Modi and his camera-friendly mother: Now you see her, now you don’t

I’m assuming Modi-ji has not watched Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. Despite it starring his state’s brand ambassador, Amitabh Bachchan. Otherwise, he would have known that it’s all about loving your family. Or whichever remnants of it, you’re still speaking to.

Call me old fashioned, but I’m of the belief that you must meet your parents often and you must try and make their lives as comfortable as possible, if you have more means than them. But it seems that Mr Modi doesn’t share the same sentiment as I do. More than anything else, over the last year, since Modi has come to lead us into the light, I’ve been struck by his strange non-relationship with his mother – but his propensity for photo ops whenever he does establish contact with her.

Now this wouldn’t be a big deal going by the fact that our politicians love cameras and publicity and public shows of any private gesture they make. But this is Modi. Remember, he abhors the media and will not allow them within a mile of him. Something which his right-wingers keep proclaiming and which even I’m quite impressed by - going by how much his counterparts love playing to the gallery.

This virtue though, seems to fall to the wayside whenever it comes to his mother. A mother who is 90-plus years old, frail, needs help to walk and lives away from Modi in Gandhinagar.

Let’s revisit the last few times we’ve heard of her before and since he became PM. We got to see an extremely thin and not very mobile Hiraben taking an auto to cast her vote before the elections. Why did her son not provide her with a car? Did he not have the means to do so? Or did she refuse to take a favour from him? If it is the latter, I find it a little hard to believe because if I was her child I would have insisted that she take a taxi or hired cab whether she liked it or not. Parents are easy to arm-twist, especially when it comes to their safety. The video of the frail woman being helped out of an auto into the voting booth, while her son and his peers were zipping around in their fancy Ambassadors, was disturbing on many fronts. What it did underline was that she was someone who did not have much money, and definitely very little family support.

Modi even made a point of bragging to an election rally in Gauriganj that his mother still went to vote in an auto rickshaw in Gujarat. Why a 90-plus woman going to vote in April heat in an auto is something any son wants to brag about as he barnstorms the country in a helicopter is anyone’s guess. Unlike Mahatma Gandhi, Modi does not travel by third class train.

But frugality for him begins at home, or rather his mother’s home.

Cut to her next appearance. Modi becomes the Great Gujju Hope and is voted PM. The same man who is allergic to the media today, reaches his mother’s house with a retinue of media in tow to capture for posterity images of him touching her feet and taking her blessings and some mithai. Once again, I don’t know about you, but if I were meeting my mother after months, I’d like the meeting to be private. As would she and Hiraben, I presume. But different strokes for PM’s folks.

And just to show her how special she is to him, Modi didn’t think it was important to invite her to his inauguration ceremony. Oh yes, it must be because he didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable in the heat. She must have been there at the dinner at Rashtrapati Bhawan afterwards, right? Wrong. She’d served her purpose and done her bit for god, country and the photographers. So there was no need for her to be brought out of Gandhinagar to share this moment with her son.

Let’s cut to yesterday. It was Modi-ji’s 64th birthday. There was a super big bash planned with chief guest Xi Xi Gabor and wife. And as expected, Modi’s mother was trooped out once again. Not to meet the good folks of China-land. But to meet Beta No 1 and the good folks of Media-land. Now this is the first time Modi was visiting his mother after he became PM in May. One would think he’d want to spend some time alone with her. Think again. She was made to meet him outside the house in the little portico, in the heat of Gandhinagar, sitting on a plastic chair. After all, if they’d met inside the privacy of her house how would the coterie of reporters – TV and Print and Digital – Modi had taken along with him, have photographed him touching her feet, eating mithai AND then announcing that she’d given him Rs 5000 for the J & K Relief Fund? Why was this a public announcement? Because what’s the point of doing the trek to meet your mother if you’re not going to get some PR mileage out of it.

Would you take money – and Rs 5000 is a lot of money – from your mother, who isn’t exactly swimming in wealth? Or would you thank her for it and say that you’ll make the contribution on her behalf? And would you then take this private gesture and announce it to all the media who’d come along for the party? And if you did do all of the above, wouldn’t you at least invite her for your birthday party with your new best friend Xi Xi?

Well, it seems mummy-ji is fine for photo ops but not for meeting beta’s friends. For all the mocking of Rahul Gandhi and Sonia, you have to give them credit that their private meetings have always remained so – and they actually do spend time together, other than in front of the media.

I suppose this is another way of taking forward BJP’s ma behen agenda. Troop out the womenfolk when the cameras are on, and send them back as you’re done with them. I, at least hope, Hiraben was asked to share a recipe or two for the 150 dish feast which she wasn’t invited to attend. Nothing like ma ka haath ka khana after all – but only if the photographers are in attendance.