How Manmohan could get out of his mess for Rs 1,764

An officer at a fire station responds to a call, the fire tenders rush to the address they’re called to and find a bed at the house on fire. They ask the resident how the fire started. “I don’t know,” he said, “it was on fire when I lay down on it.”

That’s from Robert Fulgham’s delightful book “It was on fire when I lay down on it”, a book that tells you about the problems that one could anticipate.

How could the Congress not have anticipated the mess that they find themselves in today vis-à-vis Anna Hazare?

Common sense, which many worthies have told us is uncommon, would have told them that there was a groundswell against corruption, that Anna Hazare was the personification of all that was non-corrupt and that the groundswell was so strong that it would overpower anything and anyone in the wake. But, like the protagonist in Fulgham’s book, the Congress lay down on a bed that was on fire – and got burnt. Only, there’s no fire station.

That’s the first book the unworthies from the Congress need to buy. I’ll make it easy, here’s the link to the ordering page for the book on Flipkart. It costs just Rs 486 for these words of wisdom.

Put that in your basket, Mr Singh.

The next one is a book by Richard Bach, who wrote books like Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Illusions and The Bridge across Forever. You know, the kind of books you bought when you were in your teens and in love. But Bach was a thinker. If you actually read the books he wrote instead of just buying them and hoping they got you some brownie points with the one you were in love with, you could gain from his words of wisdom and ruminate on his thoughts. That would have led you to A Gift of Wings , which you could buy for the princely sum of Rs 239, also from Flipkart (thanks to Anna, I’m feeling swadeshi now, so I’ll avoid Amazon).

A Gift of Wings would be of use to the Congress to the extent of just one story: Too many dumb pilots. It has been years since I read the book, so I’m a little hazy on the details. Fundamentally, there’s a pilot who struggles as he comes in to land from the north; all the other pilots are coming in from the south – and he exclaims that there are ‘too many dumb pilots’. Why in heaven couldn’t the Congress’ think-tank figure out which way the wind was blowing, that the dumb pilot was the pilot piloting the Congress, and the rest of the pilots, such as Anna, were not dumb?

That’s two books in the basket.

The third is self-explanatory. Even Abhishek Manu Singhvi could understand why I recommend it, so I’ll waste no time in a review. How to Win Friends and Influence People is an idiot’s guide to looking for what people want to hear and want done, how to get them to notice you positively, how to get them to appreciate, accept and respect your point of view. Go, on, buy it, it costs just Rs 105.

The fourth is not a book; it’s an impassioned speech made in 1943, which focused on the premise that you could not make a man sober by an act of parliament . You can put an Anna Hazare in Tihar for a day or two or even seven, but you cannot change the sentiment of citizens of the country. Read the debate made in the Seanad, it won’t cost you an anna or a farthing.

And now I come to the last, Desmond Morris’ Manwatching. “It is impossible to find someone who won’t be interested in this book. A comprehensive study on our gestures, behaviour and fidgets which you would normally not think twice about…yet turn out to be a highly significant indication of your state of mind or subconscious thought,” said a reader on Amazon (but buy it at Flipkart , where it costs just Rs 934).

So that’s the shopping basket to get the Congress out of trouble:

It was on fire when I lay down on it: Rs  486

A gift of wings: Rs 239

How to win friends and influence people: Rs 105

Seanad speech: Free

Manwatching: Rs 934

That’s a total of Rs 1,764.

That’s it. One thousand seven hundred and sixty four rupees to get out of the mess you’re in. That’s it, Mr Singh.