Politicians love garlands. Not just that, they accept gigantic ones that would crush their neck and spine if worn as garland. So heavy, these specimens are held aloft by half a dozen people with great leader unscathed in the centre. The multi-coloured, mega-tonne garland lazes above like a python, recently fed a goat and unable to counter the physical abuse.

Garland alive

These garlands remind me of movies on snakes. Wikipedia has an interesting list mentioned in the category, some of which have aired on Indian television. The underlying imagination is a bit like product based-journalism. In the beginning, there is one product like a particular sedan, SUV, laptop or mobile phone. Then as products proliferate, battles erupt between categories and as products proliferate further, battles within categories. You read of ‘shoot-outs’ between cars, ‘stand-offs’ and ‘face-offs.’

In snake movies and monster movies the pattern is similar. Remember the first movie in the Aliens series? Remember the first one in the Predator series? I don’t know which franchise exhausted ideas first but once they ran out of imagination, it became one versus the other. In snake movies, there was that one film which became popular — the first of the Anaconda series. Then the sequels started.

Alongside came films on incredible King Cobras, Rattlesnakes, Pythons and Boas. Slowly it devolved to the serpentine equivalent of automobile shoot-outs like Boa versus Python. With Super-Croc emerging from the lizard family, it was also possible to have mega snake fighting mega crocodile or Dinocroc fighting Supergator.

I wonder what you would call those garlands which our politicians seem to covet and their flunkies even more, as they willingly, lovingly hold them up with several more others squeezing into the space within to be graced by marigolds and jasmines. Mega-Garland is too tepid a name. There is no hiss to it. It has to be something more engaging for one of the angles I think about is — what if that anaconda-like garland actually came to life and started moving around? What if somebody got wrapped up in the muscular coils of one? What if one of those super heavy constructs chose to rest its weight on some politician?

There are other angles possible. We could have a shoot-out between the gigantic garlands of various political parties; so and so party’s gigantic marigold garland versus so and so party’s gigantic jasmine offering. We could do a study on which politicians shoulder best the crushing weight of these garlands thus infusing relevance into that frequent political stunt — show of strength.

We could even emulate another trend. Given movie characters like Sharktopus, we could make hybrid political garlands and find TV time to speculate on meaning and consequence. After all, these are the days of weird coalition politics and there is room for mix-and-match Coalition Garlands.

Wasted flowers

One thing I am unsure of is what the flowers feel. Nobody asks them who they wish to grace as garland and whether their natural aesthetics accommodates the ever growing vanity of human beings. Just as an excess of Dinocroc, Supergator and Mega-Snake makes you want to see the humbler original before exaggeration by pixels, too many giant garlands tempt you to step out into the garden, take a walk in the park or hike in rain soaked hills to see a single, pretty flower. Hopefully, one day, politics follows suit.

(The author is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)

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