He is 21, has never voted, is frankly more interested in Quentin Tarantino than Narendra Modi and yet was moved to pronounce Narendra Modi's ascension to the Gujarat de Gaddi as "a terrible event and a precursor of a holocaust".

I thrilled when he said this. Why you might ask?

Am I a closet commie you might ask or have the jehadis' been chatting me up you might ask.

Well no! I am a normal namby pamby hindu female and I find all this slaughtering of people, muslims, hindus, sikhs, isaai whether in Gujarat or Iraq extremely offensive.

But I am equally appalled by the mumbling Manmohan Singh talking of the poor, the oppressed and the laggard muslim as deserving of a better deal from his minority government while retaining absolute silence and seeming inaction on the terrorists attacking innocent Indians all over the country. Or doing nothing meaningful against perpetrators of violence against hindus, muslims, sikhs and isaais anywhere in the country.

And of course there has been too much majority bashing in the media and yes Narendra Modi though he may not get my vote seems to very subtly appease some of that hurt and that suspicion that I have been subjected to.

Does that make me a communalist?

My son, full of a 21 year olds righteous scorn calls me a "Rabid Communalist" a "Oh my God mom can't you see that this man is a veritable Hitler, a Stalin and soon you will find that as he gets more powerful he will move to the centre and will then start slaughtering the muslims".

"Hitler, sonny? 2000 assorted hindu muslims raped pillaged and slaughtered terrible though it is, is not 5 million jews or 30 million poor russians I state."

"By comparing Modi to these historic mass murderers are you not making yourself and your argument irrelevant?" I ask my son

"My god mom can't you see this is how a Hitler or a Stalin would have started out? Would you like to know how many years it took for them to kill so many? Decades to build up their power base and then to do these numbers".

"Come on son do you believe that in a functioning open democracy like ours, with a dynamic rising prosperity and a basically quiescent population we can repeat Hitler and Stalin"?

"And I also believe that Modi wants a larger role in the country and for that he will have to be moderate. Besides the rest of the party and the people will not allow him to massacre muslims, even assuming that he would like to do so, which I do not actually believe", I added.

"Besides", I added, "given the forces ranged against him this time, he seems a natural feisty fighter in a tough menacing world and more in touch with reality than the competition".

"I mean would you trust the rather elegant Sonia or the polite Singh or god forbid the charming Rahul with your country or your state when they seem to be so genteel and removed from the hustle bustle of a hard political world?"

To which my darling son said, "Mom this is the way of a man like Modi. He instills fear in people and then claims he can protect them and then attacks the others. Just like Hitler did to the Jew".

"Alright I said, Modi is bad, the Congress clueless and powerless and the Commies restrained to two rather totalitarian states like Bengal and Kerela. What kind of individual will fill the awful vacuum if these three forces are not up to it?" I asked.

"And by the way George W Bush is supported by the Sexy Sarkozy in France and the grim Merkel in Germany apart from Great Britain and Australia and we hail these countries for their economics and lifestyle and forget they are built on grim struggles. So perhaps Modi bashing should be put in its perspective or we end up like headless chicken".

"And, my darling son, the world has seen enough people slaughtered in the name of ideology in Vietnam, Checkoslovakia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa for us to dam a man for 2000 deaths however brutal and tragic. And by all means the judicial processes must be followed and punishment meted out but MODI must not be demonized. Only controlled and regulated. And his economics harnessed to India's good!"

And so sounding oracular and adult I ended my discussion with my darling son.

And I hoped I was right because frankly I do not know what the future holds and I hope I am right.

In the meanwhile we are all bystanders and arm chair intellectuals while our political leaders write out a script for us.

And yes the real life script seems to have finally penetrated through my darling son's normal indifference to all things in the non celluloid or literary world which he inhabits. And that is joy!

We must take our little pleasures where we find them, you would agree as the bigger battles range around us.

Oh my darling son How do I explain the big bad world outside our little home....and the celluloid screen?