5th Column

This lady, unlike others, has changed her mind too often
My Dear Tilvin and We Wee,
I thought I must write to you when I heard that you were still prowling the corridors of power at Janadhipathi Mandiraya, waiting for long hours to meet she-who-is-always late.

Not surprisingly, the so-called agreement you were to have reached with her is also now late and in fact long overdue so much so that some believe it will never happen.
Pardon me, dear Tilvin and We Wee, but all this political cohabitation is making us ordinary citizens a bit confused. Why, we already have a memorandum of understanding (MOU is the fashionable word, I believe) between the green part of the government and the Tigers. Then, there is Mano and Malik trying to negotiate a MOU between the greens and the blues. And now we are told soon there will be a MOU between the blues and the reds.

So, we might well ask, if you are in agreement with the blues who are in agreement with the greens who in turn are in agreement with the Tigers, doesn't it amount to you being in agreement with the Tigers?

Be that as it may, Tilvin and We Wee, I think you ought to be forewarned about this agreement with the blues, because a lady is entitled to change her mind and this lady has shown us already that she does so very frequently.

Why, in the last month alone, Satellite took over three ministries and now wants to return two of them, declared an emergency and then didn't want to sign the gazette that gave it effect, and said that the ceasefire in the north and east was illegal and then wanted it honoured! And of course, we all remember the time when she declared a referendum and then cancelled it in the eleventh hour…

The early warning signs are already there, Tilvin and We Wee. Satellite is even now talking to the Greens and has also said that Velu has "improved". These days she prefers words like "consensus" and "reconciliation" instead of using names of animals to describe cabinet ministers.

With Satellite in such a generous mood, you know better than I do that if a deal is struck either with the greens or the Tigers, the first to go would be you.

Of course, she will tell you that if you don't want a deal she will go with the greens and she will tell the greens that if they don't want a deal she will go with you. She is after all the daughter of two Prime Ministers and those genes must have some effect although, looking at Mallo, you cannot help feeling that he was shortchanged in that process.

So, dear Tilvin and We Wee, you should think long and hard before aligning yourselves with the blues, even though it must be tempting to realize that you could be an 'emethithuma' instead of a mere 'manthrithuma'. After all, at least in this instance, it may well be better never than late!

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha.
PS-You couldn't have forgotten the fact that the lady gave you a written undertaking to abolish the Presidency with a six-month deadline. Well, when you are taken for a ride once it is due to ignorance but when it happens again, people tend to call it stupidity…

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