Straight Face
                        ___________By Pamela Philipose

Bal and the goblets of fire

Before long, Bal had become a Balayogi. From Balayogi to Bhagwan was a short hop.

Bal Keshav Thackeray is, I believe, a much misunderstood, even wronged man, and last week’s bal-by-bal commentary from amchi Mumbai only went to confirm this. In fact, I found my lachrymal glands overflowing like the Ganga in spate in response to the shabby treatment meted out to this khandani manoos (perfect gentleman). There he stood, with hair slicked back, dressed in pristine white, with rudraksha malas around neck, vermillion mark on forehead, dark glasses over eyes, offering to deliver himself up to the rapacious and cruel jaws of justice.

How can anyone even consider treating this supremo of the subaltern, this magician of the malevolent, this artist of anger, so shabbily? Here is a man who can miraculously reduce normal human spines into jelly, rule India’s most prosperous state by remote control, script thriller after thriller of action-packed human drama, and all this in the service of the nation. How can we drag him to our pedestrian level and talk about prosaic and utterly redundant issues like the rule of law and the majesty of justice?

Let me, here and now, celebrate the achievements of this personage, whose political caravan has trundled on for over 35 years. Long before Jayaprakash Narayan called for a Total Revolution and Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency; long before L.K.Advani discovered his rath yatra or Tamil Nadu’s Puratchi Thalaivi discovered the joys of cut-outs; long before NTR won Andhra Pradesh for Chandrababu Naidu or Laloo Prasad saw himself as permanent as the alu in Bihar’s samosa, Bal Thackeray — the Hindu Hridayisamrat — has been around. On June 19, 1966, he founded the Shiv Sena and adopted the roar of the tiger as his language of communication. For sheer staying power, there is no one around today who’s been around for longer than this smoker of Cuban cigars and drinker of warm beer.

Like many of us, he started modestly and worked his way to the top through sheer dedication, application and ingenious rhetoric. For starters, he chose the lowly, dark-skinned, lungi-clad vendor of coconuts with his little handcart down the road as the object of his wrath. The cry Baja pungi, hata lungi — blow the bugle and remove the lungi — reverberated through Bombay’s streets, as coconuts and soda water bottles flew through the air under guided muscle-power. It left behind that first heady whiff of ammonia and xenophobia, known to be excellent for political constitutions, as morning walkers at Shivaji Park could vouch for.

Before long, Bal had become a Balyogi. From Balyogi to Bhagwan was just a short hop. By the mid-eighties, as the red flags of Lalbaug gave way to neat saffron triangles that marked Sena territory, many who prostrated before the Great One came to believe in his divine powers. So it came to pass that one fine day, shortly after the Masjid had dissolved into a pile of dust and terror spread like lightning through the length and breath of the nation, God wrote that his people must now open their Third Eye and teach ‘‘them’’ a lesson. The divine message came through with chilling clarity. Bombay, urbs prima, with 12 million people and settled patterns of syncretic living, observed the laws of spontaneous combustion. As blood darkened and dampened its streets, men, women and children ran for hidden corners their hearts beating louder that the riposte of police guns.

It was all the will of the Almighty. Things kept happening when the words ‘‘Balasaheb yancha vijay aso’’ were uttered. Cricket pitches got dug up and tarred, old and respected actors were humiliated, young and popular actors were humiliated, commission inquiries were buried, phone services went on the blink, the Sensex collapsed, cases got dismissed. When God says — not as a threat, but as a warning —‘‘Mumbai will burn,’’ everybody rushes to catches the next local back home. Then God says, ‘‘I don’t want the city and state to burn,’’ and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. In Mumbaispeak, it is like this only: Zindagi aisa chalta hain.

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