The Narendra Modi government went all out to celebrate its two-year performance, with full-page ads, and a number of videos, cartoon series and interviews culminating into a mega show at India Gate.
It’s like an extra-cheese extra-large pizza with everything on it!
Not everyone is pleased with the over-the-top jamboree though, what is with crores spent on ads and gala functions.
Which is why this Telegraph front page on Sunday came as a pleasant surprise. Overwhelming with amazing connotations and bang on sarcasm, the coverage will hit all the right chords if you (too) think the grand celebration was a tad too grand.
- To begin with, the newspaper called the whole think a “brag show”.
- The story started with a killer quote by George Bernard Shaw – “If I don’t beat my own drum, who will?”
- The paper further tweaked Jawahar Lal Nehru’s famous Tryst with Destiny’ speech to imagine how Modi would say it:
“For 67 long years, we made a tryst with darkness, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the sunset hour on May 26, 2014, India awoke to life and freedom.”
Subtext of the message on Modi Sarkar at two (with apologies to J.L. Nehru)
Here’s the original speech by Nehru
- The paper went on to call the five-hour India Gate show “a serial scintillation at the hands of the longest ever press release any Indian government has ever lavished on the citizenry.”
You can read the entire Telegraph story here.