Michaang koloppang, no! Or, to put it in another way, real ha ho in Maho! All this might not be felicitous expressions but I believe you have got the drift of what I am trying to say.

I mean where would you find two sets of artistes (well that's what the media calls them, not I) in two countries separated by a thin strip of water called the Palk Strait publicly taking up opposite causes that have nothing to do with their vocation and doing it for free?

It might not be as historic an occurrence as the election of Barack Obama (will people please learn to spell the first name correctly) as the next el presidente of the US of A. But it sure made a splash on either side of the Palk pond if not in the pond itself what with the fish not knowing which way to turn.

Where would you see some potbellied and moustachioed men with more gaudy paint on their faces than Geronimo before battle and women in glittering sarees that emit enough harmful rays to hasten global warming, take up a cause in our neighbouring land for emotional or dubious reasons rather than carefully weighed ones?

Cacophony

Did one hear such a cacophony from Chennai when the Indian Peace Keeping Force was trying to crush the rebellious Tigers in the north? Did the Chennai noise polluters show any concern for Tamil civilians then caught up in a conflict with foreign forces? No sir, there was such deafening silence. And who, by the way, killed the all those Indian soldiers and wounded double that number?

Not to be outdone by some Tamil Nadu playback singer warbling his Doric lay ( if you'll pardon this resort to poesy) our own artistes had decided to put on their own show in support of the motherland.

I almost said fatherland in which case a thousand curses would have fallen on my head and accusations of Nazi flung at me every time I put my head outside the house.

I dare say the appellation of Nazi would have sat with greater assurance on the shoulders of some people I know. But in these times it is best not to name names, right?

I actually knew a chap whose first name was Lenin, another with the first name of Stalin and yet another called Adolf. But I rather think that if anybody had been named Hitler or Pol Pot at birth he would surely have shed that at the first signs of historical comprehension.

Enthusiasm

Such was the enthusiasm of the local artistes to show those semi-literate ruffians on the other side of the water and such was their considered remarks at that first media briefing early last week that I could not wait till their gathering in numbers on Thursday to get this off my chest.

Serve those blighters on the other side of the pond right. Just because those self righteous goons that pass off as politicians in the southern state of Tamil Nadu want to hold hands with gay abandon and stand there singing in the rain, those millionaire artistes don't have to get into the act (the pun is intended, if you please) or do they?

Surely they could mind their business without sticking their snouts into our business. But as my neighbour so kindly pointed out, it is their business. If the Chennai artistes did not support the 60 million people in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere who are shouting themselves hoarse over the plight of the Tamils, who is going to patronise these artistes.

On which side

A little display of sympathy will not do badly, thank you. As my neighbour put it so succinctly, those blokes know which side their chapatti is buttered.

If the Tamil Nadu artistes are anything like their politicians, not to mention ours, it would not matter which side of the chapatti is buttered. The blighters eat both sides, don't they?

Talking of food reminded me of a bit of news I read somewhere. It said these artiste chaps had a fast or were going to hold a fast. They were to go without food for 12 hours starting from 10 am and ending at 10 pm.

It could well be because this Karunanidhi fellow and his halp karayas had collected several tonnes of food to be sent to the starving civilians in the north. Well not to put too finer a point on all this showmanship and grandstanding, there are far less people starving in this country than in Karunanidhi's bharat. I am sure that any food collected would serve a more humanitarian need in his part of the world than ours.

Maybe they ran out of food in Chennai so that the artistes decided on this 12 hour break from gluttony. Perhaps they did this on doctor's orders seeing how these fellows were expanding round the waist.

Though we have had our own chaps - mainly politicians with excessive nationalist zeal or after a few column inches of publicity in the newspapers - who went on such fasts, they were not such perfectly calibrated affairs that as the clock struck 10 pm they would all dive for the chicken biriyani and masala dosai.

Some threatened to fast unto death. Not surprisingly, nobody died - except I think up in the north where one senior LTTE cadre named Thileepan actually passed away, a sad event that is still commemorated.

Retainers and propagandists

Fortunately for those who threatened to do or die, they had faithful retainers and propagandists who somehow managed to see that they called off the fast in the nick of time, trumpeting it as a great victory.

To show their true, unwavering commitment to their respective causes, the artistes from either side should select the least healthy of their members to conduct a competitive death fast.

Whoever dies first is the winner and his/her side would be awarded points calculated on the Duckworth-Lewis system used by the ICC. There could be a three-fast series each year and the venues would alternate between India and Sri Lanka.

The artiste who dies will receive the Mahaveer Award and his or her side will be presented with three gunny bags of parippu presented by Chief Minister Karunanidhi or Jayalalitha depending on who is in power at the time.

It is only right that the honour of naming the award should go to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

After all, he started this nonsense so let him eat the parippu.

I am joking of course. Nobody wants anybody to die. But the idea of a fasting contest should be further explored for there is great potential there. One could still do it with the first contestant to reach for the food losing the contest.