The Elephant in the Room

The latest drama on the Indian political scenario has been the Election Commission’s latest directive to cover up all the Elephant statues, erected by (allegedly) the richest Chief Minister of the country Mayawati, during the past years. This act is only to ensure that the elections are fair and some other bovine fecal matter like that. Mayawati won elections in 2007 and since then has erected innumerable elephant statues or elephant heads across Uttar Pradesh.  Not to mention her own statues and her party founder Kanshi Ram. It is reported that over the next few days, the local administration in and around Noida and Greater Noida are going to employ their invaluable intellectual and management skills in determining how much tarpaulin and clothing will be required to achieve this divine democratic task.

I have paid my taxes for the past 3 years and hence I do not want to get into a discussion of where they got the money from. That would be rather depressing.

For those of you who are proud of paying advance taxes, I got three words for you.... he he he!

While the title of this post can be used for almost any politically themed article, blog, note, status update, tweet or suicide note in India, it is incredibly funny to think that this time our beloved Election Commission is going the next level and trying to cover up these Elephants!

I would part with a substantial part of my meagre savings to find out if anyone in that particular room was aware of this overused English idiom, when the decision was being taken. Is it possible to invoke RTI for this purpose? If there was such a man/woman present in that room and if he/she had a sense of humor....boy what a laugh they’d had!

So basically while she went about erecting these statues....no one noticed...right!- big elephant in the streets of UP! While they investigated Mayawati, the courts found her not guilty of any money laundering – of course!- big elephant in the courtroom! Many such elephants have gone unnoticed over the past decades. No surprises there. In fact, I am forced to believe that it is Maywati who is perfectly aware of this idiom and hence ordered these statues to be constructed, to pay her respect for all the big elephants that went unnoticed during her rise to the chair and her rule thereafter. I somehow have the feeling that every time one such elephant in the room, courtroom, or media went unnoticed, the jubilant Mayawati ordered one to be constructed in the State in its memory.

So am I to believe, that come March, people in UP will wake up on the day of the election, complete the morning ablutions, step into their fine clothes, stroll past several hundred mounds of stone covered with clothes (with foreknowledge of them being shaped like elephants), walk calmly up to the ballot box and cast an unbiased vote? Of course yes.

If this were a Monty Python sketch, I am sure that the scene would have involved hundreds of people in a queue, with several live elephants strolling about them trumpeting, while they went and cast their votes calmly. Graham Chapman and John Cleese would participate in a dialogue with each other sitting astride elephants, while Michael Palin would somehow try to get them to cast their votes and Eric Idle would be the media person covering the elections. I bet he would have interviewed one of the Elephants, utterly depressed at being ignored in the sweltering heat.

Lord I miss those guys!