Welcome to the club, Dr Singh

Few will know that I am the president of the Underachievers Club of India. It’s not a registered body because all of us in the club are too lazy to get up and register in our brains that getting the club registered will give the club teeth, and money. In fact, several of us have lost one or two of our canines because we came second best in a street/bar brawl. And we’re always short of funds to achieve anything substantial. Truly, we are underachievers.

But gentlemen, the momentous occasion we’ve been waiting for has come. And today, I’ve the privilege of welcoming prime minister Manmohan Singh to this hardly august club of people like him. To be honest, none of us in the club would have even dreamt in our most underachieving dream that Singh would ever be branded ‘underachiever’ despite the fact that Singh was always a prop propped up by the Family that gave three prime ministers to India and not one of them an ‘underachiever.’ I sympathise with Singh, it was too sophisticated an act for Singh to follow. He should have left his mumble behind in the Punjab that went to Pakistan. That could have helped, may be.

I think Singh’s Time has not been good. For a long time, newspapers and the TV have been highlighting the fact that because of Singh’s underachieving over the last three-and-a-half years, India as a nation has also underachieved. It’s almost as if Singh, and by extension India, has been striving to bag the underachiever tag come what may. Singh was fortunate in his quest because of the other underachievers in his party and coalition. Leaders like Pranab Mukherjee and P Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal and Sharad Pawar and... One of them wanted to be prime minister and the moment he voiced the thought he was dumped by the party and the poor fellow is now thrilled to perhaps get the keys to the bungalow where the nation’s biggest underachiever gets to live for five years at a stretch and not be asked to do anything that needs more than an underachieving brain.

Lucky him, some say. We in the club congratulate him. As for the other gentlemen in the incomplete line-up, all of them too want to be prime ministers but not a whisper out of them. They know it and we in the club know it that they want to be prime minister. But, boy, don’t we all know that none of them will see their dreams come true. The reason: they are all underachievers, same as Singh. Time missed the woods for the trees when it put only Singh on its cover with the Underachiever in red. All of UPA minus A Raja should have been on the Time cover, with Sonia and Rahul Gandhi sharing prime space with Singh. In one corner Time magazine could have slipped in my mug as I happen to be the president of the Underachievers Club of India, and that fact has to register at least in Asia if not all over the planet.

While on my tribe, a thought to those in the opposition who failed to achieve what Singh achieved to get the underachiever’s tag. Now, according to Time, Narendra Modi is an achiever though the government of the United States of America would rather not give him a visa for what he has allegedly achieved. The other gentleman who has achieved is Nitish Kumar with the stubble to prove that he worked hard to achieve what he achieved, a craving to be prime minister. Both these men in the opposition want to be prime minister. But with the Indian electorate always achieving what it wants achieved, it will most probably be touch and go for both of them. My fervent hope is that finally the day will dawn when these two would also qualify to join the club. You never know but I’ve the underachiever’s intuition.

As I step up efforts to close this piece with a resounding thump, I want to part with some gems. I want to tell Mr Singh, who was once King, one among the 100 most influential in the world, not to grieve at this so-called loss of face. You have had your innings Mr Singh, not one but almost two. Many would cut off their noses to get a chance at being an underachiever at your level. Many would give up their love to stand in your shoes. Many would easily hang up their boots after getting the chance that you got even if it comes to being labelled ‘underachiever.’ Mr Singh marvel and revel in the thought that Singh was once King. And most of all rejoice in the thought that you are not in the company of A Raja — A King — who happens to be the only achiever in India in a long, long time.