E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: I met the Ace Political Expert (APE) after a long time.

He was taking his morning walk in Cheluvamba Park. When we settled on one of the reclining benches, he took out a flask and offered me a health drink—a kind of kashaya—which was a concotion of vegetables and roots crushed and beaten to death in his 5-speed mixer.

APE had been missing in his daily rounds for quite sometime. He told me he had been to the Institute of Virology in Poona for a short-term course on ‘Flus and communicable diseases. I quietly moved to the edge of the bench when I heard he had just come back from Poona.

I wanted to know from APE why BJP was hell bent on self-destruction.

“We have to go back a while to understand why this is happening. All this started when Advaniji went to Pakistan and praised Mohammed Ali Jinnah,” started off APE.

“What was wrong with that?”

“You don’t get it, do you, Ramu? That was the first time the Jinnah Bug bit a Hindu politician, that too a staunch BJPite. The fever wouldn’t die down try as he did. I thought he would not survive the deadly virus but he did except it left him with a bit of selective amnesia!”

“What has happened now?” I asked.

“A replapse. The same virus with a different strain ‘Jinnah II’ has come back to haunt, afflict, maim and kill politicians of his party. This may be Pakistan’s biological attack to weaken India.”

This was alarming.

“What are you implying?”

“Look. Jaswant Singh was a popular no-nonsense leader, his booming voice striking terror amongst friends if not among foes as Kandahar showed. The Jinnah Virus made his hands itchy to write a book which was enough for the deadly virus to suck his blood out. Before we could say ‘Jaswant-Hostages-Kandahar’ he was down and out.  It is an extreme form of ‘J Flu’; it killed him politically but gave him lot of wealth; he is still laughing all the way to his bank with his raucous laughter.”

“Who else are the likely victims?”

“Well, there’s Arun Jaitley, M.M. Joshi and Rajnath Singh himself. All names, mind you, with ‘J’ in them. Look, even Vasundhara Raje was not spared.”

I was really surprised the way APE was combining his new found knowledge on viruses and flus to analyse the BJP travails.

“Is there any hope left for the BJP,” I asked.

“There is no BJP as you and I knew. BJP is now “Bharatiya Jinnah Party” and that is why we can say it is on a suicide mission!”

“What else can Pakistan do?”

He dragged me close to him, looked around and whispered in my ears.

“Pakistan is likely to release a ‘Godse Virus’ soon. Hands of all patients struck with ‘G Virus’ will start itching and they will start praising Godse in their books and talk shows and run down leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel. Then it is a matter of time before they are expelled from the Congress party. The Godse Virus like the Jinnah Virus will pick names that have a ‘G’ like Ghulam Nabhi Azad, M.S. Gill, M.K. Azhagiri, Mallikarjuna Kharge et al. I feel even Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi will be vulnerable to this attack.”

My cup of juice was empty but my knowledge on political viruses was full. When I reached home, not only did I wash my hands, I had a bath in Dettol soap as well to drive away the APE virus.