What would you do if someone calls you an idiot? Or inefficient? Or Incapable? Or dumb? Or helpless? Especially when you were once one heck of a Sheldon! It has happened to me many times, especially when I am new in any job, as I have the habit of getting into new jobs with no similarity to any I did before. But with Manmohan Singh, it has happened after he's finished 8 years as Prime Minister, and let's not forget the successful stint before as Finance Minister. Not that it hasn't been said before about him, but we hear it more often now with our PM's situation worsening with each passing day and his alleged direct involvement (possibly by accident and without his own knowledge) in scams. I say it's worsening coz as everything moves in its natural course in whatever direction, our PM is standing still. I sometimes feel he might be a robot with an external human appearance. He doesn't even wave his hands when he walks, although he walks real fast when the key is wound. We can easily build one of those I guess, by taking some money out of some coal mine auction, or have the mine run over by elephants (someone told me when I was a kid that if 1000 elephants run over coal, it becomes diamond), taking some time out of DRDO or ISRO or something and have our Scientists build something like that, of course without Pakistan coming to know. I was thinking whether we can have something like that - Build a Manmohan Singh Robot that walks like him with one hand in pocket, wears same dress always, doesn't talk - for Techfest Robotics Challenge, but I am not sure if doing it in public would be in the National Interest, as guys from Pakistan and guys/gals from Sri Lanka also participate in those competitions. But if someone can confirm that our PM is not a robot, then may be we can have this kind of a competition. I don't think this would be seen as offensive, coz celebrities happily take pics standing next to their own wax statues. This would be a high-tech robot. We should have the PM judge the event. If he can't decide, we can have a walking race with the PM as the decider, unless Sonia ji recommends some robot be declared the winner. She might pick up one of the robots for the next PM. But since Manmohan Singh is officially aging, she should rather have a Rahul Robot built for the next time Congress comes to power.
The context of this post, is of course the article - India's 'silent' prime minister becomes a tragic figure - by Simon Denyer of The Washington Post. I have realized that it is very dangerous to let yourself be ruled by a geek. Reputations of honesty, sincerity and meticoulsness to detail drawn from performance in homework, exams and research often have no relevance when it comes to getting things moving in practice. Blame it on academic stuff that has no right to be so interesting - which it happens to be for humans wired in certain way - in spite of being disconnected from reality. Blame it also on the way we form opinions of goodness about geek people, which may be true in some cases, but lead us to make conclusions that are justified only by our fear and distrust of people in power. A silent, expressionless face may mean an intelligent, possibly (or necessarily?) confused, mind lost in analysis which we correlate spontaneously to honesty and sincerity (relationships made in heaven which need not have earthly rationale), and thereafter jump and decide that such people becoming our leaders would be great. While we possibly think a weak, intelligent and honest person would let us have fun and also do what's right for us (ah, the kid in each one of us!), the powerful and chaaloo (like Sonia Gandhi) want such a person to be at the forefront to make us credulous masses happy, and also to push the puppet the way he/she likes. It's fun for all. Win-Win is a way of looking at it. But an intransitive "win" is empty by definition, unless you are a Buddha and can't define in words what he's won.
