Comedy nights with Narendra Modi!

Narendra Modi will soon topple the funniest comedy-show host on TV, Kapil Sharma of Comedy Nights with Kapil fame! The way Modi is going, Kapil has no hopes at all. Modi is bizarrely gifted, with hilarity running through his every vein…..every time he opens his mouth, his audience goes “Wow, did he really say that?”!! Move over Kapil….Modi’s taking over!

I mean how do you manage to write such comical copy as to confuse your party’s founder Shyama Prasad Mookerjee (whose role in the freedom struggle is minor at best) with a genuine revolutionary by the name of Shyamji Krishna Verma?! Also, imagine calling a  “Mookerjee” a Gujarati at all?! Take that, Mamata Banerjee, you parochial Bengali?! And as if this was not enough, imagine taking the humor up several notches by referring to the poor man’s ashes being stowed away outside India for 73 long years when in fact, they had never left the country?! “Priceless” as Mastercard would say! (Incidentally, no one understood Modi’s jest here. What he was saying was that he can still get a visa to Europe, even if the US doesn’t give him one!).

Apart from his ability to be self-deprecating (well, ok not self-deprecating really, but goofing around with his partymen nonetheless!), Modi does have another advantage over Kapil. His show is telecast by all news channels simultaneously, while poor Kapil has to manage with only Colors! Besides, Modi is far more innovative than Kapil with history, far more creative with “facts” and far more “economical” with truth when it comes to development statistics. Such awesome width of “knowledge” is not something that Kapil can compete with, restricted as he is to kitschy film entertainment!

If a TV channel were to run a marathon session of all of Modi’s comedy shows, the way Colors runs Comedy Nights, here is what one would get to see:

• That Gujarati women are nutritionally deficient because they are “figure conscious”! Too good!
• That Shashi Tharoor has a “Rs 50 crore girlfriend”! Even Jay Leno doesn’t have this type of wit!
• That China spent 20% of its GDP on education, making even the Communist Party of that country squirm! But see the self-deprecating nature again, behaving like a bafoon, making his party look really sorry?! For it is the UPA that is spending a lot more on education than the NDA did during its term! Modi’s jab was at his own party!
• That Alexander the Great actually reached the banks of the Ganges, when the poor soul had to return from the banks of the Beas in Punjab! Alexander owes Modi one for this good PR effort on his behalf!
• And then this minor issue of where Takshashila is located! What a good joke that was!
• And when it comes to numbers, Modi is truly a genius! Like this wisecrack that the UPA government converted 8.4% (growth rate during one year of NDA rule) to 4.8% (again during one year of UPA rule)! See how creative he is, flicking the numbers around and making magic with them?! I mean how many people would even have the guts to take a single year’s growth number and compare it with another single year’s? Sheer genius! Now if Chidambaram did the same and brought up 2010-11’s 10% growth and compared it with Vajpayee’s 4% in 2001-2, Modi would succeed in hitting two birds with one stone! Scoring a point (no matter how ludicrous) against the UPA…..and also making Vajpayee atone for his “rajdharma” rebuke!
• And of course, all the drama about the “lacs” who attend his “massive rallies”?! Those poor souls who crowd these rallies, those who are plucked out of their humdrum rustic lives, put onto waiting trains and buses and made to listen to some truly inspirational gyaan from the messiah?! Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, the Director of Bhaag Milkha Bhaag could have learnt a trick or two from Modi on how to create the illusion of big crowds! Modi is truly good fun to watch!

Modi’s forte clearly seems to be history. And juxtaposing his considerable knowledge of it with “contextually relevant” topics! For example, yesterday he was speaking at a hospital run by a Muslim trust (since when did we start classifying hospitals this way?!). In Modi’s creative mind, Muslims = Pakistan (the context). So he used the occasion to attack the Congress for having partitioned the country (history)! So what would Modi have preferred instead? A united India, with Muslims making 30% of the population?! He can’t handle 13% Muslims, how would he do 30%?!

Modi has started to self-actualize now. He has become an inspiration to other humorists, making them do better. Like those on twitter who were having a field day yesterday about Modi’s failed marriage, saying that he will probably hold the PM responsible even for that! Or Shobha De who in TOI yesterday felt so inspired as to write some truly funny copy on Modi! And even his own partymen who build funny-sounding defences after Modi has “hit and run”, like after the China education spend remark!

The real truth is that Modi may or may not become PM. But whichever party forms the next government, it should create a new “Ministry of Comedy” and make Modi it’s minister! His only job should be to make one speech a day….keeping us all fully entertained! Kapil Sharma, beware. You have serious competition!