*Drum roll* The symbol of Delhi’s crusade against corruption, cold and disrespect for the jhadoo is back!
In case you didn’t recognise him without a muffler, that’s Arvind Kejriwal on your TV screen . If you were going to question the death of his super-heroism due to the absence of his muffler, think again. Look how he manages to speak to you for nearly a minute, not stopping to catch is breath, as he sits in what looks like a garden. Now a garden in Delhi presently is not very different from a fiery belly of a tandoor oven. Imagine sitting in one, cribbing not about the heat or fearing for your life, and instead complaining about how evil Congress and BJP is? You have to be either the Ghost Rider or Baba Ramdev on one of his own medicines to achieve such an impossible feat.
But there he is, back to business, with no trace of the woes of a break-up on his face. He is quite a Salman Khan when it comes to dealing with ex-best friends.
As you marvel at his knitted brows, untouched by sweat, he reminds you how his government has compensated farmers for crop damage. Earlier this year, the AAP government had promised to pay Rs 20,000 per acre for crop damage to farmers.
“All governments keep saying, we don’t have money, we don’t have money. Where did we get all the money from? We stopped corruption in Delhi. And the money we saved by preventing corruption, is being used to help the farmers,” he says.
Then as the background music - which sounds like the clanging of spoons and cups fused with a moaning violin-like thing - reaches a crescendo, he asks you if you’re going to help him fight corruption.
“Aap mera saath denge na (You are going to support me, right)?” he asks, again with heartbreaking earnestness.
Now how those of us outside Delhi are supposed to support him no one knows. In fact, even if we tweet to Kejriwal with complaints, it will be completely outside his jurisdiction to come and rough up the baddies, right.? Oh, wait! We completely forgot about a gent called Somnath Bharti in his group.
Now the commercial, which seems as legitimately effective on average Indians as the ‘bahut sara tar’ ad has been to cigarette lovers, is a clever PR exercise than a means to start a movement. After the epic feud between Kejriwal and the group led by Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, AAP needed a much needed comeback film, errr, move. And who better to star in it than Kejriwal, reminding us that he is still the jhadoo-bearing nemesis of corruption? It’s another thing that the script is as believable as Sajid Khan’s.
Kejriwal concludes the commercial saying, “Na rishwat lenge, na rishwat denge! (Won’t take bribes, won’t give bribes). Monsoon in Mumbai is what winter is in Game of Thrones, and it is coming. Let the Mufflerman try find us an auto home from without a bribe and we’ll know how true he really is.