They wanted to feel important. They wanted their contribution to be rewarded, but there were others who hogged all the limelight. They were, in a sense, always left out of important scenes, and were increasingly becoming redundant. In fact, no one knew any longer why they were there. They were often side-lined, and resorted to gaffes that found their way into prime time news to stay relevant.
We could’ve been discussing about Chunkey Pandey and Shakti Kapoor. But we aren’t.
This post is about members of the old guard of BJP, the grandmasters of political grandstanding, the incredible sulks who pull a long face better than your girlfriend did when you decided to be truthful in your answer to “Main kaisi lag rahi hoon?”. Specifically, it’s about the eternally grumpy L K Advani, and Shatrughan Sinha, who proved as loud-mouthed in politics as he was in movies.
‘Anything but Khamosh’, Shatrughan Sinha ‘s biography which also gives an impression that Sinha is clueless about when to shut up, was recently launched at an event graced by known BJP critics and dissidents L K Advani, Yashwant Sinha, and Kirti Azad, as well as Amar Singh.
Nobody knew what Amar Singh was doing there, but there’s a theory doing the rounds. Sinha has revealed in his book that Amitabh Bachchan did not want to work with him, which makes one think whether Amar Singh empathises with Shatrughan Sinha considering Amitabh had refused to work with Amar Singh too. This proves that Amitabh probably is a good judge of people with the exception of Ram Gopal Verma. That guy is out of his mind. Sitaram Yechury was also there, and he opined that… well, who cares what he thinks anyway.
L K Advani, whom Sinha considers his guide and mentor, was also there, which kind of explains where Shatrughan Sinha got his mentoring on being a cry-baby from. Like Advani, Sinha was side-lined. And like Advani, he has never let any opportunity go waste in embarrassing the BJP leadership and setting the cat among the pigeons, rather vultures, in the media even when it was clear that they were no longer relevant to what was required. Everything has a use-by date, following which they’re deemed obsolete. Even Nokia 1100 vanished, and that shit was unbreakable. Not these guys though. Both of them, like the song requests from someone who’s been drinking and dancing for 4 hours straight, are stuck in the 90s.
Shatrughan Sinha claims in the book that he, like a feminist who was requested to help with preparing dinner, was wronged. For instance, he says that he won with a record margin in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections but was still marginalized while others got ministerial berths, conveniently ignoring the fact that his was an easy seat and he just had to ride the Modi wave. He also claims that he could have been successful as an independent since he has friends everywhere, including Lalu Prasad and Rahul Gandhi, which means that Rahul Gandhi has a grand total of one friend. I’m not sure what Sonakshi should be more embarrassed about: Desi Kalakaar, or the fact that his father’s best buddies include a convicted politician who steals from cows, and a guy who’s used to saying things like ‘politics is in your pants’. Given Congress is a political party, and its symbol is the hand, I’m not sure what that hand is doing in anyone’s pants.
Shatrughan Sinha has tried to arm-twist and embarrass the BJP leadership more number of times than he’s tamed villains in his movies. He’s also claimed that he has great love and regards for Nitish and Lalu. Basically, Sinha is one tweet away from becoming Arvind Kejriwal.
Like Kirti Azad, Shatrughan Sinha appeared clueless whenever he was asked about his anti-party statements. For instance, he once claimed Nitish Kumar was PM material. His chief ministerial ambitions were out in the open. On another occasion, when there were rumours of replacing Sinha with Ravi Shankar Prasad as the Lok Sabha candidate from Patna Sahib, he visited Nitish to inquire about his injured toe. But like the chap who was caught picking pocket in a Virar local, he feigns ignorance when confronted.
Not just that, he cites Newton’s third law of motion in his biography and says that if he is expelled from the party, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. To this statement, everyone’s reaction is likely to be Khamosh, since the last time a politician resorted to science to make a point, he was almost driven into oblivion with the escape velocity of Jupiter.