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Rahul Gandhi In Punjab Floors
Media, Plays Piper
WSN Bureau
 AMRITSAR/BASSI
PATHANA/PATIALA: He does it with a set pattern, and the style has
been repeated over and over again. Still, everytime he does it, the
people and media express surprise and see it as a novelty.
Congress scion
Rahul Gandhi, the party general secretary whose biggest and only
known qualification is that he is the son of Rajiv Gandhi and his
mother and all the Congressmen and their uncles and aunts have
chosen him long back to lead them at some future date, came visiting
Punjab on Monday for a three-day trip.
Just as he does
everywhere he has been going, he mingled with the people at select
people, and made all the sane noises, leading to jubiliation in the
media which finds shocking pleasantness now in completely normal
things and actions.
So, at around
7 am,
Rahul Gandhi was seen at Darbar Sahib in
Amritsar
as an "ordinary" pilgrim. Clearly, he wasn't, and the gurbani-telecasting
men knew he wasn't. So the camera repeatedly zoomed-in on him. Top
brass of
Amritsar
police did not know his programme, so they rushed. Deep in Rahul
Gandhi's spin-mastering department, everyone knew it will make for
great headlines, and the media proved them all right.
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Just as he does everywhere he has been going, he mingled with
the people at select people, and made all the sane noises,
leading to jubiliation in the media which finds shocking
pleasantness now in completely normal things and actions |
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How easy it is
to bake and sell a surprise? All you need to do is something normal,
like visiting a gurdwara and listen to gurbani for a few minutes,
and just let the word go out that this is a surprise and normal
visit.
The Hindustan
Times called it "strictly private and low key" visit and the Times
of India termed it as "almost secret". In his 45 minutes at the holy
Darbar Sahib which his grandmother had attacked with the help of
Indian Army, Rahul, sporting a kesri bandana, listened to hymns but
did not ask anyone for what these meant and then had some ‘langar’.
Astuteness was
the subtext of the visit throughout. On the langar floor, Rahul
mingled with others and sat cross legged like everyone. Later, he
also visited Durgiana Mandir and the historic Jallianwala Bagh
before leaving the city.
The SGPC
refrained from presenting a 'siropa’ to him and Rahul did not bother
to leave any comment in the visitors’ book, but it was only the
beginning of an affair with media.
Soon, he was at
other places. Near Bassi Pathana, he stopped and chatted with some
school children. who were waving flags and raising slogans of ‘Rahul
Gandhi Zindabad’. He walked into a classroom and spent ten minutes
getting to know the students. “Ask questions – why , why not – if
you want to succeed in life,” he advised students. “And, never be
afraid.”
Rahul Gandhi
himself did not answer many, and the media did not ask a single
question about how he viewed Operation Bluestar and the role of the
Congress over the decades towards Sikhs. This was a time for a
bonhomie visit and in any case Indian media isn't particularly known
for asking discomforting questions.
 Near Namada and
just 10 km short of
Patiala, Rahul
stopped at Barn village and relished traditional Punjabi fare of
makki-di-roti, sarson-da-saag with lassi, thus adding to a growing
list of photo-ops and creative headlines for subeditors. Congress
Punjab affairs in-charge Margaret Alva and state Congress working
president Mohinder Singh Kaypee were at hand but they and the rest
of the entourage knew that the scion was the principal and everyone
else an urchin, though the well known student from Punjab Amarinder
Singh was missing from the show.
Rahul did got to
the Namada village to see the annual fair in memory of Gugga Madi
peer where many young men like him visit to pray for a bride. This
leg of the visit was well planned and NSG commandoes were there for
two days earlier. Rahul said he was merely looking for better
recruitment for youth Congress, but who knows what else did he ask
for, chuckled a local scribe. Tea and pakoras kept making an
appearance for the benefit of cameras.
Before Rahul
came, the stall owners at the fair were scanned minutely and they
were asked to give in writing for how long have they been in the
area and their addresses etc. But since the media was too keen to
project the surprise element, this wasn's an aspect widely reported.
24 September 2008
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