?Country is going to the dogs,? said Boss, ?Modi this, Gandhi that, everybody barking at everybody else. No wonder all the Patels have gone abroad and are running motels and hotels.?Whoever wins, we lose.??I could make out the inspectors had been around, the guys from Vat, and so I made a weak joke about bringing in a cat. ?Just look at these newspapers,? he said, ?It is a canine wonderland out there.? At one time, prices would go up because of general elections. Now they go up, especially for food, all the time. Even for state elections.
Actually, for once Boss is really correct in more ways than one. Country is really going to the dogs. Even the media. Open Outlook, and Vinod Mehta is writing about his dog, ?Editor??doesn?t he know most people start reading a magazine backwards? Flip through The Times of India, there in the middle where you expected some page-3 gossip or leggy females, you have Jug Suraiya writing about his dog, ?Brindle?. Switch on the television, hoping to see some girl-boy action of the ?70s kind, and there you have a pretty girl with a fake MTV accent, and yes, more dogs on an NDTV-Good Times Mallya?show called ?Heavy Petting?.
As though that is not enough, the rest of the press is going ape over Ravi Shankar?s dog not being allowed into the Sun-n-Sand Hotel in Pune, and he is not even a journalist. Thankfully, Khushwant Singh doesn?t write about dogs, it is rumoured that his column is syndicated in two dozen publications at Rs 5,000 for 800 words, which is a lot of dog food, though that may be bull salad as well. We already know about Tavleen Singh?s dog doing its job on Marine Drive, though, that?s like inhouse.
Surprisingly, we don?t hear too much about corporate chieftains and their dogs, though film stars go on and on about their bitches. Must be something to do with Mumbai. Maybe we should persuade Kamath of ICICI Bank to get hold of a dog. At least then he will not go around behaving like a columnist and scaring the rest of us with dire warnings about dollars that bring in only Rs 35 to a bill. He is a banker. Me? Going to find a girl and settle down, like in the song.
