However, the very next day the train came to a dead halt on its return journey from Varanasi to Delhi, with a rattling sound, smoke and a foul smell in its last few coaches. Railway officials later said that the wheels had skidded when the train ran over a cow. The Vande Bharat Express became the One-Day Bharat Express, and the whole incident made the train (and the PM) a laughing stock the world over, with even the BBC tweeting about it with comic emojis.
The whole thing could be a perfect metaphor for Modi-led feku development: an expensive and ill-advised project whose speed is hyped up in a faked video, is then inaugurated by a boastful Modi, and then comes a cropper when it runs over a cow - that sacred Mother of the Sanghis! Needless to say, the Sanghis who keep lynching Muslims whom they accuse of killing cows, did not lynch the Vande Bharat Express.
But Modi threw a tantrum and declared that those mocking the train would be punished! He declared, Is it right to insult engineers and technicians? Is mocking them right? Can they be pardoned? Should they not be given right punishment at the right time?� In Emperor Modis rule, it is apparently forbidden to laugh at the Emperor who wears no clothes!