Shobhaa De | Greenland In Trump's Pocket: Is Cuba Next?

“Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion… and stand by it,’’ said Martha Ellis Gellhorn, an American war correspondent who reported extensively on major world conflicts that took place during her 60-year career.

President Donald Trump has probably not heard of her. But even if he had, what does Orange Hair care? His citizens are cheering him on after his impertinent, unconstitutional attack on Venezuelan soil, during which he brazenly kidnapped Nicolas Maduro, the long-standing President of a big country (population of 31.3 million) and flew him in handcuffs to face trial in America! Absurd? Shocking? Revolting? All that… Just like Donald Trump himself. What did the rest of the shell- shocked international community do? Zilch! A few clucking sounds and many weak responses later, global leaders backed off and kept mum. As did our chaps in India. Trump thumped his chest and pretended he had done all this to save the world from a drug lord, also a tyrant.

Please note: No reference to oil. The same tyrant is now the unofficial brand ambassador for Nike, the American brand that dominates the market for athletic footwear and apparel, after America flashed Maduro’s pictures clad top to toe in Nike. The brand instantly sold out the infamous Maduro tracksuit and is frantically stepping up production to meet global demand. Is this perversity or something worse? An absence of a moral compass. Maduro and Trump are hawks of the same feather. Despots who get away with murder -- literally. And voters? As pathetic as their leaders.

Apparently, Trump plans to add Greenland to America’s kitty. Political analysts are also trying to fix a timeline for Trump’s acquisition of Cuba.

Greenland is a given: it’s a cakewalk. Come on… can Denmark do a bloody thing with its own diminished global position? After controlling Greenland for 300 years, the Danes, with an army of just 16,000 soldiers, don’t stand a chance in hell. Trump can close this deal with five military helicopters strategically hovering over the territory Trump has been coveting. “I think we are going to get it one way or the other,” he boastfully declared last year. He may not need the helicopters if he decides to “buy” the 58,000 Greenlanders, by offering them a juicy deal: US citizenship and moolah. Big moolah! For Greenlanders: $1 million per head. Small change for Trump. His grand ballroom costs more. Nato? Errrr… What about Nato? Who listens to Nato any longer? Who cares?

Closer to home, warring parties in Maharashtra are going flat out to insult voters/citizens and blatantly buying power at any cost. The Big Boys are busy doing what political parties do best: bribing the electorate. Breaking alliances, creating chaos, demeaning and defaming opponents. What about a new narrative, folks?

These tricks are so yesterday. Voters want a bigger bang for that buck! Sadly, the atmosphere in this most critical period before voting day remains as damp and cold as the present, highly polluted, toxic January weather.

South Mumbai has traditionally been thanda at election time, rarely showing up at polling booths, and expressing annoyance over the mandatory holiday (“loss of dhanda, boss… zero faida”). Local netas are aware of the poor turnout, scampering from one building society to the next, soliciting support by promising the moon and beyond. Nobody is fooled! The canny netas also know it’s the occupants of densely-populated slums stretched over large unauthorised tracts of reclaimed land who need to be persuaded… not the affluent residents of wealthy housing societies. “Show me the money”, the cunning voter demands, pointing out the absence of basics in these shabby, illegal dwellings. The population has trebled, with the third generation of slum-dwellers occupying the same wretchedly under-developed, cramped spaces where the stench from open drains, uncleared garbage and rotting fish adds to the misery of life in a “kholi”.

But come election time (after eight long years) and the same folks automatically behave like snooty L’Oreal models, cheekily with political hagglers, mocking the paltry handouts and demanding more… just like Aishwarya Rai and Alia Bhat do in those glossy L’Oreal commercials: “… Because I am worth it”.

“I never said most of the things I said”, is one of the wittiest quotes of a blunt American baseball player named Yogi Berra (a cleverer version of our Navjot Sidhu, when it comes to one-liners).

“It ain’t over ‘til it’s over…”, is his most famous quote. I’m pretty certain most of our learned leaders and movie stars are not Berra fans. But they indirectly quote him regardless… never mind the irony! Uddhav Thackeray insists: “The BJP has doled out BMC projects and advances to favoured contractors… it runs into Rs 3 lakh crores.’’ He also added this election is being fought “with deceit and bad intent to erase the identity of Mumbai and the Marathi Manoos”. All sorts of charges and counter-charges are flying around, which is the currency of desi elections. Though the politico refused to identify which two Gujaratis are about to “swallow Mumbai”, the insinuations were sufficient to attach name tags to the avaricious, scheming Gujaratis he is referring to, with a hungry python’s huge appetite to swallow unsuspecting bait. Uddhav referred to the yummy, yummy… highly lucrative Mother Dairy project in Kurla, which is being handled by the Adani Group. Most of Thackeray’s ammo is aimed at Adani, and through implication, Narendra Modi.

Significant. Given the identity of other Gujarati players in the big-stakes games. Uddhav’s well-aimed potshots include digs at Devendra Fadnavis, Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar. But who knows? Once the numbers kick in, there could be a complete volte face. That’s when Uddhav and his supporters will need Yogi Berra’s lines the most!

It took an outspoken movie person (honestly, can’t describe her as a “star”) called Daisy Shah to call out over-enthusiastic political campaigners in Bandra East, who set off firecrackers in her residential complex, leading to a blaze in one of the flats. The miscreants fled the spot when the fire broke out, leaving residents to fend for themselves. “Take accountability. It’s high time,” she said. So far, nobody has! Irresponsible campaigning has been accepted across India. We in Mumbai shrug and change the subject, treating such gross breaches as an inevitable part of electioneering. We accept and get used to just about anything -- like the frequent visits of prowling leopards in suburban residential colonies. Or slithering, poisonous political snakes shedding their skin, election after election.

Remember: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over …”