The still, sad song of Congress, the modern Prufrock

                                           The still, sad song of Congress, the modern Prufrock     

One hears the Congress is presently engaged in deep introspection after getting drowned in Namosunami.  Introspection is a passive activity that relates to the quiet examination of one's own thoughts, impressions, and feelings, for long periods. No harm since Congress has a long period of exile from the seat of power – at least for five years and maybe for ten years if Modi’s words that ‘ he will not be a  one term PM,’ prove  to be prophetically true.  It is hardly a week since the banishment has officially started for the party and it can well afford the luxury to be in moments of deep contemplation. It is not an arduous task for a party that had shown stupendous silence during the pre-poll days to continue that silence  in the post poll days leaving the word stage to the PM designate who never suffers from paucity of words. But does the Congress expect to get enlightenment at the end of its introspection like the Buddha , wake up and understand the reason behind people’s rejection of the 125 year old GOP and liberate itself from this banishment which seems to be in for a long haul. Hopefully Congress should remember what the Ecclesiastes says:

There is a time for everything

And a Season for every activity under the suns

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
 a time to mourn and a time to dance,
 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
 a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
 a time to search and a time to give up,
 a time to keep and a time to throw away,
 a time to tear and a time to mend,
 a time to be silent and a time to speak,
 a time to love and a time to hate,
 a time for war and a time for peace.

Modi had been a one man demolition army that trampled over all other parties. Even his own BJP had been silenced to submission. During the election campaign his roar was powerful than that of the lions in the Gir forest to drown every other voice.  The only thing he asked his anglicized partymen to do was to use the twitter to canvass his case. The people voted for Modi and not for the BJP because he was the only face they could see, the only voice they could hear and the only one who towered as a Brobdingnagian reducing everyone of his opponents including those from his party to a Lilliputian. He changed the political campaign and made it similar to the US presidential campaign and with his masterful oratory, mimicry, mockery and outrageous disregard of factual truths, he triumphantly strode like a colossus all over India decimating all those who dared to oppose him. He contemptuously dismissed the criticism of the pipsqueaks who dared to point out his lack of knowledge of history and geography. After all in his opinion what mattered was ultimate victory at the hustings and not geographical details and historical truths. He is a consummate theatre artist who could effortlessly ease himself into different roles and show a variety of emotions such as self pity, martyred feeling, tearful dramatics, sarcasm and spite and make his audience vicariously experience all of them.  

Can Congress or for that matter any other party rise like phoenix from the ashes? Not in the near future( at least not in the next five years). Grovelling in the dust raised by Modi’s march from Ahmedabad to Delhi via Varanasi, the party has to discover a worthy opponent who can beat Modi in his game of theatrics. It has to find one who has what it takes to be a Modi fighter. The defeated Congress party had one too many intellectuals from Oxbridge and Harvard with exemplary academic credentials, excellence , privilege and exclusiveness. But they failed to put across their work to the people in a language that was simple and comprehensible. Their handicap was lack of knowledge of Hindi. The masses in particular in the Hindi belt wanted to hear someone who can talk their language. But a la Amitabh Bachhan they appeared cut off from the masses as they talked English, walked English and laughed English. Modi on the other hand, talked Hindi, walked Hindi and laughed Hindi. His ability to turn a tea vendor remark and a ‘neechilog’ remark(that had no reference whatsoever to his caste credentials)  on its head and  make his disadvantaged pedigree to his advantage cut a chord with the masses. No wonder all the gargantuan efforts of the Congress to provide food and cash security to the masses could not stand before the emotional pitch that Modi raised.

Will Modi deliver commensurate with his peroration? Will he shed his diatribe and theatricality for statesmanship and civilized language? Will he soar like the seagull of Jonathan Livingstone or fly like Icarus too close to the sun on wax wings and get singed? Will the huge mandate make him humble or conceited? Time alone will tell.  Congress party’s attempt at introspection is as inaudible as the love song of Alfred Prufrock that was never sung. With apologies to Eliot, here are the lines of its sad song that Congress must be mumbling through its moments of introspection.

                               There will be time, there will be time

                               To prepare a face to meet the faces that oppose us;

                               There will be time to learn to match your words with ours,

                               There will be time for you and time for us,

                               And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

                               And for a hundred visions and revisions,

                               Before the inking on the forefingers begins.