Suckers

Rajendra Prasad, the first prez of India put Nehru in a spot once. He had a political background and wouldn't take shit lying down. During his term, Nehru knew he had to get a stooge up there next time on, somebody who would suck up to him. And none better than Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, who was a sycophant of the first order. He had a case against him for having directly plagiarised from S.N. Dasgupta's book. How to make this guy, my personal valet, the next prez? thought wily Nehru. So he sent him to the USSR as the Indian ambassador to get him some credibility as a prez. Radhakrishnan came back and became the vice prez and then was made the next president of India.

A guy who is known to be a scholar and was the vice-chancellor of my alma mater Banaras Hindu University, was nothing but a clever thief, lifting from books by scholars who weren't bothered about making a name for themselves.

Such are we Indians. We forget the truth and start celebrating teachers' day on his birthday...while the real teachers go unnoticed and unsung.

We love thieves of any kind. People who blatantly borrow and steal stories and ideas from the west and make movies here, for example, are hailed as gods in Bollywood. The other day I was watching a pathetic Hindi movie called Dus Kahaniyan, and the first story by one Sanjay Gupta is a direct lift from Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat by Roald Dahl. And tomorrow Sanjay Gupta will be hailed as one of the stalwarts of Indian cinema, am sure. What is his background, I wonder? My close pal, an ad guy, is awestruck with Sanjay Gupta's charisma, so that probably means he has made some brilliant ad films. If you delve deep, am sure you will find them not so original after all.

But I leave that delving deep to you, the reader, the worshipper of the wrong Indian gods.