Some recent happenings in India reminds me of the olden golden days in school. The first complete sentence(or rather a question) I learned in LKG was "Tecaher, may I go to toilet?" Yeah, pissing was a favorite passtime. Many times the teacher would say, "No, you have to wait till the end of this period". Only if she knew some of my organs has a mind of its own. And the second sentence I learned was "May I come in teacher?" Suffice to say, this was all the english I learned the first few years in school. Now, coming to the matter, two days back Sharad Pawar was seen begging to Shiv Sena chief Bal thackerey, "Balasaheb, May I call aussies to play in the IPL?" And what does the toothless old tiger say with a cat-like roar? "No Sharad. Wait. Let me think and decide in two days". And so it is. The nation waits with bated breath to hear the verdict of a man, who should've been thrown out from the country in the first place.

We have such a long list of permission granters, the ones who call themselves patriarchs or whatever fancy name that comes to their mouth. Come valentine's day, and we'll again be witness to the annual ritual of burning cards, beating couples etc. In this case, even if you ask the saffron brigade for permission to celebrate, they wont give you. Its a question of their ideology(or rather lack of it) that they are not ready to tolerate any deviation. As I said in this blog last year this time, they are India's biggest gay rights activists. Yeah, you won't believe it, they'll beat even the fans of backstreet boys(or gaystreet boys, to be precise), in being the rightful rulers of the Indian gay kingdom.

If you head down to Kerala, you can't do anything without getting the red brigade's permission. A tea shop owner in Calicut learned the lesson the hard way, for not asking their permission before serving tea to Rahul Gandhi. The next day after Rahul's visit, the tea shop was closed down by the red men from the panchayat, citing the low quality of water. Yeah, they are not be blamed. He should've atleast asked them before serving tea to Rahul. If you get their permission, you can even get away with murder. Infact, they'll protect you. In Tamil Nadu, you'll have to get the permission of organisations like PMK before naming your film. English names are a strict no-no. And tamil names shouldn't be offensive to any of the million castes in the state.

Then there are our human rights activists. Before shooting a terrorist, its better to ask their permission. Else, you are surely gonna be pulled up for human rights violation. If you are a cricketer, before playing a shot, you better ask one of those million critics who never played cricket. They'll tell you if its right to play that shot at that particular juncture. Even if you are Sachin himself, you better follow this rule. But, amidst all this variety of permission granters stand the one and only undisputed one of the breed- Sonia Gandhi. Taking sychophancy to THE FAMILY to the next level, we have leaders of every shade asking her permission before arriving at decisions of any kind. The permission granter of permission granters.

your crusader Praveen