A couple of weeks ago, a beaming Moon Jae-in, president of South Korea, beside himself with joy, thanked our beloved leader on social media for presenting him with half a dozen or so Modi vests, meticulously tailored to his size.
(Rumour has it that one of our dynamic leaders called the Korean premier and told him, “We are considering changing your name to Chandrakant Jain.” But that didn’t seem to dampen his joy one bit.)
In no time at all, social media was abuzz with sarcastic, ill-informed and, above all, unpatriotic comments about how the vest/jacket was a Nehru jacket long, long before it was a Modi jacket. I have one word for all of them: murkha !
First off, refer to the Kathasaritasagara . The 20,967th distich in the 123rd chapter, to be precise. Go on, what does it say? And what does that mean? Well, the exact meaning is not germane to the argument, but it does prove that the vest predates Nehru by more than 5,000 years.
Next, while Mr Nehru may have worn a superficially similar piece of clothing, the Modi jacket and the Nehru jacket are as different as Ranbir Kapoor and Shakti Kapoor.
Here are the differences in brief:
While the NJ comes in two dull colours — dynastic grey and emergency black — the MJ comes in a joyful array of unbeatable, fade-proof colours: akhil -Bharat orange, aasmaan-se-ooncha blue, do-hazaar pink, and dollar- se-behtareen green.
The NJ is limited by its size. It comes in two sizes — small and petty — and is obviously meant for narrow-chested people, with no vision. The MJ, on the other hand, is capable of expanding one’s chest size to enormous proportions as soon as it is worn. It comes in sizes vishal , mahaan , mahatvapurn , and XXL yug purush .
While the NJ is often seen smoking, and laughing in the company of European women, the MJ is stately, dignified, and embraces foreign dignitaries (male!) only for the good of the country.
The NJ is also most unphotogenic; even in colour photographs, it appears colourless. The MJ, on the other hand, always knows where the camera is, and catches the light to show its wearer in the most flattering, statesmanlike manner.
Other notable features of the MJ are that it can never do wrong. Or be wrong. That’s the beauty of it. Wear it, and whatever you do is automatically correct. And if you did anything wrong earlier, no problem, that’s correct, too. The NJ, on the other hand, is wrong almost all the time. You become a repository of faults the minute you put it on.
Wearing the MJ automatically makes you an expert on subjects as varied as yoga, economics, global warming, archery, tribal drums, street cuisine and entire political science. The NJ, on the other hand, only knows how to do frivolous Western things like putting a flower in the button-hole.
If you wear the MJ, snap, your mentors become your protégés and wait with folded hands for your benign gaze to fall on them. You wear the NJ, no one gives a rat’s rear.
Above all, no one loves the MJ more than our beloved NRI brothers and sisters who toil night and day to make sure our country is in safe hands. Wear the NJ, not so much.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a satirist. He has written four books, and edited an anthology.
