The parables of absurdity

AN entire genre of absurdist literature exists, wrapped in poetry and nursery rhymes, which has regaled the world for centuries. Occasionally, the humour and satire they spawn assume the form of an inscrutable poker-faced dilettante relishing a faux involvement in the morose world of politics. Take the Quad foreign ministers under the dilettante’s watch. They plan to meet in Delhi on Tuesday (today) as part of America’s long-expired Obama-era ‘pivot to the east’ policy. The idea was to somehow trap China, preferably in the Strait of Malacca, to impair its stride as an economic power and as an equal challenger to the US. Penny Wong, Toshimitsu Motegi and Marco Rubio are to confabulate in Delhi as guests of Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, ostensibly to keep the Indo-Pacific sea-lanes free. Free from whom? Free from themselves, it turns out. The inscrutable dilettante would studiously refuse to call out the flawed meet. He might prefer instead to layer the humour with irony. The silent observer is only too aware that Quad discussants have displayed a marked failure individually and collectively to prise open the Strait of Hormuz in all of 86 days so far. Ergo: they have struggled against an unseeded Iran, which has stood up like Horatius to thwart an invader at the bridge. In this way, Iran snapped shut the vital economic artery to stall Donald Trump’s Exceptionalist-Zionist war. And the Quad, led by the same US, would take on China, a China which is not known to harbour any desire to interdict or be interdicted on any trade route, land, sea or air. A Quad-like situation is likely to have created the kindergarten expression: ‘And the dish ran away with the spoon.’ The irony doesn’t end with Hormuz. Donald Trump had only recently enjoyed the spectacular hospitality of Xi Jinping, an exclusively Chinese fare of lavish opulence masking, under the velvet gloves, a hardball reserved for the most unyielding of rivals. And so, Trump craves China’s help instead as never before in cru