Of stripes

Did you guys see? He is dead. Yes, the big tiger that had been scaring the wits out of a particular government in the land of the Ravana. Honestly, I never knew what the big deal was about. I do take some interest in current affairs but this issue was always, I don't know how to put it, well, boring. If a squabble(usage of this word might offend few of you out there, bite me) goes on for so many years, the onlookers do get tired of it, don't they?

But this blog hasn't been composed to discuss the politics or the current situation in our neighbouring country. What I do intend to discuss is how I felt when I first saw the news on tv. Other than shock. Why shocked? Did I not expect him to ever get caught? Of course I did, after a certain point every place in the hide and seek game gets exposed. So it was inevitable. The shock was at the swollen face with the bullet in his head. You see a pic of a stout man wearing funky military camouflage uniform, posing like it's his 10th birthday, in the morning. By evening, that very man lies dead, with the news channels making sure that every 3.798 seconds the particular visual is flashed.

The next reaction was obviously sadness. Death isn't a pleasant thought, no matter who suffers it. It was followed by regret. Yes. Regret. For the simple reason that another "icon"(again, readers, easy with the flaming torches) of our generation is no more. Confused? It's simple. Throughout our lives, we have certain constants. These constants are outside of our family and friends, of course. Constants like Veerappan, Yaseer Arafat, the Pope (old one, I still expect the hunchbacked form to appear instead of Benedict) and the greedy Bangalore auto driver.

You have grown up with these people. Even if they weren't there, physically, they were part of the process. A smuggler was synonymous with Veerappan, anyone with a weird moustache was compared to him. When you spoke about godmen, Chandraswamy's personality came to mind. Fraud makes you think about Harshad Mehta. No one says "tomboy" better than Kiran Bedi. Geek stands for Bill Gates(I mean even if he ends up owning the universe, he won't give up those glasses!). "Break dance"(to us Indians) cannot be performed better than Michael Jackson. Quizzing is Derek O Brien. I think you get the drift. Constants, all of them. One by one, fading away.

You can't help it, isn't this how life works? So you move on. You look for new icons, reluctantly. Look around. Foot in mouth has a new ambassador, George Bush. Cricket commentary makes one think of the charming, smiling, Harsha Bhogle. Attention deprivation has the face of Navjot Singh Sidhu. A ladyboy is Bobby Darling and a ladyboy lookalike to woman like is Rakhi Sawant(cosmetic surgery-jai ho!). And so, the constants change(hunh..oxymoron).

Change - heavy, noisy and always in demand.