The sculptors in Uttar Pradesh are at peace now. They don’t need to see any goddess in dreams for inspiration. They see one in person: a goddess with a handbag. The innumerable statues ordered in bulk of the fastidious deity have honed their dexterity to a clinical precision, reducing the whole creative process to a matter of an indolent ease for them. If the luck favours them in the assembly polls next year, they will have no dearth of work for the next five years. There will be parks, statues and a happily-ever-after professional ease. 

While somebody offering flowers to one’s own gigantic statue might look odd to many, the chief minister has her own justification for ‘parking’ public money that way. “We always felt the need to have a memorial dedicated to the icons of dalit community and this is one such for the benefit of dalits living around the national capital region, including western Uttar Pradesh,” the CM said while inaugurating the Dalit Prerna Sthal in Noida on October 14. Though the aspiration for dalit memorials is well understood but what is questionable is the scale of expense — Rs 685 crore — that borders on enormous waste.

But if a ‘memorial’ to living human beings (the CM and her parents, whose statues also adorn the park) baffles you and you find the CM using the term ‘icons’ for herself and her parents utterly immodest, it is because you are a manuvadi. 

And if you look askance at the statues of elephants (the BSP’s poll symbol) all over the state, including the Noida park, you will be undermining the CM’s green concerns. Why can’t these be looked on just as memorials for elephants dying in the state’s jungles or anywhere else in the country!  

When Awadh’s last nawab so famously refused to escape when the British came knocking at his doors because there was no servant to help him wear his shoe, nobody said nothing. But when the CM dispatches a private plane to fetch her favourite sandals from Mumbai, this Assange guy doesn’t praise her pro-activity and makes mountain of a molehill. He is surely ‘insane and must be sent to a mental asylum’! Now, who said that?