Off The Cuff: An encounter with Mrs Know-It-All

The first thing she said was "hellloh". I should have stayed with my cafe latte and not turned. She was seated at the adjoining table, wearing an orange sari, a Gucci handbag thrown casually on the tabletop. She was actually signaling the waiter, ordering Caesar salads for herself and her lady friend. She looked my way and said, "You must be in the media."

The latte made a surprised dash down my throat. "How would you know?" I asked.

"You've got that studious look about you that all media persons wear," she replied. "I'm right, no?"

"You're not wrong," I parried.

"I rarely am," she said, "Ask Jennifer, here, my friend from the States. I've been making her follow the Indian elections with me." Jennifer nodded speechlessly. She looked like a bird that had encountered a python, been swallowed, reborn, only to encounter the python again. Jennifer looked like she was in a recurring nightmare. Not far from where we sat, a television showed the unfolding scenes of the elections in India. Results were forthcoming. "So you're a BJP supporter," I ventured. "Not a chance," she replied. "Never was." "Why the orange outfit then?" I asked. "Political camouflage," she said, "This is the last time I shall be wearing it. I could have told the blind poet long ago he was heading for disaster."

"Blind poet? Mr. Vajpayee, you mean? He's not blind." "Not physically, but politically, totally and utterly."

"When did it all start going wrong for the NDA then?" I asked, interested.

"The moment they restarted that bus trip to Karachi."

"Lahore, you mean." "Yea, whatever. And even before that, when the General came to power in Pakistan."

"But Vajpayee and Musharraf have been making good progress on rapprochement. Kargil seems a closed chapter," I said. She said "eeks" and laughed uproariously. "That's what the newspapers tell you. I tell you the Indian government was never comfortable doing deals with the general. Sets a bad domestic precedent. WE have a military back home too, don't forget. Our politicians won't want to suddenly find themselves negotiating with generals…Now, had Benazir been in charge…."
"So you favour dynastic politics?"

"What's wrong with it? What was ever wrong with the Gandhis and the Bhuttos?" she asked. I changed tack subtly. "So what do you think went wrong for the BJP and its allies?"

"Their mistake was in allowing exit polls to be broadcast after the very first phase. It finished them. That and overconfidence. Imagine the exit polls being left in the hands of a biased media. They signed Vajpayee's political demise and handed him the document on the 13th, his lucky day."

"I see," I said, not seeing at all. "What if Sonia refuses to become PM?"

"That," she stressed, "will be a historical blunder."

"So you'll be wearing white from now on, I guess. Sonia's in white these days."

"You bet," she replied.

"Political camouflage?"

"Not a chance," she retorted, then turned to the table adjoining hers and shouted down the members seated there, reducing them to a cowering silence. "I can't hear a damn thing of what the anchor is saying with all this noise," she fumed.

"A colleague of mine says from now on pasta and pizza will be on the Indian menu," I said, lightheartedly.

She laughed back at her Caesar salad, "And I'll tell you something you don't know," she said, "in Italy, the chefs are rustling up masala dosas and idlis as their specialties. And years from now, when Europe and the subcontinent are one large bloc, it will be Sonia, India and Italy that formed the bridge. Remember that if you're still around. I hope you're going to publish all this in one of your centrepieces."

I grinned wryly. I couldn't tell her that, after deleting the expletives and the slander, I'd only be left with around 600 words to write a "Cuff".