The political cauldron of India is boiling with possibilities and alliances left and right in the election year 2014. The Prince is worried that all poll surveys show his grand old party may as well raise its hands in defeat. The saffron superman is displaying a wrinkled forehead during his strident speeches claiming to be the future leader of India, the lines looking like the scattered sticks of a marauding broom. The topi-clad smiling assassin of Delhi brandishing the broom is hobnobbing with Aam Aadmis like there is no tomorrow. The so-called third-rate third front is bristling with a total lack of ideas.
What next?
No. 10 Janpath calls an emergency meeting. Whatever they seem to be doing seems to be triggering a pepper spray in its own face. What indeed can be done?
A creative out-of-the-box jack rabbit comes up with an idea. Why not scrap the old party and create a new one? And call it the Black and White party?
Look at the marketing possibility sirji!
The idea is simple. Make India into the world's very first pure black and white nation. That means everyone and everything sports only one or two colours, the favourite white or the even more favourite black.
This idea is so ideally matching the heritage and aspiration of our nation. Let me cite some examples.
Black is the loved colour of accountants. White is the ideal of every Indian mind. White complexion (Fair Prince is shining in white rolled-up sleeves), whitening creams for men and women from all walks of life.
The Indian bride wears black eyeliner (Kareena also promotes white now), black bead necklaces and white lac or shell chudia armlets.
The frugality of a Gandhian weave is in its white.
A lot of Indian cuisine from black dal makhni to black gram halwa and black til laddus. Not to forget the white rivers and oceans of milk and curd.
The black hair that men and women sport late into wrinkled old age. Just as they in parts of India smear their faces with white powder.
The black money that backs every creative and competitive endeavour in industry and politics.
The shining black sinewy boatmen and fishermen and farmers and street layers and dock workers that can be spotted across the length and breadth of India.
The millions of outsourcing dollar earners who work every dark night to keep the white westerners happy and prosperous.
The frequent blackouts whenever we have power outage.
By eschewing the wasteful rainbow of colours which are a sheer distraction for our essentially black and white nation, a back of the envelope calculation shows, India will save a trillion dollars.
That's white and not counting the black bigger lot: starting with the savings in paint, print, television and Internet bandwidth. A straight forward increase of GDP by 20 percent.
The cut and dried Indian almanac has the white fortnight and the black one too.
Kalki is the white knight on a white horse coming as the last saviour for the masses, who comes and cleans up the sullied world.
The black Kali, Krishna and Rama already save the pious and pure souls every day.
The white Shiva sits with his Himalayan consort in the world's whitest longest stretch of mountains.
India, wake up to the future. It's black and white.
Welcome the Black and White party!
