By: Ittoop Panikulam SVD

Part of my curious daily morning ritual is to look for Sandeep Adhwaryu’s political cartoons. His cartoons are wise symbols that roar out volumes of truths to the viewers like me. And they are at the same time humorous and witty!

The gap between words and deeds

‘Banks for the poor and the river banks’ appeared on Saturday, May 22, 2021.

What a gap between the macro-phonic words and micro deeds! What a supernatural parody is being enacted upon one of the holiest of our rivers, the Ganges. It would appear that the only thing that does the equalizer stab is death. Thank God, the dead do not see any longer!  Death closes up all the gaps, the ultimate equalizer. This gap “between the Banker and those now on the banks” had been a perennial disease in our sacred land, for which no real vaccine had yet been found. It’s asking for a revolution of our hearts! The gap between the poor and the rich in India is as wide as the dead and the alive. The bankers have their eyes on luxury cruises. And the poor goes pyre-less. This is cartoon talk. The times ahead can only be worse!

Such gaps affect all other gaps in humans, like the wealth gap, the emotional gap, relational gap, freedom gap, truth gap, including religious gap. All the Indian solutions to the problems of the gaps are often summed up and distributed in three words: ‘ Bhagwan ki marji’!

The Trust-Gap

Goods made outside India, even the toothpicks made in China are bought with a guarantee that it will work. If you happen to read export quality on the package, people buy it without much hesitation with the exception of may be spices. Patients think twice about the uncertain expenses before choosing a hospital or a doctor. Turn wherever you want, you step upon trust deficits. The ones that would be considered on the lowest rung of trust would be our beloved politicians. Everyone cheats, it would seem. Profit is what shops are for. Read the next chapter from Adhwaryu’s good tidings.

The Profiteering – Gap

“What can I get is the mantra that balloons up the profiteer- size.” And you can see the gap between the fat and the thin! The profiteering vaccinations do the magic of super-masculinity!

The Happiness – Gap

The backbone of happiness and all healthy relationships depends on the quality of trust. The underlying principle of the global survey is also to discreetly find out the level of trust people experience in different countries. We find it hard even to trust the survey! How can some of our neighbours much poorer than us be happier than us? And the survey says that they are. That’s a distrustful conspiracy theory! Trust not!

 Al-mighty Solutions

The same day, when Adhyvaryu had those two above shown cartoons, a newspaper explained: why the Sensex breached 50,000 again on that happy Saturday?  Do you see any gap? Pandemic or no pandemic if you want to see the first, second or coming waves of happiness, on the  rich Indian faces, close your eyes on what happens on the banks of Ganges, but watch the faces of  those whose eyes are glued on Sensex and Nifty! Money matters. That’s the only thing that really matters. Money has brought us to where we are now. This is not the end. Mammon is more powerful than any virus, Jesus had once warned his listeners. It’s as powerful as Almighty God!

Adhwaryu in Sunday’s cartoon (May 23, 2021) shows us the solution to all the problems, the al-mighty and the powerful have drawn out and demonstrated to the entire world.  Remember, zero is our discovery! And if you add zero to zero it ends up in zero!

These are also times for the enlightened to rise up and show the way, please!