Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Didi Express

Here is what I observe(d), watching Mamata-di, our honourable railway minister, present her railway budget.

  • Most of the time, as Mamata is talking loudly, looking at her stack of papers, our other parliamentarians try to stand and out-shout her. But Didi, being Didi, steamrolls them with some of her counter-shouting.
  • Poor Meira Kumar! All that she was doing was to tell our unruly representatives, "Please don't shout, Please sit down", as if they were school kids and ready to obey.
  • Didi is flipping the budget pages left, right and center, pausing long at times and then starting to rattle off some train names and places, which with almost non existent intonation, sounds like a drone of a monologue.
  • Didi smirks and makes pointed gestures and even snapped at the other netas. ("See what I am offering", "Can't you understand what I am talking", "It'll take another 4 hours")
  • Lalu "the great", is shown at times, with his characteristic smile and shaking his head at times.
  • I can only imagine the cacaphonic "kaapi tea chaayae, kaapi kaapi" of railway platforms, as I see (saw) the budget being presented. I couldn't understand a lot of what Didi was talking, whether it was in English or in Hindi or a smattering of Bengali. She was like a chattering toy with faulty electronics which started and stopped on its own will.
  • It was a 'koththu parota' experience to see place names in Tamil Nadu being butchered by Didi.
Aside, why don't our parliamentarians embrace technology for this? Use PowerPoint presentations and talk only on the key points. Makes it easier. (There was a fake mail that floated around as excerpts from Nilekani's blog poking fun at the bureaucracy when Nandan Nilekani took over as the chair for the Unique Identification Authority of India project and when he supposedly wanted to present status to the parliament. That was fun)

Hopefully the budget is good for the train travellers out here.

14 comments:

lakshmi said...

Hehey! namba oorla jayalalitha "amma" mathiri avanga oorla Mamata "didi"ya.. ivanga thirunthavae matangala...

jayalalitha va "amma"va othukalam... ana mamta va "yakka"va othukavae mudiyathu..

yaruku yaruda yakka!!

Swaram said...

LOL ..the railway scene u hv visualized cracked me up :P Awesome ;)

RamNarayanS said...

@lakshmi-I am not responsible for your comments on Didi. :-) :-D (avunga Tatavukkey Tata kaatinavanga. avvalo thaan naan solla mudiyum :-))

@Swaram-Me too LOL at her antics on live TV. It looks as if she was ready to get into fisticuffs. :-D Thanks.

Tall Girl in Japan said...

oh she was hilarious ....specially when she got angry at everyone around her ..that cracked me up even more ! I think she spoke a wierd mixture of hindi and bengali which no one cld understand !!

chennaigirl said...

LOL. Only this karadi rhymes came to my mind while i was watching the session.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7JFAIlRCZQ&feature=related

gils said...

tht lady is one buffooon

RamNarayanS said...

@Ruch-Welcome. True, She suddenly snapped at a few folks and then sauntered on. Funny lady, she is!

@chennaigirl-That is a nice song for kids. :-D I was wondering why she was rattling on so much. Didn't smile the time that I was watching it, as well.

@gils-You and lakshmi now are on the hit list of Didi for your caustic comments. :-D

sri said...

LOL didi 's encounters, it was funny when they showed the clippings in tamil news channel about the project for Tamil nadu, I woke up to her ramblings and butchering tamil words hehe.

Jokes apart isnt she doing intersting changes in the railways? I mean bugetwise it sounds more long termed , am I missing something here.

Ramesh said...

Ha Ha . Didn't have the priviliege of listening to Didi - no hope of doing that from where I am , but could picture it vividly from your beautiful piece. She's really nuts and to think that the people of WB actually want her !!!!

Would love to hear her butcher the Tamil names - Ho ho Ho.

R-ambam said...

//why don't our parliamentarians embrace technology for this? //

good vision ! Lets hope for the best :)

RamNarayanS said...

@Srivats-She is doing some things, but I am not sure how much of those are long term or how much would be still-born.

@Ramesh-I don't blame her. :-) Maybe I would butcher if I spoke Bengali (but not place names though. :) South Indian places are notoriously difficult to pronounce for folks from other parts)

Looks like her first aim is to get the Left Front out of power in Bengal. Hope she doesn't drive all the industry out of there.

@R-ambam-It would definitely be nice to see a PowerPoint presentation in parliament. :) Technology coming of age.

Haddock said...

yeah it was very monotonous.

RamNarayanS said...

@Haddock-Welcome back. Yep, it was to an extent monotonous, but broken by Didi's antics.

Unknown said...

Aah, I missed this one :) Watching her speak is bigtime fun. LOL at "couldn't understand a lot of what Didi was talking, whether it was in English or in Hindi or a smattering of Bengali." I kinda mae out from 'bhas' and 'bhen' (was and when). I always knew it was English :) Nice write-up. :D