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Hero of the Eastern World

MODI has turned himself into quite a hero….” The drawling voice with an unmistakably infuriating accent was coming from somewhere far behind in the coffee bar exuding exasperatingly sweet perfume that coaxed you to raise the stink with the diminutive manager peeping from behind the vending machine.

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Saurabh Malik   

MODI has turned himself into quite a hero….” 

The drawling voice with an unmistakably infuriating accent was coming from somewhere far behind in the coffee bar exuding exasperatingly sweet perfume that coaxed you to raise the stink with the diminutive manager peeping from behind the vending machine.

Carried by the cool, rarefied air of the concealed air-conditioners, the words struggled hard to rise above the hubbub generated by some asinine love number with loud guitar and louder drums blaring out of the overhead speakers.

Why can’t they play some good Abba and Boney M numbers anymore? I was mulling, when I heard her again. Natasha, it was! The nasal twang was inimitable. “All this talk about him emerging as the knight in PM’s shining armour somehow reminds me of a protagonist in a literary work who portrays a success story on the society’s canvass by capturing people’s romantic attention…” 

She and politics were two sides of the same counterfeit coin you could flash, but get nothing from the market in exchange. Her ideas were worthless, to put it differently. But was the twenty-something student setting politics and literature side by side… I strained my ears and heard the quivering voice. She was talking to a friend I could not see.

“In John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World, a complete stranger stumbles into a tavern, and glory, as the society transmutes him into a hero after hearing the narrative he weaves around deeds gallant when heard, reprehensible when witnessed.

“The real import of his actions is lost amidst chorused chants of admiration. Part myth, part reality merge to create an idol out of him just because his utterances project him as a man ideal to fit into the perpetually available hero’s slot.

 “You see, the society is constantly looking for heroes. Our own gods are the ones who fight for truth to triumph. Actors, too, are worshipped and temples constructed to eulogise them. Anyone who complies with the people’s notion of a champion by appealing to their romantic ideals instantly finds a place on the exalted pedestal.

“Modi is the stuff comic-book heroes are made off. He can fly into the enemy’s territory and kill 300 terrorists and not keep nukes for Diwali. He can jump into a lake full of crocodiles to pick up a ball and a baby crocodile. You can’t defeat him. To quote Bernard Shaw, it takes two men to make a genuine combat. Modi is not a man. He is a phenomenon created by a hero-starved society.”

As I heard her ask for the bill, I realised her ideas had the potential of enjoying wide currency that could not be demonetised.

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