The Midnight Puppet Show: Why Odisha’s cm Looked Like a Guest at His Own Celebration”
He was suited up at midnight, clapping like a man forced to feel joy. But the real story isn’t about the match—it’s about a country where even silence now performs for the camera.
It was 12:00 a.m. in Bhubaneswar. The chief minister of odisha sat in his crisp white kurta, fully dressed as though attending an award ceremony—watching a cricket match. No cheers. No smiles. Only a slow, mechanical clap at the end.
The video should have been ordinary. But it wasn’t. The silence screamed louder than applause. It looked less like a private citizen enjoying the game and more like a man completing a televised ritual of “patriotism.”
What should’ve been a genuine moment of celebration became another carefully choreographed image in India’s growing theater of optics. And that’s the real headline.
In the new India, leaders no longer govern—they perform. Every gesture, outfit, and clap has become a campaign. The public has stopped looking for authenticity because even exhaustion now wears a smile for the cameras.
And that’s why the odisha CM’s midnight viewing struck a chord: it felt like watching a puppet trying to remember its strings.
The irony? people mocked him online, saying he’s “turned into another Modi-style performer.” But maybe, that’s the tragedy—it’s not imitation, it’s survival. In an age of hyper-surveillance, neutrality is rebellion, silence is subversion, and not smiling is a political act.
His blank expression wasn’t just fatigue—it was fatigue with performance itself.
The moment summed up India’s political mood perfectly: everyone’s performing, no one’s connecting. The citizens cheer on command, the leaders clap on cue, and the cameras never stop rolling.
#PoliticalTheatre #India2025 #OdishaCM #MidnightMoment #ModiEra #MediaPerformance #DemocracyInCostume #OpticsOverReality
Odisha cm, naveen Patnaik, Modi era politics, political optics, indian leadership, public performance, democracy fatigue
“Midnight, Cameras, and a Forced Clap: The Price of Political Optics”
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