Mumbai, May 31: It isn’t often that Lalu Prasad shrinks from the ring, bellicose after his own fashion, smacking his loins at the prospect of a good fight. But then, it isn’t often that his own hold him back.
The workmanlike “bhaiyyas” — Mumbai’s derogatory label on the thousands of cabbies and milkmen and liftmen and watchmen from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh that keep this metropolis going — have had a good and recent feel of Raj Thackeray’s stick-end; they want no more of it.
Their message to Lalu Prasad on the eve of his arrival here two days ago was laconic: sit Shah Rukh’s test but leave us to face our own, don’t litter Mumbai with a flaming statement that will leave us singed all over again. Lalu Prasad appears to have got it loud and clear.
So while New Delhi may have been a safe enough stage for the railway minister to bluster on about performing Chhath puja in Mumbai, in Mumbai itself that resolve lay diminished under the demands of his own constituency.
Lalu Prasad arrived here on the blazoned hype of a duel with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief; he returned tamely pronouncing Raj Thackeray not worth battling with.
“Who is he, this Raj Thackeray?” he asked, emerging from the Paanchvi Pass shoot in Filmcity the other day. The truth is his men had told him he is a big deal, in Mumbai and around anyhow. Don’t mess with him. If he says no Chhath for you in Mumbai, there’s going to be no Chhath for you in Mumbai.
No wonder he couldn’t carry off that rhetorically dismissive tone on Thackeray for too long. In perhaps an unguarded admission of his real sense of the rebel Thackeray scion’s clout, Lalu Prasad said: “Well, if he has objections to me performing Chhath in his Shivaji Park neighbourhood, I won’t do it there, I’ll do it in the middle of the ocean.”
That’s how far the Sena-wary bhaiyyas of Mumbai have made Lalu Prasad retreat with his dare — into the Arabian Sea.
The odds are he’ll be waved even farther away by the white flag Mumbai’s bhaiyyas have raised. He’s already indicated as much. Bite-hungry microphones were snatching at his lips for a feed as he came out post-shoot, but he was in no mood to boost TRPs at the cost of busting his brethren. What message are you sending to Raj Thackeray, Laluji? When are you coming for Chhath? Where are you going to do it, Laluji?
The battery of cameras was all laced and dripping with fuel. But the railway minister, uncharacteristically restrained, wasn’t offering fire. “What’s this fuss about? Don’t try to drag me into this, I never even said I have to do Chhath in Mumbai, I merely said India is a free country and nobody can prevent me from performing it in Mumbai or anywhere else, that is all there is to it, off now.”
No gloves on show, only his long kurta sleeve, raised and blurring the lenses. No bout today, my hands are tied and my lips are sealed.
“It is not as if we don’t respect Laluji, don’t get us wrong,” said a member of his own puny party, “but he can’t be exhorting us into a battle he isn’t going to lead. We have to make a life here, he doesn’t. Paani mein rehkar magarmachh se bair lena kahan ki samajhdaari hai (If you must live in the water, how wise is it to be picking a quarrel with crocodiles)?”
One look at the bench strength of the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Mumbai and you’d understand where this man is coming from. They are better provided when it comes to the entire bhaiyya population, but then not all of them are prepared to do and die in Lalu Prasad’s wake.
As cabbie Badri Pande from Gorakhpur put it: “Mumbai mein Lalu-waalu kaahe naak maarta hai? Usko chaar vote bhi nahin milega aur humko milega dus lappad. Kahe ko (Why do the likes of Lalu want to poke their noses into Mumbai, they won’t get four votes and we’ll end up getting 10 slaps. What for)?”
No comments:
Post a Comment