Ever heard of a tug of war played reverse where two parties push an object on the opposite side to win a match … well that’s what going in West Bengal nowadays . The object in question is the tag “ Maoist” and the two parties in question is the CPM and Trinamul . In a state where traditionally every car riding , a Salt Lake flat owning guy is termed a bourgeosie (don’t you dare think of Jyoti Basu) and every coffee house hoping poor loving, Noam Chomsky reading guy as proletariat (think of Jyoti Basu) , tagging Maoist is the new thing .Anybody from from your local veggie seller who charges Rs.100 for a banana to your boss who doesn’t pay you enough to buy it ,can be a Maoist . But it gets confusing and messy when the tagging gets onto the levels of the kingpins.
The Trinamul accuses the CPM and the Maoist to be the reincarnated Karan-Arjun of the movie Karan-Arjun – they were sworn enemies but really couldn’t kill each other off due to a temporal umbilical chord joining them (here the umbilical chord is not that of Rakhee’s but maybe of Hu- Jintao’s) while on the other hand the CPM accuses the Trinamul of hosting rooftop ‘dress up’ parties late at midnight where Mamata Bannerjee dresses as Snow White and the Maoists as her dwarfs . A simple solution would be to ask the Maoist about their allegiance but that would be like asking a beauty contest contender “why do you want to be like Mother Teresa ?” . While the ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ triangle continues to tingle among the three , it is increasingly becoming difficult to avoid the sound of guns raging in the state . In an almost open letter to the CM of West Bengal, P.Chidambaram (the smartest man on this planet after Crime master Gogo) had showed concerns about the activites of ‘harmads’ (he actually meant ‘HER-MAD’, Mamata Bannerjee’s sobriquet in Delhi) . But amonst all this din I genuinely feel sorry for Buddhadeb Bhattacharya ,he is somewhat becoming like THAKUR SAAB of Sholay .. no hands to act ..even if someone pins “I HAVE A CRUSH ON MAMATA” badge on his kurta ..he can’t do anything about it .. except maybe sob profusely to Biman ‘Ramu Kaka’ Bose . But in a state almost divided on the lines of Us and Them , a mere admiration of Buddha’s starch white kurta or that of Mamata’s durable chappals can get you into a lot of trouble .. so lets stear clear of any admiration or apathy and lets concentrate on behind the scenes action of the ‘K2H2’ story .
By this time we all know that the Maoists leaders don’t give a Mao’s shit about the very oppressed people they claim to represent . At the most they can be seen as merecenaries hoping from one mission to another commissioned by either the Trinamul or CPM (decided on an IPL style auction ) . The same goes with the central government which is too busy washing dirty diapers of the heir apparent Baby G and going after visionaries like Dr. Binayak Sen who waste their entire lifetime doing what the government should have done for the past 63 years and what the Maoists claim to be doing now . So for what it’s worth it is futile to tag anyone Mao or Anti- Mao, from a certain logic one person’s Maoist is other person’s Government and vice versa . It’s a pity that most of the deprived population ,who have been denied the basic needs of survival for the past 63 years, may never get to read ‘The Animal Farm’ . In an almost prophetic ending George Orwell wrote … “…The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
