Come on! Let's have some truth!

Shah Rukh Khan said at a press conference earlier today that all the
owners of the IPL teams wanted to do something for sports. Yeah, I
suppose they did by investing astronomical sums of money in a sport
that has already flourished and thrived and pretty much has put India
at the control of where it goes globally.

Lalit Modi and the IPL shamelessly claim that their idea was somehow a
pioneering effort, and he does not shy away from lies that the IPL is
the first of its kind enterprise in cricket, knowing fully well that
the ICL and Kapil Dev definitely hold that distinction.

L.K. Advani is doing everything he can to distance himself from the
events following the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane to
Khandahar during the last BJP tenure at the top. He claims he was not
part of the decision making process. That's kind of like John McCain
claiming he was against Bush's war.

LK Advani is also claiming that he will bring back all of India's
wealth stashed in the Swiss Bank. It is a totally fake claim,
considering he will need to get through a whole process culminating in
Interpol truly attesting that a certain amount of money stashed in a
particular account is indeed India's wealth and has been "illegally"
accrued, not just "improperly". It will involve actually proving to
the Interpol that every single account of every single Indian who has
"improperly" put away money in Swiss bank is actually stolen from what
would be India's money!

What is even more preposterous is that there are any number of havens
out there for loosely accounted money - Cayman Islands, Solomon
Islands, Belize, the Bahamas, Channel Islands, Panama, and if you have
the right connections, even the Vatican City can protect your ill
gotten money as long as there is enough of it. There was once a short
study conducted in the Wall Street area of New York around lunch time.
Two thirds of all ATM withdrawals were accessing moneys from offshore
accounts!

So, it is not as if L.K. Advani is fighting against a bunch of Indian
thugs sitting in some mountain in the Swiss Alps on suitcases of
money. He is a moron to even make the claim that he will somehow
bring back all that money stashed in acres of protective policy across
the globe. And even if that money came back, do we trust our
politicians to handle it right? Of course not. So...

Why the lies? What is wrong with Shah Rukh Khan saying he really
thinks the IPL is a good business opportunity and if his star power
helps his team, so be it!? What is wrong with Lalit Modi saying the
ICL was the first to do it, but the IPL has got it better? Would we
respect Advani any less if he said "I am not proud of the way we
handled the Khandahar affair."?

Would truth really be that much out of fashion compared to lies? We
don't really believe kids who drink Complan would grow 3 cms more than
kids who don't, do we? So, if a wannabe politician comes to us and
says, "I don't have any bloody experience in this political cellpool,
but I really think I can do better than all these pompous fools out
there", wouldn't there be something in us wanting to give him a
chance?

It isn't as if we can't tell the difference between blatant lies and
something closer to the real thing. But the presentation is killing
us. Everybody has got into this "TV clean" culture of being
presentable. They are all quickly learning from each other how to
present themselves, not what to represent.

Just for freshness, wouldn't truth be fun to have around? Who knows,
it might even become fashionable, patrotic, efficient, and even
nationalistic. I remember there used to be a guy called Gandhi.....