Either her dogs or the caves of Badrinath would have done the prodigy from Tikamgarh greater service. The roads which she has hit, obviously, are not of much help . Uma Bharti?s Ram yatra, which was to take on the additional ?roti? in its name once she reached Ayodhya, is already a ?roti and dhaba? yatra. Each day, scribes from Bhopal are invited to interact with the sanyasin, and the venue is invariably a roadside dhaba, where, over dal makhani, ghee roti, curd, salad and gur, Uma pours her heart out against the ?gang of four? (Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and M Venkaiah Naidu) which, she believes, is conspiring to throw her out of the party. The owners of Gill dhaba, Betwa dhaba and Manna dhaba feel blessed. Thanks to the sadhvi, they are now playing host to over 200 persons at one meal. Perhaps Uma would like to know ? or perhaps not ? that these dhabas are famous for their kukad or chicken dishes. And a close scrutiny of their bills would also show that many of the sadhvi?s faithfuls have been ducking the strict code of vegetarianism. Stick to your (rozi)roti, tell them Uma!
It?s a Big event at Leelavati, now that the worst is over. The visitors? notebook at the hospital reads like a ?Who?s Who of Bollywood?. And, we are told, the first name on the register is that of Rekha. The ageless actor, who reportedly gave the Goa film festival a slip to be at the hospital, was seen walking on foot to the Siddhi Vinayak temple in Mumbai. Meanwhile, at Leelavati, it was junior Bachchan who took on the responsibility of screening visitors to see that Big B was not overstressed. When the megastar had spent several hours in solitude, he lost patience and confronted a close friend with questions about why nobody had come to meet him. Abhishek, standing guard at the door, was pointed out. Apparently, Big B couldn?t resist commenting that his son was acting more like his father.
The two could not have had more contrasting personalities. And yet, the newly appointed CM of Madhya Pradesh seems to be a mirror image of Manmohan Singh so far as work is concerned. Much like the PM, Shivraj is reported to have taken on the responsibility of vetting senior officials himself. He is interviewing them, scrutinizing their CVs, exactly the way Singh had done it while choosing his officials. Let us hope Shivraj?s government runs more efficiently than Manmohan?s.
In the dhoti-dominated left, nobody, quite obviously, wears the pants. Look at the way they are divided on the controversial pension bill, which the UPA government is keen to table in the winter session of parliament. In the CPI(M), while MK Pandhe, the Citu president, as well as Prakash Karat, the party gen-sec, oppose the bill outright, the rebel CM of West Bengal has expressed support for it. In the CPI, Gurudas Dasgupta is vehemently against the bill while a more genial AB Bardhan has decided to take a shortcut out of the controversy. ?Our unions will decide our view on this?, he says. Which, in other words, means more chaos.
There is said to be a striking resemblance between the Congress boss and the newly nominated Anglo-Indian member of the Lok Sabha ? Ingrid Mcleod, so much so that even seasoned politicians are heard to mistake one for the other. Mcleod is from Chhattisgarh and spends a lot of time in parliament. The likeness is so real ? same height, pale skin and black hair ? that Congressmen often joke that Ingrid could be made to stand in for the party chief at public rallies if she were surrounded by black cat commandos. Does she, like madam, also need a written script to make her maiden speech in parliament?
Much as Pranab Mukherjee may dislike it, the Union parliamentary affairs minister and information and broadcasting minister, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, has his sights trained on the throne of West Bengal. Still the reigning president of the All India Football Federation, Priyada seems willing to settle for nothing less than that. He himself made that clear when some journos asked him about how many years more he wanted to remain as the AIFF president. Das Munshi is supposed to have laughingly said that he had completed 16 years as president and wanted to complete the remaining 13, that is of course, unless the left lost in Bengal and the CM?s chair beckoned. Will the post of the Congress president in the state do for now, Priya?
Volcker may continue to give K Natwar Singh and his family sleepless nights, but it does not bother parliamentarians, certainly not all. While the report warmed up the atmosphere inside the house on a cold winter day, the minister of state for heavy industries (independent charge), Santosh Mohan Dev, taking advantage of the chaos, blissfully catnapped on the front benches of parliament. When someone complained, the former parliamentary affairs minister, Pramod Mahajan came to his rescue (of all people), saying that there was no parliamentary law against members dozing off inside the house. What is not allowed, clarified Mahajan, was snoring. Another parliamentarian further explained that the verdict against snoring was probably based on the principle that one ought not to disturb the person sleeping next to one. However, we feel that since Dev has been tipped for a cabinet post in the next possible reshuffle, he needs to ensure that he stays on the right side of the aesthetic divide.
