Skip to main content

Modiesque India



The great writer Franz Kafka contributed the word Kafkaesque to English.  The worlds in Kafka’s novels are a veritable nightmare which is a metaphorical extension of our real life.  I suggest a new word to English: Modiesque.  My definition will be: “adjective: characteristic of a system that is at once oppressive and supportive, oppressive to the majority and supportive to a chosen group of people, and in which the majority of the oppressed perceive themselves as beneficiaries because of false propaganda.  Synonym: post-truth.”


Renuka Chowdhury of Congress who dared to laugh at Modiesque India is an intelligent woman.  Like most intelligent Indians today, she is helpless in dealing with the Modiesque India.  So she chose to laugh.  Any intelligent Indian would love to laugh.  I think I am also intelligent though not as much as Arnab Gau-swami.  Renuka can afford to laugh because the Indians like me pay her salaries and perks.  Gau-swami can laugh - though he chooses to bawl and yelp instead for reasons known only to him - because he belongs to the same economic class as our MPs, enjoying post-truth luxuries.


I would like to laugh too.  Who does not?  So I watch Patanjali advertisements and laugh.  I watch our godmen’s homilies and laugh.  The news channels are the best entertainments nowadays because they bring before us the classical jokers of Modiesque India.

But I have lost my laughter somewhere down the Modiesque highway on which petrol pumps loot my last penny for owning a Maruti Alto.  The farmer next-door who tells me that suicide is the only option left for him because his branch of State Bank of India is going to confiscate his house and property for his inability to repay his agricultural loan steals my laughter.  The children who go hungry in the orphanage in my home town because they live in Modiesque India which puts restrictions on charity in the name of gods have stolen my smile. 

Dear Ms Renuka Chowdhury, I would love to laugh like you even if the laughter gets labelled as the laughter of a puranic raakshasa (राक्षस).  You and I are intelligent enough to know how labels are created especially in today’s India.  I know you don’t give a damn to those labels.  I too don’t.  But that doesn’t solve the problem.  I want to laugh.  Can you or anyone in power in our country today return to me my smile at least, let alone my laughter?





Comments

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

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...
18 comments
Read more

Dopamine

Fiction Mathai went to the kitchen and picked up a glass. The TV was screening a program called Ask the Doctor . “Dopamine is a sort of hormone that gives us a feeling of happiness or pleasure,” the doc said. “But the problem with it is that it makes us want more of the same thing. You feel happy with one drink and you obviously want more of it. More drink means more happiness…” That’s when Mathai went to pick up his glass and the brandy bottle. It was only morning still. Annamma, his wife, had gone to school as usual to teach Gen Z, an intractable generation. Mathai had retired from a cooperative bank where he was manager in the last few years of his service. Now, as a retired man, he took to watching the TV. It will be more correct to say that he took to flicking channels. He wanted entertainment, but the films and serial programs failed to make sense to him, let alone entertain. The news channels were more entertaining. Our politicians are like the clowns in a circus, he thought...
9 comments
Read more

Stories from the North-East

Book Review Title: Lapbah: Stories from the North-East (2 volumes) Editors: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Rimi Nath Publisher: Penguin Random House India 2025 Pages: 366 + 358   Nestled among the eastern Himalayas and some breathtakingly charming valleys, the Northeastern region of India is home to hundreds of indigenous communities, each with distinct traditions, attire, music, and festivals. Languages spoken range from Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic tongues to Indo-Aryan dialects, reflecting centuries of migration and interaction. Tribal matrilineal societies thrive in Meghalaya, while Nagaland and Mizoram showcase rich Christian tribal traditions. Manipur is famed for classical dance and martial arts, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh add further layers of ethnic plurality and ecological richness. Sikkim blends Buddhist heritage with mountainous serenity, and Assam is known for its tea gardens and vibrant Vaishnavite culture. Collectively, the Northeast is a uni...
8 comments
Read more

The RSS and Paradoxes

The oldest racist organisation in the world is all set to celebrate the centenary of its existence. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1925 with the specific goal of unifying the Hindus in India under a religious and cultural banner. The Indian Independence struggle that was going on in full force at that time was no concern of the RSS. Though it gave the liberty to its individual members to take part in the struggle, the organisation’s official policy was to stay clear of it altogether. That was only one of the many paradoxical ironies that marked the RSS which was a nationalist organisation that cared little for the Independence of the nation. Today, the Prime Minister of India is a man who was trained and nurtured by the RSS. Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book on the paradoxes that underscore the personality of Mr Narendra Modi. The RSS and paradoxes go hand in hand, if we take Modi as a specimen of the organisation’s great achievements. Tharoor’s final asses...
8 comments
Read more