Straight Face

Straight Face
Pamela Philipose

Words and whispers '99
It was a super cyclone of a year. Rough winds of change tore through a world that was hurtling hopelessly, helplessly into the black hole of a new millennium. As the world nattered on about Y2K compliance, it seemed to be in the grip of a serious hysteria as it tried to tackle the many imponderables of life with its eyes wide shut. It was as if one needed a sixth sense to negotiate a year that saw the NATO bombing Kosovo as if there was no tomorrow as indeed there wasn't for many there. And when this ceased, it was Russia's turn to wipe out Chechnya.

In our own backyard, guspaithiyan, or intruders from across the border, brought on two months of a bitter war. It was enough to puncture the friendship bus to Lahore, and make that defining moment at the Wagah border seem a misread line in a Faiz Ahmed Faiz poem.

Suddenly Kargil was no longer just a bit of gnarled geography. It burst into our drawing rooms in a tattoo of gunfire, it seared our consciousness in the blaze of the funeral pyre. Yes, 1999 was the year of the funeral the public funerals of soldiers and the anonymous cremation of the victims of Orissa's killer cyclone. But was the Kargil affair an intelligence failure, or a failure of intelligence? Tough to say.

We may have been smothered under the blue bedspread of an almost-war madness, if it hadn't been for the lighter moments that 1999 brought our way. There was Kumble's Perfect 10 and the hype over World Cup cricket that provoked some to sport T-shirts bearing the legend ``Our religion is cricket, our god is Tendulkar''. But they quickly turned into atheists as the Indian cricket team took its game to new lows.

Austin Powers of the Bugs Bunny grin provoked our censors to edit the word ``shagged'' out of the film, The Spy Who Shagged Me. The irony, of course, is that thanks to this Ashaparekhism, most of us now know what the word means. But then the subcontinent's zero tolerance in such matters is well-known. Khushwant Singh lived up to his kissmat by buzzing the daughter of the Pakistan ambassador and jangling nerves in Islamabad and Karachi. But, thankfully, detumescence set in as far as Monicagate was concerned. Hillary Clinton pronounced the last word on it when, in a spirit of stoic spousal sympathy, she pronounced, ``Bill is a hard dog to keep on the porch.''

Our politicians took their duties as the chief entertainers to the nation very seriously this year. There was Jayalalitha treating the Vajpayee government like a teabag by periodically dousing it in hotwater until she was ready for her grand tea party. The government collapsed by a vote. Meanwhile, Om Prakash Chautala, couldn't make up his mind whether he was an Aya Ram or a Gaya Ram, and in UP, it was Ram Rajya time with Ram Prakash Gupta staging a coup in Lucknow to parallel the one in Islamabad.

But the vote for the most enthralling entertainers of the year must surely go to the Akbar, Amar, Anthony trio of the Congress. By declaring that no foreign-born should hold high office, they put Sonia Gandhi into an almighty sulk which, in turn, led to high drama outside 10, Janpath.

For the BJP, the foreign origin issue came as an unexpected gift. BJP secretary, Narendra Modi, demanded that every Indian woman pass the karva chauth test. The party followed this pronouncement by airdropping its 100 per cent swadeshi beti, Sushma Swaraj, to take on videshi Sonia at Bellary.Conversion was big in 1999. The Papal visit in November sent the Sangh Parivar into an anxiety attack but fortunately our 5,000 year civilisation appeared to have survived the three-day visitation.

It was also the year of the nerd mentality, when every geek aspired to inherit the earth and the acronym MCP no longer stood for Male Chauvinist Pig but Microsoft Certified Professional.

And if there were times when the ground beneath her feet shook uncontrollably, there were also times of an equal music. If there were funerals, there were also weddings of the sons and daughters of the andolan and of a certain Madhuri Dixit who turned into a Mrs Nene overnight.Indeed, it was difficult to decide whether this year was a national disaster or whether it should be treated like a national disaster. Until the very end when an aircraft hijacking all but hijacked the millennial euphoria it was uncertainty that reigned.