror offers glimpses. She pretends to faint in the heat, be lost in the city, be sad when the husband is grumpy. She sometimes fantasizes about the driver’s Tanjore ass, sweating and stuck to his pants. The leather seats damp.

But he cannot speak in English. When he does, it’s the few words that have entangled themselves so much into Tamil that you cannot tell them apart.  See, this is the reason she cannot have sex with this man. He probably makes out the Tamil way. Grabbing every body part, thrusting for no reason. He lives in a small shack and and probably uses the railway track as his toilet. It’s reasonable to assume that there isn’t enough water to wash his ass after his morning shit. Suddenly, the idea of his sweating Tanjore ass is a lot less sexy. Besides, she thinks someone who knows fluent English probably has kinder hands. Not the kinds that knead and pinch. She wants to fuck in English.

She wishes she was in America. And was driven around by an English speaking driver. She has nothing against poverty. In fact she has nothing against caste either. She just has a problem with the lack of sophistication that the knowledge of English might bring. But then, in America they use toilet paper, which clearly isn’t adequate. Same story. Sweating ass. Still unclean.

So she drinks water and lets the rear view mirror in which the driver stares into show the water sliding down her throat and onto her clothes. Just his yearning his enough. If he really wanted to have sex with an upper class woman, he should have gone to school.

PS - TON doesn’t write erotica. She sometimes writes about sex. Which are entirely different subjects really.

The MDMK, formed in 1994, has underperformed by any and all measures ever since.

The Dravidian Movement edged the Congress out of power in the 60s. That part of Tamil Nadu’s political history is now well explained — the DMK had an issue, had charismatic leaders and the ruling party was a sitting duck. If anything, one only needs to ask why other southern states did not emulate the Dravidian Movement earlier. Yes, Kerala went on a different path and chose revolution — possibly because of their history; one can explain Communism as an offshoot of the Princely State, if one tries hard. However, it is Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh that leave a lot to be desired — if one looks at them through a federalist’s prism.

Through the 70s and 80s — the arithmetic in Tamil Nadu was simple. Or so the conventional wisdom assumed. The DMK and the AIADMK had about 40% vote share each while the Congress had the remaining 20%. That simplistic statement and does not take into account how the state voted differently for Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections. MGR figured that pattern and the magic formula for alliance and arrived at a compromise in seat sharing with the Congress that is now belatedly emulated across the nation. It is one where the regional party will contest in a majority of the seats for the Assembly election and the national party will get its due in the Lok Sabha election — all calculations relative to parties’ perceived vote shares.

The Congress decline of the 90s was exponential from an already small base in Tamil Nadu. The result has been: smaller regional parties have usurped the Congess into becoming third, fourth and possibly even fifth in terms of vote share. The PMK, the MDMK and the DMDK have not only taken over from the Congress as important parties to consider for alliance arithmetic, they have also changed the dynamics of the MGR formula simply by virtue of being smaller regional parties.

Stunningly though, the State has largely had one party rule. Possibly, that’s a result of arithmetic again — the pre-poll alliances in Tamil Nadu ensure a two person race. Consequently, the winning party gets a disproportionately large number of seats. Since the 90s, the state elections have been reduced to something analogous to an American Presidential System of voting. The national party in the alliance obviously loses most if terms of sharing power — because the overall spoils for the smaller parties have now come to mean ministerial births at the Center. And, important ones at that.

The PMK has typified this theory. It has been one of the biggest small regional parties — and has played its cards cleverly. The party has been on the winning side in all elections since 1998. And in the process, has earned a reputation for being some sort of a bellwether. The truth though, one is inclined to conclude, is that the party is simply doing what it should. In this case, it is switching sides each election. The opposition formation will win the election if it crosses over by sheer arithmetic. When the stakes are this apparent, one expects a reasonable politician to play the part. Which is exactly what the MDMK does not.

The MDMK started by being a political party as opposed to the PMK which was originally a caste conclave. As a political party, Vaiko possibly thought he could leverage commitment to ideology – in an atmosphere where the population was getting increasingly cynical of the major parties. What he did not anticipate or didn’t manage well if he did anticipate was that the posture had huge costs. The worst part of that cost was that almost all of it was in the form of short term pains while all possible gains were long term political capital. This strategy, in gambling parlance, was akin to doubling one’s bets at each loss. While it is a mathematical certainty that doing so will ensure victory eventually, the endless liquidity required for that strategy in a political scene is not even possible – let alone being feasible.

Consequently, Vaiko decided to copy the PMK strategy late in the game, in reverse. That meant an alliance the AIADMK in the last assembly elections which only made matters worse for the MDMK. It lost its USP, namely being trustworthy. In essence, what the MDMK now has is Vaiko. Or, his Dravidian method. The party has lost too much time to fancy itself for anything bigger. In that predicament though, the MDMK sticking with the AIADMK may yield greater results for reasons discussed previously.

Did Amit Varma’s mother deserve such a poor obit?

Nilu, if you have to be an idiot, at least be a classy one.

regards

- The Other Nilu

TON,  If you want to be considerate to the dead and show compassion for the living, good for you. Good for Varma’s mother and he, too. I am not playing that game.

- Nilu

Nilu,

This isn’t about being compassion, Amit Varma, MDMK or any other such rot. This is about class. It’s best acquired by knowing when to shut up. Sometimes about a specific issue, and sometimes altogether.

Regards

The Other Nilu

That was settled long ago. If you want class, go to school.

- Nilu

Dear Nilu,

Kettena?

The Other Nilu

Kekkamale sonnen. That only style.

– Nilu

The MDMK is having its conclave at Island Grounds today.

Politics in Tamil Nadu, over the past half a century, has had two distinct schools: fan clubs and political oratory. Yes, the odd protest movement has evened out the periodic person or party; largely though, the Tamil Nation has been a binary solution space.

Dravidian orator politicians are a vanishing tribe today. They speak Tamil with a diction that makes little practical sense and with sentence constructs far removed from how regular people speak the language in their everyday lives. It’s a tradition that has had a long and often elegant history. Born as a means to tackle the upper caste hegemony on politics that depended on speeches made in English with a British accent, it certainly was one of the pillars on which Tamil Nadu carved a distinct identity for itself. That cliché can only be understood in its entirety when one considers how different the state is – both in terms of its politics and the attitude of its peoples to the Indian state.

V Gopalsamy, or Vaiko[1] as he now calls himself, is possibly the last student of that class – one that speaks with rhetorical flourish in quasi classical Tamil. The speeches are always punctuated by pauses but are unlike Vajpayee’s. They almost always evoke history and make several detours into political philosophy. The current chief minister of the state used to be one of the great exponents of the art — before age and compulsions of coalition politics caught up with him. By the very nature of the current political structure in this country, the second tier of leaders in both kazhagams is not flamboyant. Speaking wise or otherwise.

The AIADMK, by its very nature, has been more a fan club than a political party. MGR wasn’t a great orator and Jaya isn’t either – and they don’t need to be as leaders of the other school. The Congress probably has the best speaker of Tamil, if in a non-Dravidian style — P Chidambaram. However, neither the Congress nor the finance minister can win anything by themselves in the state anyway. I haven’t heard Ramadoss speak three sentences in reasonable succession and Vijayakanth needs a camera.

Great oratory, by itself, has rarely won elections. It needs an emotive issue that fools voters, requires great orators who appear committed to a cause and a very low penetration of mass media. Since we now live in post Sun TV Tamil Nadu, the skill has been reduced to a niche. That is exactly where Vaiko comes in and where I hope to make my case.

My theory is: with the ageing of Karunanidhi and the lack of a suitable replacement for him within the DMK in terms of his training in Dravidian oratory and method, the DMK will be/ is already being forced to play the AIADMK’s game. MK Stalin speaks alright – but is no match for his father. The rest of the DMK has lost out partly because their patriarch is 85 and is still running the show. In such a scenario, if Jaya gets together a coalition that has her traditional fan base and the PMK’s 5% transferable vote – Vaiko will be the GUI on top that sprinkles Dravidian aura over everything.

……part II – to be continued.

[1] – In one of his trademark quips, M Karunanidhi, replying to a reporter’s question in 1996 about Vaiko having changed his name, said ‘avarathu katchiyayi polave, peyarum surungi vittathu’.

I wanted to buy farm land. Naturally, I wasn’t given a home loan. Though, I must admit, it wasn’t all that natural until I was told, home loans are for homes.

I must be truly Tamil.

In the glorious tradition of the peoples of this great land, I always find myself supporting the aalum katchi. It makes me immensely proud of my own self and of my ilk — the tree Tamils[1]. The last time I remember supporting an opposition party in an election was in 1996 — that was when I was too young to claim I will not vote and I probably believed corruption was a bad thing. Perhaps I believed Sun TV more. Maybe both. Or, all three.

That brings me to the question — wouldn’t people who are doing reasonably well for themselves, more often than not, retain the power structure they are in? Australia only recently switched to Labor after over a decade of Conservative rule. The Republicans have been the majority party in America for reasonably long now[2] and the power shifts in Britain have become increasingly less frequent.

In the past four years, India experienced one of its fastest growth phases in its history. After four years of growth at over 8% and an average pay hike of 15% per annum in the organized sector, isn’t it natural that the average middle-class citizen feels good about oneself? If one were to be cynical and argue that the growth rates must be taken into account in comparison with those in the rest of the world, shouldn’t inflation be as well[3]? And more importantly, the middle class voter is more likely to consider what one will risk — not incremental changes in growth, one is tempted to think[4].

Of course, that rationale, even if true, does not hold for poor people. And poor people form the overwhelming majority in a poor country. That basically means, those in power can’t use growth rates — however fantastic they may have been — as an electoral plank. Which is probably why the Indian National Congress is mute about its rather splendid achievement and is acting embarrassed about it.

In other words, poor countries can’t judge governments either way. And rich countries can judge them only when they go very stale or very bad. Like Bush Sr or Jimmy Carter. In sum, the feedback loop is inefficient and the middle-class voter in a developing country should not care. Which they do not; long live Classical Tamil.

[1] — Tree as in caste, not as in plant. Vellore Mutiny, Warrior Caste etc.

[2] — One can discount Carter’s win. And one must. Only Bill Clinton has won the Presidency on a Democratic ticket after Lyndon Johnson. New Deal is safely dead. At least, was.

[3] — Assuming, the argument is restricted to middle class. Which still may not hold. But then, one has to say impact type things.

[4] — Pet theory type.

Hindu Astrology has always come to stand for prediction, and therefore unscientific. However, the original texts clearly distinguish between Jyautishya and Phala Jyautishya. Jyautishya means astronomy while the latter term literally means “astronomy with a result/fruit,” which approximates in meaning to astrology. By his own account, AKR’s father was a phala jyautishi. Secondly, in calling the Gita a religious text, which always means a Hindu equivalent text to the Koran or Bible , AKR displays the first instance of either ignorance or deliberate mischaracterization. The paper provides numerous instances to lead me to believe that the latter is true.

Now, let’s bet. How many different pairs of boobs has this Sandeep person felt (up?).

PS: Gasquet fan, where is the widget?

PPS: Both boys, namely this Sandeep person and the author he dissects, don’t seem to have read Kant. They should really shut up — but they (or he) will not and we can’t bet on a certainty.

This makes me wonder why Balaji has no Google Ads on his blog.

Let’s assume Senator McCain chooses Bobby Jindal as his running mate. Let’s aslo assume, the Louisiana Senate too approves SB 733 which has already been passed by the House. Bobby Jindal, one would assume, will not veto the bill[1].

Fast forward four months.

Barkha Dutt will want to have an episode of We the People with Amit Varma as the expert on American politics. What will his opening remark be?

[1] — Let’s assume the man is smart enough to let the Supreme Court kill it.

Think of a good phone for businessmen and what comes on top of mind is the Blackberry. Maybe a Nokia E-series phone. Apple iPhone really doesn’t figure in the list. It after all, has a strong ‘high-end consumer phone’ image.

This is the number one need that businessmen look for in a business phone.

What are you wearing thinking?