Satiricus has not read Musharraf'sbook. Satiricus has read about Musharraf'sbook. What he has read about the book would fill a book. So much wastage of paper by the papers, says Satiricus. He simply cannot understand all this din and noise being made by every columnist worth his cheque and every politician north his kursi against it. As a fan of fiction, particularly of pulp, Satiricus is sure to like it. In fact he would not be surprised if even Fredcrick Forsyth'sflights of fancy fall flat before this novelists'sthrill-a-minute narrative of how he won the Kargil War which the whole stupid world thinks he lost.
We Indians, of course, are too illiterate to know anything about learned literary criticism. As a result, this author'sadmirable imagination has been dubbed fabrication by our ex-Army Chief and obfuscation by our ex-Foreign Minister. This wretched reaction reveals that the former lacks the imagination to distinguish between imagination and fabrication, and the latter is too obfuscated himself to appreciate the virtues of obfuscation.
Fortunately, our government seems to find this thriller so unputdownable that it is too dumb-struck to say a word about it. Then again, there is a significance to this silence. It is that Musharraf may (sorry, must) be telling the truth, for how could India have won without a UPA government?
