The Great Indian Undie Protest, Take Two

Nisha Susan of Tehelka wants you to send pink panties to the chief of Sri Ram Sene.

Does that make her a Hindu-baiter?

Of course not. The Sene is a little rowdy outfit that beat up girls who went out with boys to a Mangalore pub. It is composed of men who are as nasty as the Marxist cadre that committed rapes in Nandigram, or the Taliban who made a jolly good video shooting a woman in the head. Moreover, these are men that can't tell beautiful Valentines from their soiled langotas. Very primitive and completely uncool. Ergo, giving them a shock of pink serves them right.

So I see that you sport that "eh? come again?" look. Well, the point is, you know nothing if you don't believe in pink. It is said that even the clouds surrounding St Valentine up there in the heavens are a sensuous pink. Imagine, therefore, the effect of thousands and thousands of pink panties on these cornered, flabbergasted Sene men. Before long they be will sending Nisha and pals hand-carved Valentines begging for mercy. And a few months hence, you won't believe that the goatee-sporting pony-tailed hunk with that sexy babe on his arm sitting right next to you at the bar counter in the hippest joint in town was a former Sene activist. You won't. You will keep rubbing your eyes in disbelief till you start to see pink.

Yes, baby. Pink is the natural color of protest. Just as apple is the natural flavor of the Durex condom.

So you think, so far so good. And you want to know where does this Hindu-hating angle come from then, when the projection for the future is so rosy (or pinkish, depending on your p.o.v).

Well, here it is. Some communalists believe that this whole pink panties trick is a convoluted way of baiting Hindus.

How's that, you ask, shocked, every secular bone in your body stirred.

Well, communalists have stitched up a nice conspiracy theory to explain it all.

Didn't Undie TV (that is NDTV for you, but righwingers call it Undie TV) start this whole shebang about "Hindu Taliban" in Mangalore? They ask. Didn't they stress that word "Hindu" again and again, they ask, just as they stressed "exclusive!" when they said "exclusive gun shot, brought to you from Bombay!", when they covered 26/11?

Didn't they keep going at it on and on, for far longer than Barkha Dutt hyperventilated on Undie TV (NDTV for you) about the attack on Leopald? They ask.

To top it all, didn't Tehelka use sex workers in its Operation Westend "sting"? They ask.

The last one is a bit puzzling, I know. How can the use of prostitutes to get a story be dubbed an attack on Hindus? It is an attack on the ethics of journalism, alright, but on Hindus? What's the connection? You wonder too, just like I did.

But you see, communalists are not rational people. They imagine conspiracies because these "Tehelka types" and "Undie TV types" are into this sexy pink undies crusade.

But the communalists couldn't be more wrong. There's no Hindu-baiting in this. Nor Christian-baiting. Nor Red-baiting.

Try this for experiment. Protest Tehelka's unethical use of prostitutes in what was claimed to be a journalism operation . Protest their secret filming of a man having sex with a prostitute. Protest it with red-colored bras.

Just send Red bras to Tehelka, and request them to burn them.

Yes, d-cup, c-cup, full cup, strapless, padded, wired -- ANY kind of bra will do, as long as the color is a shade of Red. Just as most shops that accept Mastercard also accept Visa, shops that accept pink protest are also cool about Red protest.

Steal, beg or borrow -- gather your Red bras and gather tons of them. Send them to Tehelka in protest against their debasing of the values of journalism with their use of sex workers to get a story.