Defending a minister can be risky business. Yet, I am doing it. No, Uttar Pradesh Khadi and gramodyog minister Rajaram Pandey is not a lascivious moron; he is not even a stalker. He is just an ardent admirer of yonder eternally romantic Keats. A thing of beauty is joy forever, remember. That’s him and also Pandeyji.

So why doesn’t the media even give the minister a benefit of doubt, let alone my insistence on giving him a clean chit, in the matter? When Pandeyji speaking at a government function in Sultanpur said, “I have been very lucky in this regard… When I was minister-in-charge of this district earlier, the DM was a woman and it’s the same case this time as well”; it could also be that he was just being gender sensitive, just following the Indian tradition of “yatra naryastu pujayentey, ramantey tatra devatah” (gods dwell where women are worshipped). Painting somebody in a bad light is the media’s primary business. How cheap!

Undoubtedly that day in Sultanpur was tad bad for Pandeyji. From that hapless dais, he went on to say (I am sure inadvertently): “The earlier DM was very beautiful. I thought there couldn’t be a prettier DM. Lekin (nayi) DM unse bhi adhik sundar hain (but the new DM – K Dhanlaxmi – is even more beautiful)…bahut hi madhur vani hai (she has a melodious voice).” As the new DM squirmed in her chair, Pandeyji kept going on: “Inki kad kaathi bhi bahut achchi hai (she has a good body structure too).”

As the media has painted him almost as a potential stalker, I insist on giving him a benefit of doubt. Why can’t we see the poet in him? He was just indulging into a bit of praise of beauty, maybe in a luridly lascivious way. While the words he uttered don’t make a good defendable case for him, I am sure he would have said those without any vixen-like gleam in his eyes – the hallmark of a bad character. And if just the language is to blame, Pandeyji, like any of us, have been fed plenty of that by the eternal Bollywood baddie Ranjit. Of course, with eyes contorted and the tongue perpetually sticking out. Pandeyji has none of it.

Since the minister’s antecedents also don’t help the case – his minister of state accused him of taking bribes for transferring and posting officials a while ago while he has three criminal cases against him besides being accused by the Lokayukta in 2002 for land grabbing (read more here) – I invoke the poetic licence to justify his diction.

At 56, Pandeyji defies age for his literary commitments. When his muse arrives, he forgets everything else and gives himself to serenading her with his limitless poetic charm. Unsuited to his present assignment – his antecedents never supported him for that anyway – Pandeyji deserves to be preserved as a litterateur par excellence. One who lives poetry and one for whom a thing of beauty is joy forever. Any comments?