21 Oct 2009

300 YEARS LATER!

Almost 300 years ago, a bunch of Englishmen jumped off their canoe on an unassuming little river port in Bengal, India. They loved the Bengali cuisine, Ilish maachh, Alu Posto and the hairy poets wearing long discoloured robes. They loved the demure wife-burning, Kaali-worshipping menfolk who lived on these shores. Undoubtedly, they knew nothing about fish'n'chips or Scotch whiskey, so they thought that these legging-wearing, wig-proud outlanders might teach them a few tricks! Of course, who knew that they had more market economy in mind than bunny-in-a-hat.

Nonetheless, the so-presumed cultural exchange got bad, the pot-bellied siesta-loving Babus of Bengal and their Nawab couldn't really match up to the Royal Navy's debating skills, not to mention the accents, and ended up signing a contract in a foreign language. Too bad for the Nawab, but good for Calcutta! The three villages of Sutanuti-Gobindopur-Kolikata were squeezed together to form good ol' Calcutta! Which went quite well for some of us, for about a century, until the English started teaching us English. What else could we do! Before, if the English swore at us, we just thought it was another difficult word, but now.... ah well, you get the picture.

So, with this education bit, things went out of control, and along came a man, who looked like Ben Kingsley, talked like Ben Kingsley, but was, in fact, someone called Gandhi. Now this man went really berserk, and threw a tantrum that if the Englishmen didn't leave the country, he'd just sit and die. Its difficult to fathom why one emaciated, half naked man's dreary threat could sway the English pride, but they DID leave. But not before they sort of played 'Operation' on India, which mostly constituted of amputations followed by faulty sewing-up jobs thereafter. Well, that's another story, but here... they left India into three separate nations. I think they got confused with the initial efforts they made with combining the three villages of Bengal. I'm guessing they were feeling, "Bloody hell! Yaw mate! Let's just leave these buggers the way they were before, Yaw!"

After they left us, we got lonely, we tried associating with China. They didn't trust us. I think we were too Right-Wing for their liking. However, the USA was more friendly, they sent Hillary Clinton and her husband (Who was that guy again? Oh! He made sex tapes with the Lewinsky girl? No? Oh I must be thinking about Michael Jackson) to take pictures in front of the Taj Mahal. I think they were hoping we'd give up Saddam Hussein or Bin Laden if they shacked up with Veerappan or Dawood Ibrahim. However, none of this worked that much, becuase they were both in DisneyWorld, Orlando, USA.

So, coming back to our disgraceful attitude towards a free India, and autorickshaws don't help much either, we decided to fight back. Well, not exactly, after all, we were never fighters, it was the Persians who came to fight us first, and were very surprised that we would rather eat out samosas than go out and fight, so they settled down in this peaceful land. The Turks and the Mongols had similar experiences too. (See, that's why we look so different from each other!) Therefore, the only way we could take our, let's say revenge, on the plunderers is to give them a taste of their own Scotch whiskey! How? Buy a Scottish island! Give it to a man, who shows qualities (at least fashion-wise) of another famous scantily clad man.



Baba Ramdev is thus, India's answer to all those years of forced cuisine, clerical jobs, painfully slow roadways, badly planned urban spaces and not to mention the ingrained and dismally permanent association of Bengalis to that with prudish behaviour and the invention of the word "aantel". So, no matter, how mad Baba Ramdev made Koena Mitra and Shilpa Shetty, I support him fully, to slowly take over England. (Scotland is right next to it right?) After all the Surds' plan didn't work out. We have seen how mad these English can get over 'yoga;, remember the Beatles? "All we need is Love" - for yoga, to get back at the buggers for using our shores to dump scrap iron and bad temper. We got the scrap iron used up, but the bad temper became an integral part. Yaw!



Anyway, so finally after almost 300 years, we are approaching a moment, where we may avenge our English raiders. And in any case, its way too late to take revenge on the Persians, Turks or Mongols, plus they are not very well-off themselves either. Now that we are on the road, I would like to remember the days when the English-folk would swap leggings and wigs for the moustaches and wives of their on-shore counterparts, and everybody would be happy and high. Those were the glory days! However, revenge is a sweet word to those who have seen Ben Kingsley play Gandhi. Thus, Baba Ramdev has all my support!!

(I'm hoping we take prisoners when we win, I want Jude Law for my personal collection!)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Powered By Blogger