It's the World's Job to Spin Around, Our Job Is to Be the Axis

It is a genuinely unforeseen twist. India languishing as the great unwanted democracy, while the United States and China compete for influence over our neighbours like Pakistan and Bangladesh

- SANTWANA BHATTACHARYA

IF you like to choose allegory and atmosphere out of cinematic art to describe the contemporary, a piece of classic Hitchcock horror would seem to be in our midst. There's a bird species that's seeing an increase in its population these days. No, not the pesky pigeon, which has been rendered jobless by email. There's another that's squeaking and gnawing at our window panes. It is the black swan. It's absurd. By definition, it shouldn't be there. Certainly not in such numbers.

But being devoid of logic or precedence is no disqualification these days. A handful of years ago, we were stalked by a genocidal virus. Half a season ago, we had war. A small spat in a nuclear family. Both sides complained to Papa. He came and sorted it out. His fondness for young, attractive model democracies is, anyway, all over the news in America.

This is one version of the story, not particularly unprecedented if you look at Indo-Pak history. And Donald J. Trump speaks only the truth. His social media platform is named for that. Every time you repost what he writes there, it's apparently called a "retruth." Those fervently "retruing" his version in Parliament included Rahul Gandhi, who threw that into the debate along with a gauntlet to the government. If you believe otherwise, he thundered, say it clearly that Trump is no Mahatma Gandhi. But we know that in classical Indian logic, for every assertion, the opposite is equally untrue.