The ebb and flow of news is such that you cannot tell what’s going to happen the next minute. Sudden death of a female superstar in the Gulf and exit and entry of money grabbing businessmen. Now, we learn that google will police extremist content on youtube. And the ISIS is heading east! It is outrageous. But Karti should not have returned.

Not because it resulted in TV channels getting into a catfight over which one “scooped” first Karti’s arrest. Give the remote its head and you’ll know every channel scoops first. It is like news is vanilla, strawberry, chocolate. Ice cream! “We have better sources” should have been the message, but somehow that is not what is conveyed. Let’s just say they (TV news channels) are bad at it – the conveying game.

Simply put, Karti is being harassed. Complexly put, he’ll now willy-nilly be a side-story in a mom-murders-daughter plot. Imagine. In Delaware kids can pick their gender but Karti – a bona fide male on a subcontinent of dominant males – has no right to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to his part in the life of a killer mom.

The woman is a jailbird, for god’s sake. Nobody could get to Indrani Mukherjee. Except her own thoughts. And the CBI. The CBI gets to her with a recorder and she sings like a canary. The lyrics lead to North Block. Indrani just doesn’t want to go south. She’s already in deep. ‘You know Mr. CBI I met Karti’s tall father in his office in North Block. Does that sound impressive?’

‘Of course, Madam. Very impressive. You’re a lilywhite witness.’ Indrani is now the BJP’s darling – ‘The Whisperer’. You wouldn’t find that in weirdest.com. But it’s better than ‘The Murderer’. Indrani gives substance to her whispers with documents – vouchers of dollar exchanges. The blue suits get that confirmed under section 164. The magistrate’s stamp carries weight. Good foil to ‘CBI carries Modi’s mineral water’.

Yes, Karti should not have returned. Never trust a woman with dough. She’ll make a chapatti of you. Burn your roti. If she is on thin jail dal, she’ll cook your goose and point you to the gander. Did Karti not know that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander?

It is all pretty unbelievable. But the blood work is not looking nice for Karti. There are traces of ‘all cool haul’ of a million dollars, at least. Karti should not have returned. He should have picked up international editions of Indian publications. Scanned e-papers. Looked at how Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi were handling CBI calls to return calls ‘head home’.

Vijay Mallya and Lalit Modi were also in the same bailiwick. In close proximity. In the London vicinity. Indian loot has a habit of ending up in London. Old habits die hard. The Kohinoor Diamond!

Nirav and Mehul were shaping up to be the Congress’s electoral strategy – uncut diamonds. Karti’s return has provided the BJP one. Till yesterday it was ‘Modi is corruption’. Now, Chidambaram is. Did Rahul Gandhi speak too fast? Jump the gun? Today, BJP also has an electoral strategy. And to imagine, till the other day BJP was bankrupt!

With Karti’s return, the term ‘arrests’ has taken on its ominous impending meaning. Nirav and Mehul have been warned. Never return to the crime scene. Their counsels parked in the subcontinent will muck up the scene and write new ones. Red herrings will take over from goose and gander. Herring is silvery fish with great commercial importance – diamonds of the sea. Not dull Dubai pearls. Sparkling Belgium diamonds. Close to Rs 14,000 crores worth stashed in Nirav & Mehul’s ‘keesha’, Malayalam for stash, cache.

Karti should not have returned. Bright boy that he is, that was what he told the duty magistrate: ‘I should not have returned’, much to the delight of Counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who ‘in a lighter note’, in a nice turn of phrase told the magistrate, ‘Your Honour, Karti is not a ‘Hindustan Leaver’. Pun at a time of no fun. But Singhvi can be pardoned for the levity. He himself was dragged into a flat leased to a Nirav Modi company. That was outrageous. And now this other outrage. Arresting Karti. That is like ‘Finding Nimo’. Play of words.

It was wrong for Karti to return. He shouldn’t have. Father Chidambaram was forced to cancel London engagements. Take the first flight home. And everybody knows ‘PC’ is no empty suit. He is key counsel to Congress President Rahul Gandhi. A pillar in the Congress Party. With more grey cells than there are CBI cells. Now, he’ll have to draw up a ‘Spring Karti’ strategy in addition to provide inputs to the Congress Party’s electoral strategy. Don’t forget ‘The Whisperer’ has named P Chidambaram, too, to the caged parrot in her canary duet with husband Peter Mukherjee. Jailbird, jailbait. Karti Chidambaram should not have returned. (IPA Service)