Infinite Sea of Opportunities

The magician borrowed a 10 rupee bill from a person sitting in the first row, he lit that bill up, I saw with my eyes the 10 rupee bill turning into ashes, but what he did next was impossible for me to imagine. He started scrubbing the ash between his fingers and 10 rupee bills, not just one but umpteen number of them appeared. I was quite young when I saw a magic show like this, I could not believe my eyes. I had utilized all my logic and reached a conclusion that I want him to take a bigger bill from me and make zillions of it. When I told him that, he just giggled.

Magicians are the quite honest people; unlike some politicians, they tell you they’re gonna fool you, and then they do it. 

But they both work extremely hard and put a lot of research on getting in their audiences’ brains. They uncover the way people perceive, with the sole intent of distorting their perception and forcing them to see something that does not exist. They confuse the audiences into seeing the future based on past experiences. The vanishing ball is one such trick, the magician tosses the ball twice and the third time people assume that the ball went up and later get confused when they don’t see the ball coming down as per the law of gravitation. Rafale Deal is one such trick perfectly executed by our beloved magician. Bofors happened, it is a fact has been proved. It does not matter who was involved or who got acquitted, but it did happen. They tossed up Rafale, memories enriched with a variety of scams along with Bofors forced people to believe the opposition. Now when the French government, their president, Dassault CEO say that it is not a scam, people are confused, once bitten twice shy.

It’s like the skillful magician pulled a rabbit from his hat.

A ball or a rabbit is not the only thing that could be vanished, a skilled magician could vanish anything and make something appear from nowhere.  David Copperfield vanished the 310 feet high Statue of Liberty or someone magically made a five tonne elephant appear from nowhere. Likewise, our magicians made Indian History vanish or rather a major part of it vanish. What existed before the British? Mughals. What was there before the Babri Mosque? Nothing. What exists after the British? Bapu- Mahatma Gandhi, Chachu – Pt Nehru, Iron Lady- Indira Gandhi. Who brought Computers to India? Rajiv Gandhi. And that’s it!!! The uneasiness that we are witnessing amongst a certain group today is because somebody is revealing the tricks like a debunker who forces the audience to take control of their vision and look at a place where the magician does not want them to look. The elephant was right there all the time, and once it was explicitly told where to look, you never missed it again every time you saw the video.

A skilled magician tends to exploit the fact that not every body in the audience is Sherlock Holmes i.e. they will tend to ignore the present. They think they have a vivid and a detailed awareness of their surroundings, but the fact is that they will compute only a very localized set of visual data points leaving a large part unprocessed. With properly executed misdirection, people would ignore what is right in front of them and focus on the cues provided by the magician. But the big question is: What are our magicians trying to hide by all these tricks? 

The number of chief ministers from Indian National Congress has come down from 24 or 25 chief ministers in ’60s when there were only 24 or 25 entities (states plus UTs) to 3 when there are a total of 36 entities (29 states and 7 UTs). The following graph would give a picture of that. INC has been on the downfall for decades now. PM Modi has done exactly what a hardware accelerator does in an embedded system design; accelerate or increase the speed by several folds.

Now you know what magicians are trying to hide; the destiny of Indian National Congress.

As soon as the party failed to separate itself from a dynastic rule, it was destined to fall. There is no paucity of dynasties in the Indian History. Starting from the Kuru Dynasty in 1200 BCE to Pallavas in 275CE to Mughal Empire in 1526CE (yes, history did not start with Akbar and Babar,  there exists some history of around three thousand years before they were even born) to the Scindia rulers of Gwalior from 1731 CE and so on and goes till now. What is one thing common to all of them? They all fell, some stayed longer, some vanished quickly, but they all fell.

Why is every dynasty destined to be doomed one day? The rulers coming in the later part of the dynastic timeline simply are spoon fed. They never had to move a single muscle to build the empire, but they enjoyed the fruits of a being an emperor. The last ruler is always the weakest link. He is weak but offensive and thinks he could attack and win anybody. He is arrogant and self-centered to an extent that he starts thinking he is the kingdom and everyone else is to entertain him.

Did any of the last dynastic rulers know that he was the last one? Did Bahadur Shah Zafar know he was going to be the last Mughal emperor?  Did Nityapal know he would bring the five-century old Chutiya Kingdom (pronounced as Sutiya or Sadia) in Assam to ground? Infact his inabilities were known right before the beginning, the nobles and ministers had resisted the decision of giving away the throne to him.

With hopefully the last and possibly the brightest Scions at the helm or leading in different parts, it is highly unlikely for congress to revive itself. However, if they see a small ray of hope they will try to drag their rule further, all dynasts do that and in the meanwhile bring misery to people. Indians got a chance to get rid of them for good in 2004 but they chose misery and pain for the next 10 years. They are standing again at the crossroads. It is not at all about why BJP should win, it is only about why Congress should not win anything till they let go of the dynasty. Congress would start resurrecting as soon as Dynasties are left behind.

By the way, magic tricks get old and magicians regularly update their magic tricks. There are tricks where the magician becomes the prop, for instance, he starts levitating or gets himself chopped into pieces. Would you be able to recognize if our magician becomes the hat? Think about it, is he acting like a magician or a prop?

Thanks for reading!!

Also Read: What Lies Beneath the Mask?