Humour is born of a sense of disrespect. But what is better abusing a person vulgarly, doing scandal mongering against him or doing it through humor. Anti-climax is the mother of humor, not achievement but failure, not fulfillment but disappointment.
To put it bluntly to a politician after seeing his horoscope is to disappoint him, to do it humorously is sometimes hurtful to put it subtly is perplexing to him.
Let me give three instances.
1) One very rich man, stinkingly rich as they say wanted to fight elections to the
Rajya Sabha from a state in northern India. His wife came with an intimate friend and I told her, after seeing her husband’s horoscope, that there would be deception and defeat.
I came to know from my friend that this politicians had spent more than thirty five crores to bribe voters and was confident of getting elected. The voters took all the bribe money and did not vote for him.
Later, this politician himself came with his wife and my friend. The wife told me that other astrologers had predicted his clean victory. I asked her whether she had given the same birth details or different ones. It is an important question. She said it was the same and the same horoscope also. In this case I said it bluntly.
2) Many years ago, a politician who was very intimate with me and with whom I
could take liberties asked me whether he would get his party’s ticket for a third time to fight election to the Rajya Sabha.
Ticket in Indian politics means nomination by a particular party to fight elections. There are lot of Indians who are known for travelling in trains without tickets and some of them get caught. It is a notorious habit in a particular state of India and this politician hailed from that state.
I told him that he should become a ticketless traveler like some other men of his state. He got the hint and that was the end of his political career and two or three years after he died a tragic death also.
3) I asked a famous former chief minister of a state who was also a minister in
the central cabinet, if he ever thought of an alternative career. He did not understand it then. His political career at the state level and also central level got eclipsed in 1999 and he has been leading a band party of folk musicians
now for some years.
But these cases do not show any sense of humour of politicians. Do obsessions with intrigues, jealousies and desperate survival instinct which is what political life is, destroy one’s sense of humour? Some pyscho-analyst should find an answer to this question. But that is my own conclusion.
( 25 October 2007