The Age of Technicolour Facts

What’s reality if not for a little bit of colour — be it the hysteria over US President's tax returns or the uncertain future of Indian politics in 2019

HALFWAY AROUND the world, there is much excitement over the US president’s tax returns, which were received by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston in the mail from an anonymous source. MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow flourished two pages in an Arnab-like manner, after teasing viewers for half an hour. And then everyone in the States was scrambling for the story. The liveliest tweet, from a Buzzfeed reporter, racily captured the breathlessness in TV studios: “We have Donald Trump’s tax returns. Donald Trump had tax returns — we have them. Tax returns? Donald Trump. They’re here. Rax teturns.”

The hysteria is understandable — though these are only the first two pages of a 2005 return — since interest in Donald Trump’s financials has been pumped up by the miasma of corporate secrecy and those television programmes claiming to lay bare the gilt-edged life in Trump Tower (Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous retooled for an age which perceives reality to be an attribute of television rather than the universe). The White House reacted peevishly: “It is totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns.” Why, aren’t they public documents? And anyway, there’s no media conspiracy afoot. For teasing her audience, Maddow was roasted by Stephen Colbert, who is on her side of the political divide.

A White House clarification refocused public obsession, stating that until the moment he took the oath of office, Trump was morally obligated to pay the government as little in taxes as possible. All right, so the official version was, “no more than is legally required”, but that isn’t half as colourful, is it? In our times, colour is everything.

Speaking of which, NDTV had this interview with Kapil Sibal last Saturday which ended with colourful though completely parliamentarian language. Srinivasan Jain tried to gently badger Sibal into admitting that Rahul Gandhi should be encouraged to ride off into the sunset and leave the Congress to its fate. Even though internet humorists have appointed him star campaigner for the BJP in the 2019 general elections. Obviously, Sibal could not possibly crumble and admit that a Gandhi-mukt Congress is the next big thing in Indian politics, though his colleagues are making noises in that register. But Jain persisted with, “So 2019 is not a done deal?” To which, the intriguingly colourful reply was: “Nothing is a done deal, Vasu, not even your channel.” The trolls have been running with it ever since, leaving smelly three-toed footprints everywhere.

Assam provides what appears to be another bit of trollery, which could have been drollery if the implications were not so grim. A ‘fatwa’ against teenaged Assam singernahidafrinturnedouttobeamere leaflet. Pictures are circulating on social media of an appeal printed on that bilious yellow paper which is used nationwide to advertise cheap detergents and miracle cures for piles. Making allowances for my poor Assamese reading skills, it appeared to be a general appeal against the pernicious effect of music on the faithful, when it is practised in the vicinity of religious institutions. It does not name a target, which one takes to be an essential element of a fatwa,butitdoesnamethevenueatwhich Afrin was to sing. The chief minister has been right to speak out against this, but what is interesting is the rapidity with which talk of a fatwa was bruited about on social media, and it made a little bridgehead into formal media, too.

Pi Day was celebrated everywhere on Tuesday, but you may have missed it if you live offline, drowned in the blathersome TV analyses of What’s Going On in Uttar Pradesh. The celebration of the world in the round has been a feature in the academic community, and now it even has its own website and merchandise. Indeed, it’s the internet which has brought it out into the open, and what used to be a private conversation in the geek quarter now leaks out into the wild, through civilian followers of geeks on Twitter. That’s quite wonderful, given that the scientific temper is getting rusty in our times, to the extent that in the imagination of presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway, microwaves can turn into cameras to wiretap Donald Trump for Obama. She told a local paper in New England: “There was an article this week about how you can surveil someone through their phone, certainly through their television sets … microwaves that turn into cameras.” That was the latest Wikileaks dump and somewhere out there, Julian Assange is silently computing pi to 42 places of decimal to keep calm.

However, it’s not clear why Pi Day remains March 14 when July 22 has always been readily available. Wouldn’t the date of 22/7 be so much more appropriate for celebrating pi? Maybe it’s been missed because many nations read July 22 as 7/22, or 1/pi, turning the world’s most famous ratio on its head, and making it look distressingly small.

A White House clarification refocused public obsession, stating that until the moment he took the oath of office, Trump was morally obligated to pay the government as little in taxes as possible