Emotive Issue

Humour is the balm to soothe charged emotions

Under the flowering tree: A beautiful garden goes to seed

Had not Arun Patil’s car run a flat tyre, we could have had a different morning today. Chances were that instead of listening to recorded music on his box speaker, we would have got live news of the election results on radio while exercising. But Arun came in late and had left his box speaker home.
Interest on the outcome of the world’s biggest democratic exercise is natural. But to inflict one’s political opinion and affiliation on others is in bad taste. This has never happened in the Club earlier. An unwritten rule exists that we must respect the sentiments of every member and party politics can find no place in this.
Today that rule was broken. Some members with obvious right wing leanings exulted brazenly on the impending victory of the saffron combine, only to send a buzz around. When Jagmohan Papneja raised the BJP slogan, ‘Good days are coming’, Arun Patil retorted with “Ya, ya, they’ll even make rotis in your homes."
Now this was stepping into dangerous territory. A call went out not to bring politics into the Club and Nahid Khan tried to diffuse the situation by reminding that regardless of whichever party comes to power, our condition will remain the same. But Papneja persisted by bringing up statistics on how the economy will improve and Arun harped on danga-phasad breaking out and Harbans Kaur joined issue by declaring, “the Congress always starts riots” till an otherwise composed Khatoon Baig snapped: “Please, stop it! We don’t want to hear politics here.”
Before the Club could be split on party lines, Srichand Arora made light of the issue by announcing, “From today, India’s national dress shall be ghagra-choli. The national food shall be phapda-jalebi. National drink shall be goli-soda. National sport shall be kite flying…” An emotive issue was thus put to rest.
Jagmohan Papneja:
Modi-led NDA will form the next government. The BSE Sensex today surpassed the 25,000 mark and rupee is on a eleven-month high on trend giving a clear majority for Modi-led BJP in Lok Sabha polls.