I am not Anna

Guess who's having the last laugh? Sharad Pawar, of course. Anna Hazare has finally been paid back for making that scornful remark, "Just one slap?"

Practically, the entire city slapped Hazare in return. How's that for poetic justice?

Rupa Gulab Mumbai

Team Anna failed to read the warning signs a few days before their circus at MMRDA began --- Mumbai's Twitterati cheered madly when the Bombay High Court delivered the following statement: "It might be satyagraha for you but for some other factions it might be a nuisance." No Mumbaikar would willingly want to be the reason for yet another traffic jam. Hey, we're considerate people.

Also, do keep in mind that our idea of entertainment is not street shows; come on, watching an old man fast with mournful bhajans playing in the background is such a dull way to kill time. Particularly not a man who ties drinkers to poles and whips them. Hello, we love our pubs and hate the Taliban! Also, that quaint cap is so day before yesterday – imagine wearing summer of 2011 headgear in winter, shudder.

But don't let that fool you into believing that we're frivolous people who don't care about the nation: we're sick of corruption as well but we're not naïve enough to fall for Team Anna's undemocratic and patently anti-Congress movement which is shabbily disguised as an anti-corruption drive. Even if some of us are not particularly fond of the Congress party, we dislike cheap political games even more. Over time, many of us (including some die-hard Team Anna fans) have become disillusioned about the methods and the people heading the movement. Get real, would you give up even a second of your precious time to listen to corrupt people like Kiran Bedi preach to you about corruption? Oh, we'd dearly love to know how much she charged for her air fare to Mumbai!

By the way, don't let Team Anna con you into believing that the turnout was low because people had to travel vast distances to get to the MMRDA grounds. If there was a rock show scheduled, rest assured that it would be packed to capacity. And Team Anna's whiny allegations that the government sabotaged cellphone communication is laughable. All the networks were working fine apart from Airtel. The official story is that Airtel was down due to a fire, and I'm sticking to it. However, if Mumbai's wily politicians did indeed have anything to do with the Airtel outage, I doubt that it had anything to do with the dismal numbers at MMRDA. Incidentally, Twitter had a ball on the numbers and I have to quote my favourite tweet (by Seema Goswami) on the subject: "Arrey oh Anna, kitney aadmi the?"

As I write this, I'm aware that Team Anna supporters would love to hurl their footwear at me. Please note that I'm partial to a stolid brand called Clarks. Right, I'm going to go ahead and say what must be said: Team Anna was getting arrogant – annoyingly arrogant. The collective ego of that bunch needed to be punctured. And I'm proud, really really proud that it was aamchi Mumbai that eventually did it.

Finally, guess who's having the last laugh? Sharad Pawar, of course. Anna Hazare has finally been paid back for making that scornful remark, "Just one slap?"

Practically, the entire city slapped Hazare in return. How's that for poetic justice?