Oh Rahul! Where art thou?

Hi! I am Rahul. Naam to suna hoga?”

Remember Dil to Pagal Hai? In the climax of the film, just when Akshay Kumar thinks he’s got the girl, a tape starts playing in the background, (purely a dramatic accident) where the girl, played by Madhuri Dixit, talks of Rahul and what Rahul means to her. The monologue begins with Rahul, it ends with Rahul, and without saying anything related to plot, immerses itself in Rahul.

As I sat watching the prime minister, Manmohan G, embarrassing himself on national television last Wednesday, I could not help but wonder why the powers that be did not play the Rahul G monologue from Dil To Pagal Hai as background score during the media interaction. The television editors would have loved it and perhaps deafened by the Rahul aarti, the nation would not have noticed how the Einstein of Indian economic reforms has turned into the AK Hangal of Indian politics.

The way our prime minister speaks it appears that a political coalition is the Gabbar Singh in the Ramgarh of Indian democracy. And Manmohan G is as helpless and as honest as AK Hangal in Sholay. I mean no disrespect to the prime minister when I extend the metaphor. Imagine AK Hangal in Sholay with a turban, thick glasses and a beard to match.

I don’t blame the PM if he’s left speechless. It must be tough for him to suddenly switch to 2G, 3G when all he did in office till now was “Sonia G, is Rahul G ready? Madam the nation is waiting.” But I do blame the Congress high command for not playing the Rahul aarti when the PM needed it the most.

Waiting can turn a tourist into a lover and a lover into God. Which is why, I think, Rahul G isn’t just the PM in waiting. He is a political avatar in line. He is the answer to our prayers. But where is he?
Rahul G is to politics what Tendulkar is to cricket. Except, he’s refusing to come off the nets. When I use the word G in Rahul G, I mean exactly what a telecom expert implies when she discusses 2G or 3G in her line of work: Generation.

To me, Rahul, the phenomenon, is symptomatic of my generation’s general malaise — protracted adolescence. A generation that is never fully grown but is always growing shouldn’t be a problem. The harvest is the trouble. At what point do you send the boys to the wolves? Rahul G is a promise quite like a prophecy or a well executed movie trailer. But now it is becoming very boring. Even for the aunties in my parents’ neighbourhood in Delhi.

“Bete, iss saal to shaadi kar hi daalo,” an aunty said when she found me sitting with my mother one afternoon on my last visit home.

I looked at my mother. “Bus aunty, Rahul Gandhi ke baad apna hi number hai,” I replied. 

 “Phir to ho gayi shaadi!”