In a world where truth is just a semantic twist for a pants-down president, you, our avuncular comrade of immense comedy, an English-speaking communist ruler in one of the last few soviets of the century, have said it for the record, with unintended Orwellian subtlety: truth is lie. Silly, the media. They should have known what to expect from a very senior communist like you.

They should have known more about the methods of politbureaucracy, the secrecy of the state. But you were kind enough to clarify: I too will lead you down the wrong path.You mean the right socialist path. Yes, we understand. You are certainly the chosen one to lead Kerala -- down the wrong path. Pyongyang's Kim or Havana's Castro can never be as honest as Kerala's Nayanar. Are you, dear comrade, the jester who survived the false script of communism?

``False information was provided to keep you happy'', continued the Chief Minister at the press conference. Keep us happy, yes, keep the masses happy. You have only stated the obvious. Every communist leader of the century celebrated the false to keep the people happy. After all, what was communism if not an idea of infinite happiness? An Edenic brotherhood on earth, as ambitious as Christianity. The only difference was, in the red religion, the cross was marked for the one who questioned the dubiousness of happiness.

Compared to the historically abandoned socialist lands, your kingdom is so insignificant, your burden so light, as light as a silly joke. Your forefathers implemented happiness by resorting to jackboots. Theyhad higher things at stake -- the empire, the masses, history ... What have you got? A few mofussils, some slogans, the book and, of course, false information.

History repeats itself: first time as tragedy, second time as farce, and finally as joke. But your joke is so harmless, comrade. It may not make us happy. It certainly makes us laugh.

``For the last three months, you have all been fooled'', continued Chief Minister Nayanar at the said press conference. Only for the last three months, and only journalists? It has started the day Stalin landed in the Finland station. Not journalists alone, a vast section of humanity was fooled, for eighty years. When history intervened ten years ago to put an end to the ebony joke, nobody laughed. There were only tears of I'm-still-alive-to-cry. But you, comrade, survived.

You were too marginal, too invisibly irrelevant, to catch history's attention. Now you say you have been fooling us. We have never claimed that you have been doing something else. You look sofoolish when you say that you have been fooling us. Is Comrade E.K. Nayanar capable of anything else? We are not foolish enough to say yes.