The Weekly Vine Edition 2: DONALD TRUMPS DEATH

Hello and welcome to the second edition of The Weekly Vine. Your responses have been overwhelming, especially the gentleman who asked: “Who’s raison d’etre?” Frankly speaking, I have no idea who she is. Sounds French to be honest.

In this week’s The Weekly Vine, we’ve Donald trumping death, a Tamil vs Telugu Battle Royale in America, Great Babu Supremacy, football’s refusal to come home, and iconic crossovers in the Ambani bash.

1) DONALD TRUMPS DEATH

By now, at least sixty million have seen the iconic heading that reverberated around the world which has become as iconic as a picture of Donald Trump with his fist aloft and shouting: “Fight. Fight. Fight.” It is without a doubt, the most powerful fist-aloft image in American history since sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos held up their fists in the Black Power Salute from the medal podium of the Olympic Games in Mexico City in 1968.

The raised fist is now a symbol of fighting oppression around the globe, so a few Trump critics might be filled with chagrin to think that it appears to have been culturally appropriated by the MAGA crowd. But that’s how the ball rolls.? To quote the great man himself: “A lot of people say it’s the most iconic photo they’ve ever seen. They’re right and I didn’t die. Usually, you have to die to have an iconic picture.”

The Weekly Vine Quip: Donald Trump surviving the assassination attempt will go down as one of the most important moments in American history, more so when the Democrats are in complete disarray over Joe Biden’s inability to stay awake long enough to form a coherent sentence.

2) A Brown MAGA

For centuries, conservative America used to panic about ‘Hindoos’ taking over, and it appears that they had good reason to. The MAGA movement, like the Tories across the Pond, is now dominated by brown folks.?

After Donald trumped death, ISKCON revealed how Trump had come to the rescue of devotees during the Rathyatra festival by providing a large space to construct raths in 1976, and it was Lord Jagannath’s turn to “return the favour”.? Then there was – much to the chagrin of some MAGA Christians – Ardas (Sikh prayer) at the RNC. And of course, one of the most recognisable faces of the election campaign has been the slick and glib Vivek Ramaswamy , who is expected to be at centre of the MAGA movement for a while.

But the cherry on top has been Trump picking JD Vance as his running mate . The best-selling author of Hillbilly Elegy isn’t just an upcoming MAGA star, he is also married to Usha Chilukuri, a devout Telugu Hindu whose deep faith actually helped the once-atheist Vance find Christ again. Who would have thought that one of the side-shows of the 2024 Presidential race would be a Tamil vs Telugu showdown?

The Weekly Vine Quip: ?Comedian Vir Das once said: “Once you go brown, all the other races will let you down.” America is just discovering that. To quote the Veep: “You didn’t fall out of a coconut tree, you exist in the context.”

PS: Here’s a delightful archive of the historical moral panic of Christian Americans – mostly through newspaper clippings – about ‘Hindoos’.

3) The Great Babu Supremacy

God made man. And since he was too busy to govern, he made civil servants. At least that’s what Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey Appleby would have led you to believe. But even the suave civil servant would have been shocked by the power that his counterparts wield here.

The movie 12th Pass showed Vikrant Massey’s eternal struggle to crack the UPSC – as he became progressively browner – and some critics had pointed out that the movie was “glorifying” the civil services and creating unrealistic expectations for children.

Well to be perfectly honest, you can’t really blame the filmmakers if someone decides to base their career choices on movies. Secondly, you can’t accuse aspirants of wasting years to crack an almost-impossible-to-pass exam that will take you as close to divinity as humanly possible. Cracking the exam might be a Herculean endeavour, but the perks are infinite. From closing a stadium to walk your dog to draining a dam to retrieve your phone, no task is too small. ?

No wonder people are accused of faking all sorts of certificates to get into the civil service under reserved seats. As Sir Ivor Jennings is believed to have put it: “The net result of partition wasn’t that Pakistan got Muslims and India got Hindus. It was that Pakistan got the Generals, and India got the bureaucracy, and they’ll hang around their necks like a hangman’s noose.”

The Weekly Vine Quip: While a man’s reach must exceed one’s grasp, one ought to wait to become a full officer before putting the red beacon on one’s car. As the Hindi saying goes: “Sabar ka fal meetha hota hai. (The fruit is sweeter when you have patience).”

4) Football refuses to come home

Football fans across the world – from Spain to Scotland – had prayed that England didn’t accidentally end up winning the Euros 2024. Nothing could be more unbearable, not even English food.? They had somehow reached the final playing a brand of Total Non-Football where defenders couldn’t defend, attackers couldn’t attack, and they had failed to lead in a single match in the knockout stages in normal time.

Thankfully, the Spanish Armada ensured that the world wouldn’t have to live with the misery of an England win.? In the end, Gareth Southgate turned out to be England’s ‘almost Cromwell’ . He did give hope that his regime would be an interregnum to the years of trophyless wilderness for the English football team but in the end, he ended up without any gongs despite leading England to two Euro finals and one World Cup semi-final.

The Weekly Vine Quip:? It was never coming home because football would balk – much like the world balks at what passes as food for the English – at the thought of England being football’s residence. ?

5) The Ultimate Crossover

In 2018, when Akash Ambani got married to Shloka Mehta, many observed that it was a better crossover than Avengers: Infinity War (a meme that was in vogue at that time). I mean how often does one get to see Shah Rukh Khan make former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry dance to his tune. There was also a memorable video of Salman Khan dancing – as a background dancer – the way Nietzsche recommended. However, the great Ambani bash of 2024 appears to have trumped that with so many memorable crossovers that it will make decoloniality scholars wonder if their idea about the subject was completely wrong.

We’ve seen so many match-ups so far that it almost boggles the mind. Where else could you see FIFA chief Gianni Infantino shaking a leg with Hardik Pandya and Ranveer Singh, Rekha hugging Aishwarya Rai, John Cena stanning Shah Rukh Khan or Mamata Banerjee and Kim Kardashian in the same frame. It was truly a wedding for the ages, no matter how many socialists outraged about its ostensible ostentatiousness. The only ones missing seemed to be the members of the House of Windsor. We guess the royal family of a tiny has-been kingdom no longer makes the cut as global celebrities.

The Weekly Vine Quip:? True decoloniality isn’t vibes, papers, essays. It is about forging a better relationship with Mammon than all former colonisers. All else is embellishment.

(written by Nirmalya Dutta )