Was he, was he not? That’s the question of the day thrown up by ABP Ananda’s report on Abhijit Mukherjee’s gender sensitivity.

Was he high? Was he not?

While reports that Mukherjee has relocated to Mars after being too high proved to be rumours, unconfirmed reports said the vehicle he had booked for the trip had gone to the workshop. Yes, to get dented and painted.

A source close to the MP meanwhile said Mukherjee made the shocker of a remark after initially presuming the nation’s shock absorbers are better but later found they had been taken out during denting and painting and thus apologised.

At a high-level emergency meeting late Thursday afternoon, members of the Gender Insensitivity Association of India is learnt to have passed a resolution in support of Mukherjee’s call for de-dented and de-painted faces to show up at all protests in and around Lutyens’ Delhi.

“Mukherjee’s supporters sought life-membership for him but our association feels he needs to do better. We think he had scope to be the ideal insensitive man in an otherwise totally thick-skinned India by being a little less vague about the denting-painting part. He should have taken names of some women he thinks should wipe all painting off their faces. We have kept his membership hanging for now,” the association’s general secretary, Khujliwal Hosiery, said.

“Was he trying to compare run-down cars or women? What is denting one’s face? If there’s a dent, a face looks puckered, not perked up,” another member of the association said on conditions of anonymity. “I think he meant dainty but his mouth misquoted his brain. Mukherjee should immediately apologise and say he meant to say women with any kind of face — pretty or haughty, ugly or straggly, hideous or tedious ?—should not come to any protest. Otherwise they should be ready to face the music that came from the police batons over the weekend.”

But in a similar emergency meeting elsewhere in the capital, the Denters and Painters Association of Delhi is learnt to have taken strong objection to the Jangipur MP’s statement regarding the dented and painted bit. According to a member of the association, going by the shocker statement, and total absence of brakes on the inanity, Mukherjee was talking about car workshops, and not women.

Meanwhile, a Birbhum-based political leader of the party led by a revolutionary lady who gave the green signal to the Reds to pull out of West Bengal claimed the election commission should hold a bypoll to the bypoll in Jangipur since Mukherjee has a) abdicated his Indian citizenship by establishing that he lives in Venus, b) has insulted the constitution which gives equal right to both students and non-students to take part in any protest and c) proved that he is a Maoist.

Asked how the MP has proved himself to be a Maoist, the local leader said, “Didi says so. This state is her comedy show. Abhijit-babu is conspiring to usurp that role.”