At an anti Bush protest rally today: women, lots of women, and some children too.

“Eighth standard Vidyaranya students”, Padmini says with a half uncertain half hopeful smile. Bright smile.
“Ten years down the line, they’d all be serving in the American administration.” Buchamma, irony, pride, a certain grunt, even though it couldn’t be heard.
“I found it a little weird, though”, says Padmini, “when K was clicking pictures of her daughter holding a placard with the anti Bush slogan.”
(Me, I’m thinking, Pictures? Right. Bete, tumhara photo kal newspaper me bhi chhaapenge.)

Anyway, to this K. Apparently an organization run by her published a book on the Great Women of Telangana. The penultimate woman listed in that is her mother, and the last, of course, is K herself. So there they were, The Great Women of Telangana, along with a handful of slightly lesser mortals, saying, as they should, really, that Bush has no business coming here. And, of course, clicking pictures for the daughter, to put up on the walls of her room when she will be, as Buchamma says, “serving in the American administration”. Hopefully for her, the Democrats would have pulled a miracle by then.

Anyway, no more digressing. Back to the issue at hand. (Ha! Sometimes I just love these pedantic tropes!)

Some of the women were brought there, in cabs hired specially for this purpose. The others, a lot of them, were leading dual lives, the sort we all talk about here, the sort that we all, perhaps, live. The question, then:

Padmini’s coming back home in an auto. Curious, she asked the autowalah if he went for the anti Bush rally. His reply? I don’t have it verbatim, but I gather it was to this effect:
Kaun kaun aata, kaun kaun jaata, hame nahi maloom, hame to roz apna kaam karke paisa kamaana hai, na?

Hmm. I think. So true.

To phir ab karein kya is duniya ka??