I said it before:
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
I meant it then, in the context of Zohran Mamdani and the 2025 New York City mayoral election, that I was far more bothered by the theatre unfolding in India. I cringe each time a foreigner mentions India and suddenly Indians feel proud, as though the old “colonial slave mentality” has been reactivated, the reflexive swell of chest at external validation. I’ve said that Zoran’s owning up to his Muslim identity so close to the election was bad timing, bad optics. I’ve said that I am not sure his socialist policies will hold up to the real world. I have said he looks too clean, too perfect for him not to have skeletons, and that I dread the day when the very liberals celebrating him will form a lynch mob to “cancel” him.
Yes. I have been a cynic, and I continue to be. I own up to all of that.
And yet, last night, when he won, and when in his speech he quoted Jawaharlal Nehru, yes, I got goose pimples. I cannot fully explain why. I am unashamedly admitting that I felt a surge of, if not pride, then a surge of satisfaction. Somebody who quotes Nehru, who has Indian ancestry, who calls his father ‘Baba’, who speaks Urdu-Hindi, who looks like me (if I looked like a love child of Bobby Deol and Rohit Sharma) who eats with his hands, who has a sense of humour, is now the mayor of the greatest city in what is debatably the greatest country in the world. I know. I know it shouldn’t bother me. I know I have more problems in India to think about than the sanctum sanctorum of capitalism. It doesn’t matter what New York, or any Old York says, not a hill of beans. But, as in Casablanca, “we’ll always have that.” I just want to take one second to feel nice. It’s alright for us to feel a moment of joy in this world so bleak and full of sadness, full of reverses and defeats, full of disappointments and losses, indeed full of the dark cloud without a hint of the silver lining.
Because there’s this: you can refuse the spectacle, ignore the circus, and the monkeys, tune out the band, shut your eyes to the dazzle, and still allow yourself a sigh of recognition when something resonates. I’ll return to the real work, India’s dramas, its rawness, its far greater stakes… for me and my descendants. But for a fleeting moment, let me pause the not-my-circus posture and simply enjoy the show, hold my breath as the trapeze artist lets go of the bar, somersaults through the air, and, as time stands still and you think they are never going to make it, catches another pair of outstretched hands as the drum rolls and the awestruck audience erupts into applause, each one knowing fully well that it isn’t their circus. Let me savour that second of suspension, knowing it is rehearsed, knowing it is theatre, knowing it is, once again, not my circus. And yet, strangely, it is.
Later edit:
It struck me that everyone except the right wing seems to quote their heroes in speeches. I wonder why that is. Why does no right-wing leader ever say something like,
My clansmen, as Gen Forrest once said, “Men, you may all do as you damn please, but I’m a-goin’ home,”
or,
Let me recall the golden words of Golwalkar Guruji: “Hindus, do not waste your energy fighting the British. Save it to fight our internal enemies — the Muslims, Christians, and Communists.”
Or even,
In the words of my hero: “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.”
Why is it that even right-wingers, when searching for something inspiring, end up quoting leftists and liberals? Curious, isn’t it? It’s almost as if they are embarrassed of their own heroes. Hmmm.
