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The slipper is on the other foot. Jayalalitha, long used to making other politicians look pathetic and ridiculous, has fallen victim to a barb carelessly launched by Laloo Prasad Yadav. Of course, he was bound to get a rise out of her. In a poor country, the gayly-shod tend to be sensitive. The AIADMK just had to enquire if Laloo Ya-dav's entire property was worth less than Rs 2 lakh, the value of Jayalalitha's collection of slippers. But perhaps humour would be out of order here. In fact, it would be downright callous. The ponderous dignity of the AIADMK's rebuttal conceals a poignantly human vulnerability.
An official statement from the party's deputy general secretary which must have occasioned toil into the wee hours, on the party's official letterhead, declaring that Madam's footgear has been duly examined by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption and, presumably after allowing for depreciation, has been valued at exactly Rs 2 lakh. It puts one in mind of Imelda Marcos' immortal defence pleain 1987, in the court of the people: "I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes. I had one thousand and sixty."
Leather has always been politically significant. The territorial success of the Roman legions, for instance, is sometimes attributed to their superior kit, which included the best footwear of the time. The legionnaires were eventually rendered loopy and impotent by the lead in their cooking vessels, but that is another issue. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has a cobbler insinuating that `proper men' can be reliably identified by the quality of their shoes. The phrase `down at heel' remains opprobrious, even in the age of durable plastic.
Nearer home, shoes have represented the absent ruler in the Ramayana. Before Independence some kotwalis of the east had the fabulous cubit-and-a-half slipper. Too huge to be worn by a mere mortal, it was the footwear of the state and regularly descended on the posteriors of the erring and impertinent in the interests of political control. In more recent times,slippers are used in garlanding effigies of political opponents. In political meetings, they are redoubtable instruments of dissent. Legend has it that only Piloo Mody was able to stand up to flying slippers. When hit by one, he immediately demanded the pair.
Such good humour is not a feature of the current slipper wars. Not surprising, though, because this round rekindles the ancient association between slippers and shame. Both parties are seen as trendsetters for a new polity which has publicly put Mammon before all else, where the only sin is to be caught. The pity is, they are far behind the times. It was Imelda Marcos, again, who articulated the crisis of modern politics in 1985, going out in a blaze of glory when both contenders were in their political infancy: "My economic theory is that money was made round to go around. The whole trouble is, the center is money. All the heads of people thinking about money. All the hands of people reaching out for money. All their poor little bodies working formoney. They are running in all directions for money." What an accurate description of the Indian political establishment.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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