Remember the song of the Nonnberg Abbey nuns about the novice Maria in The Sound of Music? “Out of focus and bemused”, “unpredictable as weather”, “as flighty as a feather”... They had “many a thing to tell her, many a thing she ought to understand. But how do you make her stay, and listen to all you say?... How do you keep a wave upon the sand”? In short, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?”
Replace the she’s in the song with he’s, and her’s with his. Bingo! You get what every Congress leader is saying about Rahul Gandhi—“out of focus and bemused”, “unpredictable as weather”, and “as flighty as a feather”. They have many a thing to tell him, many a thing he ought to understand; but how do they make him stay, and listen to all they say?
In short, how do you solve a problem like Rahul?
Among the first to feel so was Himanta Sarma. After several pleas a decade ago, he made Rahul stay for him, but couldn’t make him listen to all he had to say. Sarma found the young Gandhi keener on feeding his dog than on listening to what crises were dogging the Congress in Assam. Disgusted, Sarma quit the party, joined the BJP, and rose to be the Congress’s nemesis in Assam.
Mohammed Moquim, the latest, didn’t reach that far. For three years the poor Odisha ex-MLA had been seeking an audience with Rahul. Frustrated, he wrote to his mother about the “emotional disconnect felt by workers across India, who feel unseen and unheard”. No sooner had he made the letter public, than he was kicked out of the party.
Every opposition MP might have felt much the same during the closing days of the winter session of Parliament. The Narendra Modi regime was moving to remove the name of the revered Father of the Nation from modern India’s kindest-ever poor welfare scheme, introduced by a Congress-led government—one that had saved millions of Bapu’s daridra narayanas (God in the poor) from hunger, one that had been the closest to Rahul’s mother’s heart, and one that the leftists had hailed for its bleeding-heart welfarism and the rightists had applauded for putting money in the pockets of the poor who began buying shop goods.
The outraged opposition MPs expected Rahul, as the hon’ble leader of the opposition, to come charging, lead the assault on the government, and defend the honour of the Mahatma. In vain. They couldn’t make him stay, or listen to all they say. Like Maria who was singing in the woods when she should have been praying in the chapel, he was riding a BMW bike in Munich instead of leading the charge in Parliament. When asked, partymen said sheepishly that he was discussing democracy and global climate responsibility with German think-tanks. Any better ideas?
There is more. Rahul had shaken the nation and the whole democratic world with his stellar show over the vote theft charge, and had led a rally through Bihar. But when he found his allies had other campaign issues for the assembly polls, he simply scooted, only to surface towards the end of the poll campaign. By then most Congress voters had bolted.
Mend your ways, young man, like Maria did. The flighty-as-a-feather girl matured when she found the von Trapp kids needed love, care and attention, and she could provide them all those. Your mother had been providing all these to the Congress for the last quarter century and more. She is tired; she needs rest.
It’s time you stayed, and listened. Congressmen have many a thing to tell you, and many a thing you ought to understand. Give them your ear immediately. They have very little patience left.
prasannan@theweek.in