Netting netas
Parties are breaking up filmi style. Titles and all
Now on screens, rebel-blocbusters. The record-breaking Bengali and its Maha copy are live-streaming simultaneously, plots thickening faster than a middle-age waistline. Like all great drama, this ‘netanki’ too requires a suspension of disbelief. Though, no sign of suspended dissidents. Updated idiom: Deserting rats are sinking the Mamata/Uddhav ship. Like SRK in Happy New Year, Maharashtra’s Shiv Sena DCM declared last week that this was ‘only the trailer. Picture abhi baaki hai.’ Eknath Shinde hinted that the queue of those wanting to decimate the Thackerays rivals that for a Lalbaugcha Raja darshan during Ganeshotsav or at least the daily one outside Mumbai’s two newly anointed benne dosa deities. Let’s see which film titles are a perfect fit.
We’ll start with the current Hollywood blockbuster since money is the alleged lure but power is the politicians’ basic Obsession, like in the film, their ‘one-wish willow’. However, here the horror is being felt by their ‘hate-interest’, the mother party. Shinde – the OG Shiv Sena breaker – named his current hijack Operation Tiger. While Balasaheb’s biological heir is desperately crying (Amcha) Tiger Zinda Hai, his breed is the most poached beast of the Maha political jungle.
On an IMAX scale, the reigning Obsession is that of Om-nipotent BJP. It’s now driven by the hegemonic ambition of an ‘Opposition-mukt Bharat’. To that end, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, who spearheaded Total Mamata Collapse, handed her 20-MP clout to Nationalist Citizens Party of India. Thus overnight turning this hitherto unheard of, congenitally loser outfit into the biggest partner of NDA, read ‘BJP’.
The political suspense thriller genre per se is marked by One Battle After Another. The current crop, mirroring this Oscar-sweeper, also features those who’ve been branded as ‘illegals’. Or, even Sinners. Backrooms have been action-packed.
Reflecting Apun Ka Bollywood, the ongoing drama could as well be titled Cocktail 2 (States), and be quite Toxic for the shaken mother party. Both rebel groups fancy themselves as Dhurandhar/Dhurondhor, without daring to challenge the undisputed No.1, Bahut Jeeta Party. Will ‘partees’ remain parted? In politics especially Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.
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Alec Smart said: “Mumbai monsoon arrives bringing relief and woes.”
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
