I remember a story from a primary class English book about a man giving his son wings carved out of wax and feathers with a warning of not flying too high. Some googling and a few clicks later I knew the names of the two Greek gentlemen, Father, Daedalus and the son Icarus. Icarus’ insatiable curiosity proved fatal for him when he flew too near to the Sun which melted the wax. “Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms.” Wikipedia. (I almost imagined a Wile E. Coyote from the Road Runner Show there).The rush of adrenaline and the accolades that follow a seemingly dangerous stunt are incentives enough for man to keep challenging the notions of doability and impossibility.
One of television’s most loved maverick Steve Irwin fell to such an urge. Near home, Yuvraj Singh announced his arrival on the big stage with a defiant knock against the mighty Aussies. After which he failed to deliver for what seemed an eternity to everyone but his skipper and mentor Saurav Ganguly. Though he later settled down and carved a permanent place in the team’s starting eleven, his last knocks worth remembering came almost 3 years ago in inaugural T20 World Cup. While most players realize their roles in the team either on their own or after being assigned one and then strive to fulfill them, Yuvraj’s case could be likened to Steve as he too fell to his fondness for flamboyance. His immense talent may have allowed him to take on Stuart Broad after an altercation with Andrew Flintoff. But such pomposity may not always pay off and it didn’t in his case. When showered with short balls, an unusually unhealthy Yuvraj (who otherwise could have dispatched that short stuff over the semicircle from mid on to backward point with ease, given he had spent enough time on crease taking a blow or two from smirky pacers) found it difficult to deal with them. His lavish use of long handle against the bowlers early in his innings proved to be his undoing. Its time there is some soberity in the way seniors like him and Sehwag approach their game. And there is plenty of time for him to think over that as he watches the Asia Cup from his home.
In an entirely different universe, it’s also the time that BJP shows that it has matured as a party.
It might be a point worth pondering over as to how a party decimated to just two out of 530 odd seats in 1984 in the world’s largest democracy, could bounce back riding on the popularity wave with Advani’s Rath Yatra to rule the same country 14 years later. While Advani can hardly be faulted for being the benefactor of the country’s democracy, giving it some meaning by single handedly creating a lasting opposition. His ways can always be put to scrutiny. The Yatra, the temple, the Mandal politics, and the VP Singh defection marked the heydays of adventurist politics for the BJP. Soon they were the single largest party in India claiming to represent the upper caste, the middle class and in general the Hindu aspirations. Theirs was the only non congress government to last its full five year term. They had successful alliances at state level and provided stable pro development, pro business governance. But then came the 2004 General Elections fought by them, on the face of it, on the development plank but somewhere in the middle of their tenure, markedly the Godhra violence, they had missed the chance to transform themselves into a ‘party with a difference’. They failed to market their rapid achievements to the electorate and still depended upon the Hindutva plank to garner votes. And with deserting allies and a resurgent congress under Sonia Gandhi, they were soon reduced to a ‘party with differences’. Even after the debacle the party still seems to unable to shrug off the shock and move ahead. They must realize that the role of the exhilarating journey of the 1990’s was to catapult them into the national prominence. After that it’s their continued hard work that would count. And hard work they did, visible though only in an isolated incoherent manner at the state level. Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar may be examples worth emulating but with no indications of them making headway in terms of gaining public support for their policies they tend to resort to the formula quick fix solution of the 90’s and we have a Varun Gandhi spewing venom in Pilibhit. They have to come of the erstwhile mould of savior from the congress. They no longer are that angry young party that people look up to, to rid them of the single party tyranny. Its time they realize that and start acting their age, in a calm composed and sedate manner.

Recently ahead of their National Executive meet in Patna some over zealot Modi Supporters put up hoardings of him waving to the crowd with CM Nitish Kumar, knowing full well how such a campaign would negatively affect the CM’s standing in the minority community. While Modi undeniably is a charmer and a large faction of BJP already sees him as their future PM candidate, such a misadventure jeopardizing an otherwise fruitful alliance ahead of the Bihar Assembly Elections was simply uncalled for. At a time when a victory seems all but guaranteed for the alliance in Bihar, due to the appreciable work done by their ally Nitish Kumar, the party again seems to be drawn to some reckless extravagance in their show of strength which might just prove to be a bit costly. Just the example that embodies there knack for (mis)adventure.