When Rahul flew over the cuckoo’s nest: Metaphysics of fruit flavours and Rahul Gandhi’s desperate attempt to appear smart

Congress President Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi’s interview to India Today has already been shrouded by a cloud of mystery. There are rumours going around that the interview was actually in video format, however, the end product was not to the Congress party’s liking and therefore, only a print version was released in the end. And the answers he gave to some of the questions only reveals why people find him unworthy of occupying the seat of Prime Minister.

One of the hallmarks of sound intellect is the ability to answer simple questions in a simple manner. Rahul Gandhi appears to lack that ability. His answers to some of the questions that were posed, only shows that the ‘Pappu’ tag has affected him so deeply that his answers are tailored not to answer the question itself but to present him as someone of deep intellect.

And so it happened that Vipassana found a mention in a question about which fruit he liked. The answer, quite obviously, doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. But it’s quite evident that by mentioning Vipassana in a question that involves fruits, Rahul is trying to prove that he is a wise person of remarkable intellect.

The answer is worth reading in its entirety because it reveals the terrible inferiority complex the Congress President is suffering from. He could very well just tell the interviewer about the damned fruits he liked but that wouldn’t have shown the public that he was smart. Someone, preferably Sammy (Sam Pitroda, of course), should have informed Rahul Gandhi that not every question is an opportunity to show the world the depth of your great intellect. That he fails to understand such a simple thing only reveals how smart he actually is.

“I do Vipassana. The mind constructs the flavour of the fruit. You can like or dislike any fruit you want. You can choose to like mango, you can choose to hate it,” the Congress President said. Well, if I wasn’t aware already who said these words, I would have assumed they were said by someone in one of those cheap self-help books you find in street stalls that no one actually bothers to read. But here we are.

It appears to be the general theme of the entire interview. The interviewer asks him a simple question. The Congress President then gives the impression that he has been asked something related to Quantum Physics and then proceeds to give an answer that is convoluted at best and word-salad at its worst.

There was another question about his relationship with his mother and sister. His initial answer was fine enough but when he asked whether he had any preference for who he decided to confide in, the best Rahul Gandhi could come up with it, “My Mother is my Sister. My Sister is my Mother. They are the same thing, the same force.” Well, thank you, genius.

The most hilarious bit of the interview, however, came when the interviewer asked Rahul Gandhi about his foreign policy. When he was asked what was the difference between Narendra Modi hugging world leaders and him hugging Narendra Modi, the best he could come up with is “My hug had love in it.”

Of course, maybe we just didn’t understand Rahul Gandhi’s pearls of wisdom because we didn’t “go at him with sophistication”. He really did say “come at me with sophistication and I will come back at you with sophistication”. We truly wanted to add an exasperated emoticon here, but that would perhaps be unprofessional.

Rahul Gandhi is any PR agent’s nightmare. The questions which provide him with the opportunity to display his intellect, he comes up terribly short while answering them. And questions which demand simple answers, he goes all Einstein on it. The questions about his family and his favourite fruits were meant to show him as a person just like us. Instead, he came across as a tosspot whose hobby is to ponder upon the metaphysics of fruit flavours.

Considering some of the answers that the Congress President gave in his interview, it suddenly makes a lot of sense for people to want to bury the video of it. Rahul Gandhi appears so stupid just by reading the answers, one can only imagine how stupid he will actually look in a video saying all the stuff that he did.

K Bhattacharjee: Black Coffee Enthusiast. Post Graduate in Psychology. Bengali.