InJest is a satirical column from South First. Names, places, situations referred to in the satirical piece are fictitious and are not intended to hurt any sentiments. The column is meant to be taken with a pinch of salt and a whole lot of laughs.
Published Jan 13, 2025 | 7:14 PM ⚊ Updated Jan 13, 2025 | 7:14 PM
InJest in a satirical column by South First. Names, places, situations are all fictitious. Caricature by Satish Acharya/South First.
11 January, Saturday, 11.30 am
Aam Admi Party Office
1, Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla Lane, New Delhi
Arvind Kejriwal was furious. Hot air seemed to come out of his ears and nose. He banged his fist on a jazzy computer printout before him on the table.
“Is this,” Kejriwal exploded, “really the list of AAP candidates for the Delhi Assembly elections? This is the worst bunch of election candidates any party has ever picked on either side of the Equator since the Greeks invented democracy in the sixth century BC!”
Party leaders seated around the table had copies of it. They looked at it and at each other in bewilderment. Deep Throat — as I call my source — crouched outside a window and watched them.
Kejriwal’s fist came down again, harder this time. “All the 70 candidates here are BJP apparatchiks. They haven’t walked out of BJP and jumped aboard AAP. They continue to be sanghis, as mad as ever and bashing AAP every minute. But they are on our candidate list. How come?”
Saurabh Bharadwaj, the Chairman of the Candidate Selection Committee, squirmed as if his chair had grown a thorn. “We adopted a ‘poli-tech’ approach this time and did not quite expect a list of this kind ourselves, sir.”
“Three on this list,” said Delhi Chief Minister Atishi, “are facing charges of verbal terrorism against political rivals on Facebook. And one has called a lady politician a woman of loose morals. Shame.”
“And four of them,” added AAP MP Sanjay Singh, “claim to have dug up 12th-century shiv lings from under 18th-century mosques in Old Delhi.”
Kejriwal gave Bharadwaj a dagger look. “Did I not make it clear to you that this election is a make-or-break for us and that we must pick candidates who cannot lose even if they want to? Look what I have got. Who is responsible for this?”
“Not ‘who’ but ‘it’, sir,” replied Bharadwaj.
Bharadwaj took out a device the size of a TV remote, jabbed a finger on a key and turned to the door. There was a rumbling sound that shook the floor. A tall robot, with green lights blinking all over it, entered.
A computer engineer by education, Bharadwaj said, “We fed our party’s requirements into the robot, which used Artificial Intelligence to produce the list, sir. After learning that BJP was acquiring an AI-enabled German robot to make its own list, we did the same. The German company customised it to our needs, but—”
A red light began to blink on the robot and a loud sound came from it:
Grr purr brr goof grr, ha ha.
11 January, Saturday, 4.30 am
Prime Minister’s Home Office
7, Lok Kalyan Marg, New Delhi
Narendra Modi looked up with sheer boredom at the state-of-the-art robot that towered over him. He held his head with both hands as if he had a headache. Then he looked at Amit Shah as if he was the cause of his headache.
Modi picked up a computer printout from the table and shook it in the air. “Are you trying to tell me,” he said, “this is the BJP’s list of candidates for Delhi elections?” Deep Throat watched them through a keyhole.
Shah turned to JP Nadda, who had masterminded the selection process and said: “It has become a fashion to say AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI. And look what it has done?”
“All 70 on this list,” Modi said, “are known AAP flunkies. One of them has built a Sheesh Mahal to live. Three have bought sofa sets for ₹5 crore each using people’s money. Eleven are involved in liquor scams, and two make fake Aadhar cards. This is a silly list. It would be grist for Mohan Bhagwat’s mill in his next bhashan.”
Nadda said, “We believed, sir, AI alone could help our do-or-die strategy to snatch Delhi from AAP. We imported an AI-powered robot from a German company which customised it to our needs, but—”
A red light began to blink on the robot and a loud sound came from it:
Grr purr brr goof grr, ha ha.
“What’s Grr purr brr goof grr, ha ha?” I asked.
Deep Throat explained: “It simply means in AI language: I am the wrong one, ha ha. The robots of AAP and BJP got swapped accidentally in transit from Munich to Delhi.”
(Srinivasa Prasad, a journalist since 1981, has been a Chief of Bureau (South) and Senior Editor with national dailies. He has been reporting and commenting on politics, governance, social, civic and economic issues and has written over 300 satirical articles. He lives in Bengaluru.)
Disclaimer: This is a piece of satire and is fictitious.
