A Statue Upsets a Sports Icon While Farmers Do A Namo!

Delhi seems to be seeing a lot of protests lately. And no, these protests have nothing to do with our man AK – nor has he to do anything with these protests (he’s safely saddled in the chair of the Chief Minister plus it is too cold in Delhi and AK has lost his muffler!). The city saw a 101 day sit-in against the CAA at Shaheen Bagh a year back. It is now witnessing a massive protest by the farmers at Singhu Border. While the style of the protests, the food these protesters eat and their indulgences have been dissected by folks sitting in their cozy, centrally-heated apartments and gobbling pizzas – these farmers, mostly Sikhs, are a resilient lot. Over 20 of them have died in Delhi’s severe winter yet that has not been able to shake the high and mighty – not even the PM. Mr. Modi insists that the newly enacted laws are a ‘gift’. It’s not that these farmers are insensitive towards our beloved PM. No! They aren’t. That they took to clanging steel utensils and thalis while raising slogans, a trick clearly inspired by none other than Mr. Modi, is good enough evidence. It is a different matter that these farmers timed their act so that PM’s Mann Ki Baat gets drowned in the cacophony. A little ambitious – yes. However, this blogger has reasons to believe that the message, if not the noise, certainly reached Lok Kalyan Marg.

Dilliwalahs often leave the dead alone. That’s provided the dead remain dead and oblivious. DDCA, the controversy-ridden body that controls cricket in the capital, brought one of its past president out from the afterworld. It’s another matter that his ghost literally came back to bite DDCA. No wonder William Dalrymple called Delhi the ‘City of Djinns’. DDCA apparently has plans to install a statue of Late Arun Jaitley at Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium. This was reason enough for another Sikh, the legendary spinner Bishan Singh Bedi, to get very upset. He immediately asked for his name to be removed from the stand that was named after him at the Kotla. Dilliwalahs would recall how Mr. Bedi had raised the issue of misappropriation of funds during Mr. Jaitley’s tenure as the president of DDCA. Sadly, Mr. Bedi’s rants are not likely to make any difference. The current president of DDCA is none other that Arun Jaitley’s son, Rohan. Did you say that word – Nepotism? That’s a ‘no ball’! Nepotism is prevalent only in opposition parties and Bollywood.

Dilliwalahs have often wondered on how the Chief Guest for the Republic Day Parade gets picked up. Well, this year there is complete clarity. Birds of the same feather flock together! To comprehend this all you have got to do is to view that video of the British House of Commons that’s gone viral. It has Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, a Labour MP, making an impassioned statement on the protesting farmers’ plight. The response it gets from PM Johnson is completely unrelated to the issue raised. You watch that – and (bingo!) you can easily visualize the bonding between our respected PM and Mr. Johnson. That bear-hug awaits the British PM. The vacancy for able candidates for a bear-hug, with Trump out of power and Xi flirting with Ladakh’s map, seems to have been finally filled up.

StateOfDelhi Suggests: Winters is a season of Gajak and Rewari for Dilliwalahs. While stalls or kiosks hawking these savories spurt out in every nook and cranny of Delhi, there is nothing to beat the stuff that one gets at Kinari Bazaar. Connecting Dariba Kalan to Nai Sadak, Kinari Bazaar is a narrow street where you get a variety of Gajak and Rewari albeit under the manufacturing tag of ‘Meerut’. An outlet for picking up real good stuff is that of ‘Meerut-wale’ Surender & Sanjay Kumar Jain. Here’s a chance for you to perform a largehearted Dilliwalah act. Send a few boxes of Gajak for the protesting farmers at Singhu Border and express gratitude to the guys who have fed you for ages.