Wise and worldly? Or, other worldly? Take your pick.

I’m wary of people who compare Sonia Gandhi to the so-called Mahatma and Jayaprakash Narayan for renouncing’ power at the last moment when Congress replaced the BJP as the prime mover at New Delhi in the last election. My own reading is, MK Gandhi was not interested in wielding it once India became independent. On 15 August 1947, he was in fact praying and fasting in Calcutta. He had gone there to quell the massacre of the innocent. That day, by the way, also happened to be the fifth death anniversary of Mahadev Desai, his principal secretary and close confidant from 1917. (This part of our history is succinctly and tellingly depicted in The Last Gandhi Movie, my unpublished novel.http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/05/back-from-oblivion-last-gandhi-movie.html.) Narayan too was probably not power-enamoured at the end of the Emergency when a Janata Party government was swept into power by an anti-Indira wave. With Sonia, the decision to say No to the prime ministerial crown was probably motivated by her anxiety to avoid a near civil warlike situation and also perhaps personal safety. To me, it seems a worldly-wise decision, not a saintly one. But I could of course be totally wrong in my reading. Because she “told her MPs she had decided to listen to her ‘inner voice’.” – in an MK Gandhi-like pronouncement. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3721863.stm. Her reference to ‘conscience’ had prompted a VHP hate spam e-mail with ‘Whose conscience?’ in the subject line. It seems ‘conscience’ is the prerogative of the chosen few: the practising Hindus who want to demolish mosques and build temples in their stead. And, if you happen to have been born outside India, you’d better not even utter the sacred word with your infidel tongue.

Bonfire of the Vanities. Thank you, Google.

This happened some time in last June, if memory serves. At the prompting of a friend (and my vanity), I finally ventured to query Googlism http://www.googlism.com/. ("By the way, it’s a wicked site good stuff." is how Andrew Thompson describes it. “Thanks for the total roxority that is googlism," Greg Pallis adds his two bit’s worth.) about Deepak Mankar. And got a “Sorry, Google doesn't know enough about deepak mankar yet.” rebuff for my trouble. So I queried Googlism about Dr. Manmohan Singh. Same result. Never mind. Because when I checked what Google thought of such worthies as Sonia Gandhi, MK Gandhi, Shah Rukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar, quite a few Googlisms I found were incoherent and incomplete. For instance: “mahatma gandhi is”; “mahatma gandhi is not known”; “mahatma gandhi is no more a person”; “mahatma gandhi is one of them”; “mahatma gandhi is a similar feature”; “mahatma gandhi is spot”; and so forth. Maybe Google doesn’t give a damn about Indians, hmmm? Here are the gems on Andrew Thompson from Google: “andrew thompson is an m”; “andrew thompson is a small but steadily growing company and the only way we can continue to grow is to offer our customers the highest quality and the best”; “andrew thompson is currently completing a doctorate on foreign policy in britain and hanover in the first half of the eighteenth century”; “andrew thompson is a 22 year old ultra”; “andrew thompson is a 25”; et cetra, et cetra and so forth. If you can make sense of it, please let me know. Now I know what the tern “flawed technology” means. (‘GOOGLE = PROOF POSITIVE? Even judges think so.’) http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_787572,00030007.htm. Maybe, what Gail D'Almaine – whoever she is – is right about Googlism when she wrote (via email): "Haven't had such a laugh in ages, brilliant tool, amazing results - and poetry isn't dead after all.” Or, Waldopepper of FilePile opined: "Its like a zany-madcap humour generator.” One last thought: Not much seems to have changed at Googlism after nearly a year, though, except probably the collection of laudatory quotes. Read about the first bonfire of the vanities held in Florence on sinful, vanity objects like mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, musical instruments, immoral books, manuscripts of secular songs and pictures including several original paintings on classical mythological subjects by Sandro Botticelli, under the baton of Father Girolamo Savonarola: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonfire_of_the_Vanities.