One of most delectable and exciting loves is to love somebody else’s wife, as long as one is careful not to fall in love! If you let that happen, ecstasy turns to sheer torment. The tables turn quite emphatically. Now it is you who is being cuckolded and not the husband. It is your woman who is sleeping with some one else and not vice versa.
Otherwise the union, when and if it does happen, is unbeatable in the high it gives, maybe because it is forbidden, absolutely and explicitly. Essentially, the tryst has to be hidden, furtive, and quick; to be forgotten as soon as enjoyed.
This heady mixture of agony and ecstasy is also known to anybody who attains the right to hold power’s hand in a democracy.
He cannot wed her; she is betrothed to the voter. Rather he is expected to serve her like an ascetic servant, that too temporarily. The cruel lady has a propensity to change lovers and/or servants sooner than later. If you fall in love with her, you would soon have to bear the torture of seeing her in someone else’s arms.
Power is utterly self willed, unfaithful, promiscuous and in nobody’s power.
She is the ultimate seductress. She flirts outrageously and unashamedly with all her suitors, leading them on with her promises. She allures, teases, tantalizes, titillates, suggests and, arouses. She drives them to distraction. But when and if, one is voted to lie on her bed; she suddenly turns coy. If pleased, she would even disrobe herself for you, but to make love to her would be like loving somebody else’s wife.
It is forbidden, absolutely and explicitly.
But then politics, whether in a democracy or otherwise, is the art of camouflaging your personal ambition behind the façade of public good. The public gets to own , possess, and question, what is revealed to it, and that is barely the tip, of what is actually available in the mammoth hidden iceberg.
Being a politician of any standing, is like being a member of a closed, multi layered club. The outer most layer would comprise of people who proudly call themselves ‘workers.’ Then each inner layer loosely consists of councilors, legislators, MPs, ministers, chief ministers, party presidents. Each inner layer gets progressively smaller and tighter and more difficult to penetrate. However some times, some of these layers, do overlap.
Your ability to break into an inner circle depends on which circle your God father or mother belongs to. You will amount to nothing in politics till you have a powerful sugar dad, mom or lover, who really, really, really likes you. If they merely like you it won’t work. Because politicians ‘like’ anyone who can be useful to them.
I cannot tell you what makes them like you, because if I knew that I would have been busy being a minister somewhere, instead of typing this, but I can tell you that it would never depend on the ‘working’ you do for the party. Each of our ‘national’ or ‘regional’ parties comprises of thousands of faithful workers who spend a life time shouting its slogans, distributing its handbills and swelling its public meetings and who never get anything but the tinniest tidbit of the immense cake available. That too is thrown at them begrudgingly, much as you would throw a biscuit to a whining pet.
But I can give you a hint. Politicians are inordinately in love with themselves. When you see any one donning the white kurta pajama in designer khadi, also see an extremely vain and lustful person. How much you can feed that vanity and lust would be directly related to the amount of likeness they have for you.
Little wonder that you find a Tharoor, a Ramesh, a Jayaparada or a Jaitely, not to mention a certain Amar Singh juxtaposed at the very top without having to break a single pair of slippers in the streets. I am not even mentioning the biological children or the official wives here. They are sacrosanct.
Those in the inner circle take care of their own. And once you are a member of that circle you take care not to tell the public anything of what is available in that heaven. Instead you quickly learn to mouth platitudes. You sleep in the hut of a poor mother, before you go back to the lap of your seven star luxury, you hire a high flying PR firm to tell the public how utterly hardworking and frugal you are. And how worried you are because China and Pakistan are hostile to us. Etc,etc.You do not tell them the amazing amount of millions that they spend on something as mundane as your security.
Because you are not allowed to openly enjoy the fruits of being a politician.
That is forbidden absolutely and explicitly.
