Hindustan Times:
A visceral mistake
Manas CHAKRAVARTY
The LTTE is in shambles. Their glorious army has been shattered. They
have lost all their territory and are running for their lives. How on
earth did this happen to such a ruthless fighting force, led by a
master-strategist like Velupillai Prabhakaran? Surely it can't be
anything the Sri Lankans have done - they've been fighting without
success against the guerrilla group for decades. Why, even the Indian
Army couldn't do much against these suicidal guys.
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Velupillai Prabhakaran |
Jayalalithaa |
No, the blame for the LTTE's great debacle lies squarely on the
well-padded shoulders of Prabhakaran himself. The simple but awful truth
is that he has committed the most heinous sin a guerrilla can ever
commit - he has become fat.
Leading a sedentary life in the jungles of northern Sri Lanka, the
LTTE leader often found time hanging heavily on his hands. Like so many
of us, Prabhakaran succumbed to the temptation of eating the hours away.
Starting with jackfruit and pumpkin idlis, he moved on to jaggery dosas
and sweet pongal rice, though he soon abandoned these patriotic recipes
for more sinful savouries. Cakes and ice-cream followed and some say he
even dumped rasam for sweet French sauces. But it was when he started on
chocolates and Black Forest cakes that the bulge really began to grow
and soon he was the proud possessor of the largest revolutionary paunch
in history.
Since anybody who made personal remarks about Prabhakaran was
summarily executed, nobody advised him to cut out the calories, or to
jog. Once, after watching an ad for a body shaker on TV - the one where
all you have to do is sit and read a newspaper while the contraption
shakes your body - I called up the toll-free number and asked them to
send the thing to Prabhakaran: address somewhere in the Vavuniya
jungles, cash on delivery. Looking at his photographs, I don't think he
got it.
This isn't the first time, though, that a revolution has failed
because its leader became too fat. The Shining Path band of Maoist
guerrillas used to terrorize Peru in the 90s, before their leader,
Abimael Guzman, was captured. Imagine the surprise of the Peruvian Army
when they saw that the terrorist they had nabbed was not a lean, mean
killing machine, but instead a baby-faced, pudgy professor. Those
stuffed tortillas topped with cream had taken their toll.
They promptly dressed him in clothes with horizontal stripes, so that
he would look even wider than he was, and paraded him on TV. That soon
killed the movement, because nobody, not even a Peruvian peasant, would
want to fight for such a ridiculously fat man.
That goes for all revolutionaries. Would Che Guevara have become such
a romantic rebel if he had chubby cheeks and a double chin? Would the
Russian Revolution have happened with an over-fed Lenin? And is Osama
bin Laden in hiding because he's scared the Americans will get him, or
is it because he has become so fat that he can no longer conceal his
tummy under his robes? Perhaps the reason he hasn't attacked the United
States recently is because he has a recurring nightmare of becoming so
plump he can no longer squeeze out of the narrow opening of his cave. As
a result, he is too busy watching his weight to be bothered about
anything else.
Studies by researchers at Rush University Medical Centre have shown
that the accumulation of visceral fat, the kind of fat packed between
internal organs at the waistline, is often linked with depression. Could
it be that Prabhakaran had become so fat that he became depressed,
which, in turn, led to his defeat?
Be that as it may, Prabhakaran's soldiers need not worry. Their
leader may have let down both his waistline and his followers, but
AIADMK Chief Jayalalithaa has recently promised she will take up their
cause and continue to fight for a Tamil Eelam. The problem, though, is
that she is even fatter than Prabhakaran.
The writer is Consulting Editor, Mint
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