AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

        The real art of cabaret, as anyone with a sharp eye and sharper mind will tell you, lies less in revealing but more in concealing. Likewise, in this era of ineluctable split poll verdicts, coalition partners are emerging to be inside (or is it insidious?) opponents rather than be outside proponents. The Left parties at the Centre and the PMK closer home have reflected this essential black-and-white contradiction in, er, black and white. The PMK and the Left have shown that they can be hares to run with as well hounds to hunt with. In the principle-scarce world of politics, actually it is not such a bad strategy to shift and shingle around. It makes the path easier for the inevitable compromises and inescapable turnarounds that doubtless follow, especially at the time of elections.

        Having said that, this tease trip, blowing hot and blowing cold according to convenience, can also be shown be up for what it usually is — an act. A harmless show of bark and bellow with little promise of bite and brio to follow. But PMK supremo Dr S Ramadoss, a crafty politician who knows every trick in the book and plus some more —— otherwise would his men have been Ministers at the Centre in both the BJP and the Congress-led coalitions?—— can be trusted to understand this underlying reality. So that makes his increasing stridency against the ruling DMK in Tamilnadu an interesting exercise to follow. It is easy to surmise that the good doctor has worked out (at least in his mind) a larger treatment plan, so to speak. Whatever that be, it will surely be some kind of bitter pill for the DMK. Then again, this is not something that the other wily politician in the equation —— M Karunanidhi — would not be unaware of. He is more than a past master in these games of slick scheming and smart skullduggery. If Ramadoss represents an irresistible force, then Karunanidhi is the proverbial immovable object. A reader of comic books would put them in the Spy vs Spy genre —— players of oneupmanship and brinkmanship all at once.

        Politically speaking, Ramadoss, however, seems to be caught in a cleft stick. Though he may not be in a mood to provide unfettered support for the DMK, he has very little option other than it (at any rate, in the conditions as is obtaining now). The impatience and helplessness borne out of this cloistered constraint maybe one of the reasons for the PMK's rising decibels against the DMK with each passing day. A dog tethered to the post can do little else than bark. Ramadoss's predicament seems similar. But the bigger problem for him may be that Karunanidhi fully knows his predicament. This is where the rub and nub lies for the PMK founder. That is why his shouts of threats against the DMK sounds hysterically hollow. Hitting without hurting does not work for long in the hurlyburly world of politics.