It belches and grunts. Is moody and makes offensive sounds when it dislikes its passengers. It also holds many secrets in its bonnet — mostly from the badlands of Uttar Pradesh where people still brandish kattas and can kill for a bottle of tharra.
It belches and grunts. Is moody and makes offensive sounds when it dislikes its passengers. It also holds many secrets in its bonnet — mostly from the badlands of Uttar Pradesh where people still brandish kattas and can kill for a bottle of tharra. Chachi is an Ambassador of 1970s vintage that ferries dhoti-clad, paan-chewing, portly politicians indulging in “suitcase politics” back and forth from Uttar Pradesh to Delhi. Louise Fernandes Khurshid’s imaginary conversations with a DLY driver took the shape of a newspaper column some years ago, and evolved to what we have today — “a simple journey illustrating the signs and scions of our times”. Travails with Chachi, which was launched in New Delhi recently, may sound dated as it records travels of Madath Singh Yadav, the DLY taxi driver, between 1980 and 2000, but it is not. As Khurshid, an ex-MLA, ex-journalist and wife of Congress leader and minister for external affairs Salman Khurshid, pointed out, “How times have changed. And yet haven’t. How mindsets have changed. And yet haven’t. How politicians have changed. And yet haven’t. We live in the age of Internet, but people still use it for astrology.” The colourful journeys with Madath’s tau Nakli Singh Yadav, a caricature of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, who loves inducting everyone from bus conductors to convicted dacoits into his party, and the portrayal of former Prime Minister V.P. Singh, who spearheaded the Mandal Commission movement seeking 27 per cent reservation for the Other Backward Classes, as “miskeen (poor) messiah” are comical. Madath refers to his VVIP savari, the miskeen messiah, as Rajaji, who bares his heart, insisting repeatedly on how impeccable and blemishless his image was — “Not just clean, Ariel clean!” While potshots at other political parties are ample, Khurshid has gone easy on politicians from the Grand Old Party of India for obvious reasons. Yet she has captured the political scene in Uttar Pradesh to near perfection: Small-time politicians seeking a taxi driver’s help to be introduced to leaders in Delhi and Madath basking in all that attention — sometimes waylaying politicians outside Delhi’s Hanuman Mandir on Tuesdays. Though Khurshid mostly caricatures politicians in and around Uttar Pradesh, Madath makes an occasional trip to Jayalalithaa land and one to Goa. Here Madath finds a neta banging his head on the ground chanting “Om Jaya Jayalalithaa”, another going into a trance and rolling in the mud, and a third standing on one leg — all in awe of their deity. He sends up a quick prayer, glad politicians in Uttar Pradesh are not worshipped like deities. The best scene is from the chapter titled “Impractical Seshanomics”. Election Commission officials monitoring poll-related expenditure on the instructions of “Seshan the Alsation” and Madath counselling sulking clansmen: “We, anyway, don’t spend money on unnecessary election paraphernalia so accounting is never a problem. Our main expense is on last minute booth capturing, which, anyway, the Election Commission fellows are pretty helpless to prevent.” The only chapter on a Congressman is the one on late Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao: “When in doubt, pout”. The old man, as he is referred to in the book, laments the loss of minority support and how his party allowed the 450-year-old Babri Masjid to be demolished. Rao could have fooled the world, but not a UP taxi-wallah, who will always remember him as the man who publicly expressed satisfaction at the security arrangements at the mosque three days before it was pulled down. Chachi is portrayed as a principled taxi — not the one to budge for a few extra pennies that Madath would salivate at. She grunts and growls and refuses to move towards a famous Lutyens’ Delhi address when she does not want a former Prime Minister to be in the “back seat”. “A stone’s throw from the Congress’ office at Akbar Road she becomes breathless — sputtering and muttering like a chronic consumptive”, and Madath is hugely embarrassed to drop off his savari mid-way. Answering a question at the book launch, Khurshid said, “Chachi would never have allowed Narendra Modi as a passenger.” Khurshid often meanders to themes which do not gel with the thrust of the book. She dedicates a few pages to the stray dog menace in Delhi with statistical details about the number of deaths due to rabies. Of course, she takes potshots at BJP leader Maneka Gandhi while doing so, but the detours are tedious. The pages are also splattered with Hindi words, sometimes abuses, which hurt the eye and the ear. The constant referring to Madath’s wife as “Bablu ki Ma” and Bablu as “the little harami” is annoying. Delhi Public School children, which is where Bablu studies, trying to make Delhi plague-free is a chapter Khurshid could have dropped. The book has been a long time coming, as Khurshid’s son Zafar pointed out during a reading at the launch. He was a child when he accidentally kicked a pile of papers and had to hide for several hours to escape his mother’s wrath. Khurshid plans a sequel in this changed political landscape and has a few chapters ready in her computer. She would love to write about Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and, of course, Narendra Modi. For now she is looking forward to the Hindi translation of the book (which shouldn’t be difficult given the liberal use of Hindi) and the reaction to the potshots at politicians. “And then I would need a gun licence!” she chuckled.
