Pit Mamata di against Rakhi S and who would you bet on? After their respective performances on Railway Budget Day and Swayamvara, put your money on the lady from Kolkata. Anyone who can take on Lalu Prasad Yadav in a gab fest and make him look jaded-aged has to be declared the winner.

Forget for a moment, that she was somewhat unintelligible in that quaint mixture of English and Hindi which came out sounding like Bengali. Fact is, she gave a highly entertaining performance laced with wit and trenchant comments as homespun as her sarees. She was not afraid to speak her mind and her jousts with Laluji were the highlights of a refreshingly candid speech. Such a relief from the usual smooth and suave politician we watch on TV.

Pranab Mukherjee’s Budget speech was a sedate, composed affair, offset by his rather natty white bandh-gala. For those of us who think ‘fiscal’ is the wrong spelling of ‘physical’, two aspects stood out in the Budget telecast: Hindi channels such as Aaj Tak, India TV and Star India provided a simultaneous Hindi translation of the speech and the FM appeared on a DD News interview within an hour of his speech.

What stood out in last week’s incessant debates on Section 377 before and after the Delhi High Court ruled against the criminalisation of homosexuality, was that people came onto TV and said what they really, really thought about homosexuality — be it gay activists, politicians or religious leaders. For possibly the first time we had a fearless exchange of views on sex. Such openness suggests we are willing to face up to what has been hidden in the closet so far. Tolerance if not acceptance maybe at hand.

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