It is alright to poke, call or shout at a sleeper who you want to desperately wake up. My wife does that all the time. While NYT is trying to do that precisely here, it appears to me, as an onlooker, a mildly amusing entertainment. Perhaps a horror movie of future.
Because the person is not really sleeping. He is just pretending to sleep.
For all the talk of development and bullet trains, deep down he knows that he is not the miracle-worker that Arnab Goswamy and his credulous and massive followers hoped for. Modernity does not reside in ATMs or Trains. It is a transformation of mind and culture. The modern so-called development that the Indian middle class is waiting for - that is not the Gomukh of miraculous powers. But, it is just a child of a cultural change, perhaps the youngest born. I will grant that Modi is acutely aware of this. But then, there are a couple of problems:
1) What he peddled was not that. It was instant gratification. He just asked for five years, not fifty.
2) His own cultural ethos goes against the very same change. He drank the ideological milk from a mother who believes in taking Indian ship back to a port that it left, not taking it to a different destination.
I would have loved to believe that the person is actually sleeping. But I can't. For all I know, four years down the line, most probably he is going to need the people to turn out to the polling stations not with hope, but with hatred. And he knows NYT is not going to help him.
There is one way to detect if a person is actually sleeping or not. A person who genuinely slept will be uncouth. Not like this. If he knew enough to wear his name all over his body, he knows everything else going around.
Because the person is not really sleeping. He is just pretending to sleep.
For all the talk of development and bullet trains, deep down he knows that he is not the miracle-worker that Arnab Goswamy and his credulous and massive followers hoped for. Modernity does not reside in ATMs or Trains. It is a transformation of mind and culture. The modern so-called development that the Indian middle class is waiting for - that is not the Gomukh of miraculous powers. But, it is just a child of a cultural change, perhaps the youngest born. I will grant that Modi is acutely aware of this. But then, there are a couple of problems:
1) What he peddled was not that. It was instant gratification. He just asked for five years, not fifty.
2) His own cultural ethos goes against the very same change. He drank the ideological milk from a mother who believes in taking Indian ship back to a port that it left, not taking it to a different destination.
I would have loved to believe that the person is actually sleeping. But I can't. For all I know, four years down the line, most probably he is going to need the people to turn out to the polling stations not with hope, but with hatred. And he knows NYT is not going to help him.
There is one way to detect if a person is actually sleeping or not. A person who genuinely slept will be uncouth. Not like this. If he knew enough to wear his name all over his body, he knows everything else going around.
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