Their SARAH and our SORRY state

It was the craning neck of my co-passenger, as usual, that drew my attention to it. He had started leaning heavily against me, wanting to have a glimpse of that tactically placed titillating photo . I glanced up from the news columns at the bottom, trying to trace his line of vision.

"Strip show on Sarah palin" the news paper said.

The adjoining photo ensured a fair amount of eye ball time, as proven by my neighbours eyes still clinging onto it unblinkingly.

After making sure I missed nothing that was visible, and after the 'automated-imagery-based-expose-whats-covered' method, I moved on to the text part.

A strip club called "Club paradise" in Las Vegas, which was just across the seeminlgy hugely popular joint "Hard rock", was hosting a "Sarah Palin look alike contest" - the news paper said. The steamy photo alongside showed some scantily clad models lined up. The winner of the contest was also promised a $10000 package including a trip to Washington D.C for the January 2009 inauguration of the next presidential tenure.

Though certainly a good 'warm-up' reading on an early morning train ride, somehow it took me on a different train of thought.

The winner of the contest.

Sarah, an American Vice- presidential candidate who belongs to one of the two major political schools, on one side. A little known, sleazy, strip club in a particular state in the country, on the other.

I scoured the news papers carefully as also the internet for the next few days for any semblence of protest or a clamp down on the strip club by the authorities. None came forth. The strip club went ahead with their contest and declared the winner. Whats more, there were plenty of contestants willing to sex-up the election mood.

Surely the Republicans were not waiting outside the strip club to gang-rape the participants. Nor did they gather in mobs to burn down instruments of public transport.

The Alaskans (of which state Sarah palin is the Governor) never threatend to step down from the present government nor did they employ the currently hugely popular method - 'threaten to withdraw but maintain outside support'. The Alaskan regionalistic passions were never whipped up in an attempt to protect their daughter's dignity- or whatever. The political mileage theorem was never applied.

No cultural values were infringed nor were the traditions thrown to the winds. Whatever the strip club was trying to do, it remained a strip club. It never made an explosive entry into the corridors of American legislative power houses. The senators brains there were not clouded over by their libidos unlike in our place where the cultural values and ethos mostly revolve around the groin.

Macain was not ashamed, nor was Palin's modesty outraged. They went about their jobs of campaigning for the American presidential elections with the same intensity. No apologies were demanded , neither from the contestants of the strip show nor from the club. There was never a mention of any defamation suit.

The women's lib movements, normally very vigilant - remained silent. The 'Medha patkars and Arundhati Roys' of America probabaly saw the seriousness of the American election and chose to look away from the strip show , focussing at more important issues. The Obsessive - Compulsive Disorder (OCD) of 'protest at everything' , was conspicuously absent.

The liberty equality and freedom enshrined in our constitution, remain in those yellowish crumbling moth eaten pages of our constitution- rightly put to rest by us to make that constitutional "Rajghat" enabling our high profile, big mouthed and hollow rituals.

The Americans probably are at fault for keeping the liberty envisioned in their constituion, truly instilled in the hearts of the population rather than being inscribed in some tomes lying in those dusty corners. They are at fault surely, for we are culturally and traditionally much ahead of them.

As an after thought I wonder - How many Sarah palins, look alike or not, would have got raped? How many of our brothren would have been murdered?

Thank God. For he knows well, what contests to be held where.