Netas trade jibes as season of political repartee kicks in

Politics and diapers both need to be changed, and for the same reason. But how many times can you keep recycling the same two dirty diapers?’— Anonymous
The above maxim on politics is most likely to have originated in the two-party America. In present day India, though, it is raining diapers of all sizes in the form of jibes, diatribes and repartees.
The open season has even dragged the US president into Maharashtra politics. At the Sunday rally in Bhandup, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray questioned why Barack Obama had greeted Modi in America with ‘kem chho?’ (Gujarati for “how are you?”). “Why didn’t Obama say ‘aap kaise ho’ to Modi? Is Modi the prime minister of Gujarat or of India?” thundered Thackeray, taking his trademark four-second pause before spouting his next sentence.
Raj’s next line, too, was about Modi in the US. “Why did they celebrate Modi’s visit to the US with Gujarati garba dance?’’
Barely five months ago, though, he had praised Modi and his Gujarat model.
The ongoing verbal spats have shown that none will be spared during the assembly poll campaign.
There are also the non-contestants, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that have appealed to the people to instead press the NOTA button. “This is the free-for-all season. We are telling voters to try and choose a good candidate or go for NOTA. We also analyzed that a total of 42 Maharashtra politicians left their parties to join BJP recently. These are the ‘party badlus’ (political turncoats) according to us,’’ said Ravi Srivastava, state executive member of AAP.
During his recent rally in the state, Modi had said that Congress and NCP are playing the “kaun banega arabpati (who shall be billionaires)” in Maharashtra. While NCP supremo Sharad Pawar had wryly questioned why Gujarat state had installed a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji in Surat although he was called a looter in its history books, Modi had retaliated that Pawar should stop doubting their “Shiv bhakti” as it was BJP’s Vajpayee regime that had renamed the Mumbai airport after the Maratha warrior king.
At his Kolhapur rally, Modi took the opportunity to praise the world-famous Kolhapuri chappals by playing this square-cut line to the gallery: “The entire country needs Kolhapuri chappals so that we can move at a fast pace.”
Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray reacted to Modi’s stand of respecting late Bal Thackeray, with the prickly, “If you respect Balasaheb so much, then why did you break the Sena-BJP alliance?’’
Uddhav, in fact, went back in time to 2002 to recall this eyewitness account: “When everybody was saying ‘Modi hatao’ after the Gujarat riots, Balasaheb had supported Modi even then.”
“Sena is playing the wounded tiger card after the breakup while MNS does not know what to do. NCP and Congress are also blaming each other for corruption, as is seen between Ajit Pawar and Prithviraj Chavan. So, we feel that Modi wave is still on,” said a BJP politico from suburban Mumbai.
The contesting Congress MLA from Vile Parle, Krishna Hegde, though, countered: “If there was a Modi wave, then why did BJP do so badly in the recent state by-elections in the country? People want the food prices of alu-gobi to come down.”
Apart from the flood of words, it is the noisy trend of motorcycle rallies that in fact annoys locals and scares away stray dogs. This Sunday in Panvel, there were multiple motorcycle rallies.
“My pet puppy was so terrified of the roaring bikes that he hid in the bushes for over three hours till the roadshow was over,’’ said a Panvel resident.