Monday, October 16, 2006
Gandhi and Gates
You know the dilemma where your heart says one thing and your head says another? That’s the feeling I had on hearing the news that Indians now revere Bill Gates more than Gandhi. On purely material grounds, Gates is miles ahead. As well as creating the stuff that keeps our computers running, the man is donating billions to worthy causes, with a fair share going to the Mother Continent. While it’s true that Gandhi had similar aspirations for helping the downtrodden, the poor fellow didn’t have two beans to rub together. A fat lot of good he did by riding the trains 3rd class – had I been a low-budget traveller, I would have told him to bugger off to 2nd class to leave more leg-room for the truly needy.
Yet somehow these cold economic facts will never tell the whole story. There is something about Gandhi that stirs the soul, and I’m not just saying this because he was a vegetarian pacifist (as we gorillas are, most of the time). The Mahatma, you see, had a look and a style that was all his own. You could spot him at 200 yards from his silhouette, and he never gave a hoot if some people mistook him for a beggar. In a country where the big honchos used to ride elephants and wear jewels in their turbans, that sort of insouciance suggests a huge inner confidence. Gandhi didn’t fear ridicule because he knew that his homespun homilies would make anyone who mocked him look like a monumental ass.
Even a senile baboon could see that Bill Gates has no hope of competing with the Mahatma’s mythic image. For all his gigabytes of cash, he will never come across as anything other than a nondescript computer nerd. Even his pretty, but not too pretty, spouse looks like a digitally-generated housewife in a cake-mix commercial. A Bill-and-Melinda press conference is like watching a pair of well-tuned androids deploying their latest interactive programming on bunch of bemused hacks.
Of course, you can never say anything about Gandhi without some cheeky wag mentioning that he shared his bed with naked young women. So what if he did? A man’s sleeping arrangements are his own affair and have no bearing on his moral authority. I once shared my bed with no fewer than three female acrobats after a flasher had accosted them during a night out on the town. They were feeling vulnerable and said they’d sleep easier if they could bed down with a gorilla. Quite understandable in the circumstances and there was no question of anything resembling hanky-panky. I don’t know why women wanted to hit the hay with the Mahatma, but they must have had their reasons. As for opting to sleep in the nude, the oppressive heat in the monsoon season may have had something to do with it.
The good news about Gandhi is that the Indian film industry is finally making an effort to re-establish his credentials with the younger generation. In a recent Bollywood release, a love-struck gangster is visited by the ghost of the Mahatma, who lightens the atmosphere by cracking jokes and offering him folksy advice. The hoodlum is persuaded to abandon his evil ways and adopt the Gandhi philosophy, apart from the bits about being celibate and wearing a loin cloth. This enables him to win the hand of the maiden he pines for, as well as acquiring the personality of a thoroughly good egg. If a movie like that doesn’t make the Mahatma popular again, I don’t know what will.
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Can't say that a visit from the ghost of Gandhi does much for me, GB. A film featuring the ghost of Gates, on the other hand, now that's entertainment. For a start, he'd have to be dead. Awesome...
Still and all it's refreshing to hear someone say something charitable about Gates. With Ghandi I always felt he was having a secret laugh.
Tarzan: he may be a bull------r but he knows of which he speaks.
Tarzan: he may be a bull------r but he knows of which he speaks.
How come the women aren't all over me then?
Considering all his dosh, you would think old Gatesy would get a proper tailor. That shirt collar's too tight and his ghastly tie is choking him. You can even see it through the collar.
Really.
Considering all his dosh, you would think old Gatesy would get a proper tailor. That shirt collar's too tight and his ghastly tie is choking him. You can even see it through the collar.
Really.
They say that back in his swinging days one could enjoy a fortnight of contortionist sex with Mahatma "M.Diddy" Gandhi. His press secretary vehemently denied this. The press secretary also mentioned law suits so we'll move right along. (Freaky love making aside) When we think of Gandhi we usually think of a determined Indian fellow who drank his own urine and avoided McDonald's. Or at least that's what I got from some video they forced us to watch back in high school. We forget about the party animal that Gandhi chained within his soul for the good of his country. I think the personal sacrifices he made for the good of the world is an aphrodisiac in its own right. The fact that Gandhi wasn't in the least bit interested in horny chicks just makes him sexier. Well....sexier than Bill Gates anyway. Calvin Klein need to put out a cologne to make people smell like Gandhi. Minus the flatulence.
The thing about Gandhi, Fatman, was that he sowed his wild oats early - when he was a child, in fact. By the time he got into middle age he was only interested in looking, not doing.
An ascetic streak can be very attractive in the right man, especially when you know he's denying himself for a higher purpose. And especially when you know he knows all that wild squeaky weasel sex stuff.
But I think the women who had sex with him would say they were attempting to have sex with his brain. What they'd mean is that they wanted a mind-fuck. So to speak. Not kidding. A man's mind is of paramount importance to many women when it comes to attraction. How else do you explain wanting to bed Martin Clunes? Or Stephen Fry who doesn't even like girls that way?
Sex is all in the mind anyway, isn't it?
But I think the women who had sex with him would say they were attempting to have sex with his brain. What they'd mean is that they wanted a mind-fuck. So to speak. Not kidding. A man's mind is of paramount importance to many women when it comes to attraction. How else do you explain wanting to bed Martin Clunes? Or Stephen Fry who doesn't even like girls that way?
Sex is all in the mind anyway, isn't it?
And he did have a certain taut yet supple wiriness to him, making him look athletic and pretty "capable".
How tall was he?
Off for a Google...
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How tall was he?
Off for a Google...
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