Year 2014. Election and IPL time again in the country. This time government has not found an excuse to export it out of the country. Pakistani government and terrorist ( what’s the difference anyways ) have almost forgotten to plan on interrupting IPL as they are busy killing their own people. The OCA ( Opportunist and Corrupt Alliance ) have finished their 5 years in power. This election looks like a rather dull one. The politicians have not figured out a single issue which can excite the nation. The Youngistan of the country is now not all that young any more and the youngistan of politics is almost headed towards Kabristan. Sachin and Sanath are all set to play the seniors IPL and people are already talking of Dhoni to retire from cricket as he could not win the world cup. Lalit Modi is now incharge of handling Indian hockey and his efforts to pump money into hockey have resulted in him looking like a starved model. Tatas are still selling Nanos as hot cakes although the 1 lakh car is now a distant memory.
But here comes the big scoop to spice up things in the country. All political parties have at last agreed on one issue. They want to hold all their political rallies in temples where people have a habit of leaving the foot wear outside. This is no mean achievement as such agreement between diverse political outfits is unheard of in the annals of Indian democracy. The politicians have learnt their lessons from the last elections where shoes were thrown by dozens of people for a 5 minute appearance on Aaj Tak.
Sports man have taken an offence of this development as they had started on developing shoe throwing as a full fledged sport. Training colleges were setup through out the country and there was heavy lobbying happening to make it Olympic sport. The reasons given were very simple. This game has a universal appeal. It has roots in US, Iraq, China as well as India. That covers more than half the humanity who are in all possible stages of development (or lack of it ).
Religious folks have taken a different angle to all this. The religions which did not mandate removal of shoes before entry into their religious places are claiming this as a conspiracy by have nots ( not having shoes ) against the haves. They are also missing out on all the rent paid by the politicians ( which comes from common man via businessmen) and are raising their voice against it. Some people of those religions are also quoting from an old book that how a verse means that shoes are supposed to be kept outside.
The shoe companies are lobbying hard to get this policy changed as that has had a severe impact on their politician brands of shoes. Infact after the last elections all of them started various shoe brands named after various politicians. But despite this approach taken by large shoe companies, small companies have managed to tie up with all the hawkers outside the religious places to take good looking shoes and sell it to them at a low cost. But some times the hawkers are not able to pickup both the shoes. To counter this they are running a campaign on TV about a new fashion statement ( endorsed by SRK, Night Riders are sleeping now ) of wearing two different types of shoes at the same time.
The common man ( not the one in RK Laxman cartoons ) has opinions on everything. They are sending SMS to vote for Jaynagar 4th Block Idol, they have a strong opinion on why Bangalore name should be changed again, they are so bothered about Chiru returning to movies after politics and Rajni moving to politics after movies. But unfortunately no time for casting their vote when the real poll comes. Too busy watching election news on Aaj Tak that they did not land up in the polling booth…..
