Skip to main content

Celebrities and me


If I am asked to invite some “celebrities” to a dinner at my dining table, who would those “celebrities” be?

At the outset, let me clarify that this is a purely hypothetical and fictitious approach to the latest theme proposed by Indispire.  

The first three names that come to my mind are Arnab Goswami, Narendra Modi and Gurinder Singh Dhillon.  The last may need an introduction.  Mr Dhillon is the godman who controls quite a few empires led by a cult named Radha Soami Satsang Beas.  He is arguably the richest Indian if the wealth possessed by his cult in India alone (let alone those abroad) is reckoned.  He is worshipped as a god by a few million people in the country though he shies away from publicity of the sort I am giving him free of charge.  He is a celebrity though the Indian media has not discovered him yet except in a rare report like this.

Mr Modi with his political acumen and Mr Dhillon with his godman skills can work out some divine miracles or at least some human strategies for solving India’s myriad problems including Pakistan and China. We have come a long way from Swatch Bharat and Black Money Back.  Now the focus is on the potential Third World War being concocted at the Indo-Pak borders.  I would love to know what the godman who owns the largest area of land in the country has to say about this war for territory.  And I would love to see Mr Goswami bending his ego like the reed in a storm and trying to shout “The nation wants to know...” 

Indispire wants me to invite five celebrities, the sixth one on the table being me supposedly.  So let me invite Dr Manmohan Singh.  He will give me company, I hope, to be a silent observer even when Mr Goswami will declare him the culprit of the latest Indo-Pak showdown.  I will be delighted to learn the value of silence from Dr Singh.

What about the fifth chair?  Well, let god occupy that.  God is the silent listener always.  Let him/her/it learn, if he/she/it has not learnt it already, the games his creatures play in his/her/its name.

PS. This post is written for Indispire Edition 136 #Celebritydinner 


Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. Durga Prasad DashSeptember 24, 2016 at 9:18 AM

    Considering that the post is to be categorised under humour at Indispire, your article foots the bill perfectly. Now the question remains as to who will foot the dinner bill, will it be the richest among them or, following the tradition of the godmen, he will demand a hefty sum from you for honoring you with his presence?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 24, 2016 at 12:19 PM

      You have understood godmen perfectly. They never give anything to others; they know only to receive, grab and grab and grab. Thank my stars, this is only an imaginary dinner.

      Delete
  2. Pranju chakrapaniSeptember 24, 2016 at 9:20 AM

    A Tripuri friend of mine had a picture of him as his wallpaper on his mobile. He said with a wink that this guy do not preach hinduism but spirituality. I let him wink at his own line for there is more than what the eye sees. But yes, I would like to have Arnab Goswami as my guest.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 24, 2016 at 12:24 PM

      I knew a lot of his devotees. I had quite a few arguments with some of them at the gate of my school after the godman took over the school (and eventually killed it much as they assured us that they would run the school "for a hundred years".
      http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/New-management-trying-to-close-school-alleges-staff/articleshow/20402538.cms)

      One of the devotees met me outside the gate one day just to tell me that he had left the cult having realised that it was fraudulent to the hilt.

      Delete
  3. जितेन्द्र माथुरSeptember 24, 2016 at 1:30 PM

    Very good post Sir. Very good indeed. The question put forth at the end is the icing on the cake.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 24, 2016 at 4:27 PM

      Life compels us to reach such climaxes (or anticlimaxes).

      Delete
  4. UnknownSeptember 25, 2016 at 9:13 PM

    Praise The Lord sir, yes if they give than they won't be of that importance to have the worldly things,respect,claim of being false god so,they would still find a way to grab land in some there place planet.
    Let's not wait for war it is already on

    ReplyDelete
  5. sunaina sharmaSeptember 27, 2016 at 3:16 AM

    Will Arnab Goswami manage to coax Mr. Manmohan Singh ot of silence....?....I wonder.....:)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...
16 comments
Read more

Nehru’s Secularism

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Narendra Modi, the present one, are diametrically opposite to each other. Take any parameter, from boorishness to sophistication or religious views, and these two men would remain poles apart. Is it Nehru’s towering presence in history that intimidates Modi into hurling ceaseless allegations against him? Today, 14 Nov, is Nehru’s birth anniversary and Modi’s tweet was uncharacteristically terse. It said, “Tributes to former Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Ji on the occasion of his birth anniversary.” Somebody posted a trenchant cartoon in the comments section.  Nehru had his flaws, no doubt. He was as human as Modi. But what made him a giant while Modi remains a dwarf – as in the cartoon above – is the way they viewed human beings. For Nehru, all human beings mattered, irrespective of their caste, creed, language, etc. His concept of secularism stands a billion notches above Modi’s Hindutva-nationalism. Nehru’s ide...
14 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more