Season’s Greetings

But there was an Easter egg within the Easter egg: Siachen. Not since George Fernandes has a national leader attracted so much attention with a Siachen visit. What was originally billed as a three-hour, no-meal visit to Srinagar mopped up three days of prime-time juice. He has certainly got more bang out of bucking the trend than Rahul Gandhi ever leveraged from his Dalit homestays. On the morning of the day before, Zee was running a curtain-raiser on its ticker: “Coming soon: Learn how Narendra Modi will spend his Diwali.” And the image of a combat-ready Modi, complete with oxygen mask, classy snowshades and other modcons will persist for years. The man is having a ball, and part of the kick is the ability to set the agenda for the media, and to set them scurrying.

India’s intrepid reporters have suffered intolerable hardships this week, having had to spend their Diwali far from family and friends, in the rarefied atmosphere of Siachen and amidst the victims of the floods in Kashmir. The mood in the Valley is understandably un-festive and the PM himself is not ideal Diwali company, as it is generally understood in north India. However, at least the intrepid have been spared the incredible Diwali pollution in the capital. CNN-IBN, which tracked air quality and sought the opinions of the public-spirited pessimists over at the Centre for Science and Environment, levels of nitrogen dioxide have more than doubled since Diwali last year. NDTV reported that Delhi’s pollution had jumped to nine times the usual level. The pessimists stood vindicated.

Was the festival the provocation for Barkha Dutt’s interview of former finance minister P Chidambaram? Muhurat trading, the association with speculation and gambling, that sort of thing? Well, no, the peg was the possibility of the Congress being embarrassed over black money. Chidambaram deflected that and wished out loud that his successor Arun Jaitley had gone all the way with reforms. Ironically, even right-wing economists on TV had disparaged Jaitley’s maiden budget as a UPA-style squib.

The image of the week was the usual aftermath of a Sangh Parivar victory: the winner has his face forcefully stuffed with a laddoo and embarrassing pictures are taken. But Maharashtra chief minister in waiting Devendra Fadnavis needed a special push, what with Nitin Gadkari’s supporters having sparked the imagination of the media. So he had the mandatory laddoo in his face, but not deep enough to bite. And then a BJP hand was applied to the back of his head, and his face was swivelled this way and that so that all the cameras ranged around could get a good shot. Finally, a desperate Fadnavis grabbed the laddoo himself and crammed it into his mouth. And that was the end of that.

pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com