I have to tell you this. I could not resist writing a sequel. And whether you have read the first one or not, you are going to love this one. But if you read the first one first, you enjoy this one a lot more. Context hai ji!!!
ABBG
TPOG
PKIG
UPOG
If you are a Punjabi, chances are you will understand the poem / message behind the above acronyms quickly. If you are not one, ask the next Punju you meet. They will smile and tell you that it is about an elderly lady and tea.
But there is one acronym that has been made world-famous by the lady who coined it. The acronym? ABCD! ABCD? African Union, Bilateral meetings & Biofuels, Connectivity, Delhi Declaration. The lady who coined it? We will come to her.
African Union is the doooooooor ka rishtedaar, ignored by the 19 others for the best part of the last decades, but was invited by our bauji to attend the wedding!
Now of course some guests are treated more intimately than those who are just formally received and shown the way to their seat – this statement has nothing to do with Just-out Trudeau! What has to do with Justin Trudeau though, is the fact that his request for a bilateral with bauji was denied. Kya karte bauji, itna samjhaya, but Justin plays with the naughty boys of the mohalla!
Hold on… there is one more meeting (though not bilateral-bilateral) worth mentioning. But before that, I am sure you have heard of jale pe namak. Here is how it is done. Now that smart alec foofa sent his younger brother, PM Li Qiang, to Bharat’s big fat G20 wedding. We hear that the only leader who met with him was Georgia Meloni, on the sidelines, only to tell him that Italy is indeed moving out of the BRI, yani jale pe namak hai jani!
But yes our beloved bauji did pick and choose who to engage in the bilateral meetings with.
Then with Biden, Sheikh Hasina, Georgia Meloni, Luiz da Silva, Alberto Angel Fernández, Lee Hsein Loong, Pravind Jugnauth & Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan he launched the biofuel alliance. Remember the golgappa stall in marriages? When it opens up, a few relatives go there to try. Seeing them, a horde of mamis, chachis, tayis, mausis, buas make a dash for it. We are told that 19 other countries are keen on joining it.
So what did Georgia do after telling Qiang that she wouldn’t walk on the Chinese road? She sprinkled jale pe aur zyada namak. How? Oh ji bauji made a new WhatsApp group, without foofa, for connectivity and named it IMEC, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, thereby poking a finger in foofa’s eye. And Italy was one of the first countries to sign up for it. Foofa’s sulk has only grown deeper. Psst: more is to come!
Clearly, foofa Xi Jinping has drawn a zero. But you know there is one man who has been collecting zeroes with pride. In fact Amitabh Kant was made a hero by the zeroes he collected in this wedding. 0 dissent, 0 footnotes and 0 chair summaries in the New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration (NDLD) in all the 83 paragraphs of it.
Do you know what is bhaji? No my cousins from Maharashtr, I am not talking about pav-bhaji, but bhaji, the box of folk sweets & namkeen that are presented to the people attending the wedding. Everybody went back home with some or the other bhaji, and they were happy with their respective bhaji. By the way, one was happy for not getting any bhaji also. We will come to it!
The West was happy because the NDLD called on all states to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state.
Africa is happy that it was included.
Russia is happy it did not get anything. ‘Ise kehte hain pyar’. The Delhi Declaration does not mention Russia, and refers to the Ukraine conflict as “war in Ukraine”. This is a significant climb down from last year’s Bali Declaration which had condemned the “war against Ukraine”.
The Chinese were the only contingent who received bhaji twice over, but were unhappy. I am not joking. After all they received a finger each in both their eyes. Bauji’s was one. You know whose was the other one? Rajnath’s. How?
He inaugurated 90 projects to reduce the burgeoning border infrastructure differential with China. These are spread over 11 states & UTs, notably Arunachal Pradesh (36), Ladakh (26), J&K (11) and West Bengal. Seriously, guests come bearing shagan at shadi or sagai, and China claimed the whole of Arunachal in its map! Ab Rajnath ji itna bhi na karein?
There was yet another finger rubbed in China’s face. What are you accusing me of? Did I say two fingers first, and now I am calling out three? Remember always to read between the lines! You don’t have to show anyone the middle finger. Just raise two – the index and the ring finger, the middle finger is always in between. The Chinese brought suspicious material in the Taj hotel (jammers & snooping devices to listen to da Silva maybe, as he was housed in the Taj too). The Indian authorities objected with such gusto that to save themselves of the embarrassment, they had to dispatch it to their embassy!
Many congratulations to Mr. Amitabh Kant and his team, for extracting an unqualified G20 declaration! If Amitabh Kant, no one can. Now read that again.
Dr. Swasti Rao doesn’t work in a mint, but being the magician with words that she is, mints without the mince. She can be fairly & squarely accused of having minted ‘ABCD’. Thanks to her I got to write this article ji!