No mundane chores for India’s own VIPs

Preparing for re-entry into the real world is very necessary if people have spent significant amounts of time cloistered in the rarified corridors of power. So soon-to-be ex-FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) Michelle Obama must be commended for venturing into an ordinary store, albeit with a famous comedienne and talk show host in tow, to gauge if she still has the smarts to do ordinary chores. She apparently has retained those old skills as acquitted herself well, pushing her own shopping cart and picking out merchandise from the shelves. Whether she will actually ever need to do that is moot as the (ex)presidential lecture circuit is lucrative enough for them to employ domestic aides, but the point about coming back to terra firma is well taken.

Indians holding and demitting similar high offices, of course, need never bother about such re-skilling themselves to take on these mundane tasks. The benevolent state machinery ensures not only their seclusion from the hoi polloi that elected them for the rest of their lives, it generously provides all the staff and wherewithal for them to never have to bother with quotidian issues. Not for them the travails of being an aam aadmi ever again. The Obamas, the Camerons and political leaders in less-accommodative countries certainly have reason to feel envious.