Crush the Candy Saga: With lots of free time, our babus are fiddling their thumbs

The news that denizens of the Delhi Secretariat are sweet on Candy Crush shows that the Capital is up on the latest international trend, as elected representatives from the House of Commons to the Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru — not to mention Bollywood stars like Ranbir Kapoor — have been espied playing it. Though the conscientious Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal obviously could not secretly resort to it while undergoing treatment for high blood sugar in Bengaluru, the aimless game involving lines of colourful virtual lozenges has certainly garnered a worldwide fan following. Perhaps because, unlike desi sweets, it guarantees a sugar rush without calories or kilos.

An easy explanation for its alleged popularity in the state government offices in Delhi, however, could be that most aam employees have nothing else to do, now that the ruling party has decided that it is ‘Pehle AAP’, with no less than 21 MLAs appointed as parliamentary secretaries. But the inadvertent admission by a Delhi government babu that it is a hard habit to kick appears to indicate that proficiency levels have reached addictive stages due to long periods of free time in office, at least in the last two years that the game has been available. Clearly, the chief minister needs to do something about the rising sugar level in the secretariat.