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Many frantic years ago, an AIADMK legislator in Madras made a fine suggestion to her assembly colleagues. She thought that the state of Tamil Nadu, and indeed all of India, and in fact all of humanity, would be very excellently served if a Nobel Prize was awarded to Tamil Nadu's then chief minister, the cape-shrouded Ms Jayalalitha Jayaram. She urged the assembly to immediately take up the nobel, sorry noble, cause of getting the prize conferred on the caped lady.

I am absolutely confident that this urging had nothing whatever to do with the little fact that Ms Jayalalitha Jayaram was and is the head of the AIADMK and other members of that party were and are mere ciphers steeped in sycophancy. Perish the thought. No, there was a certain impeccable logic that applied to this woman's superb idea. If Mother Teresa deserved a Nobel Prize, she explained to Tamil Nadu's lawmakers, Ms Jayalalitha deserved one as well.

I couldn't agree more. In Tamil Nadu, that delightful state where I was born and whose mellifluous language I still speak with fair felicity -- in Tamil Nadu, I am led to believe, wearing a cape 24 hours a day is considered a tremendous feat that calls for a Nobel Prize. Speaking for myself, I find it hard to understand how Mother Teresa managed her Nobel Prize without a cape. And what about Amartya Sen? Rigoberta Menchu? Richard Feynman? What were these characters doing without capes and why did they get Nobels without them?

Come to think of it, wearing a cape 24 hours a day would be a tremendous feat anywhere. So of course we must recognise it as it deserves. Let's not waste any more time, then. Give the lady her Nobel Prize, I say! A second cape would be in order too.

But anyway, if you think it's only Tamil Nadu's elected representatives who have been serving the people very excellently, think again. In far-off Bombay, I have a strong feeling the legislators will soon be making a very legitimate demand indeed, one that also reflects the humble yearnings of all humanity: that the Nobel Prize be renamed the Chhatrapati Shivaji Puraskar.

In Bombay alone, you see, we already have the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus for the railways, the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Domestic Airport for the airlines. Most recently, the government has decided that it must be the Chhatrapati Shivaji Vastusangrahalaya, not the Prince of Wales Museum. So it is only a matter of time before everything here is named Chhatrapati Shivaji.

I look forward eagerly to the time, about five years from now, when I will have to decide between the Chhatrapati Shivaji Vidyalaya and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Vidyalaya for the education of my son. I hear the Chhatrapati Shivaji Vidyalaya has better teachers, but that's today; in five years, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Vidyalaya may well have caught up. And of course, if both have crumbled into mediocrity, there's always the Chhatrapati Shivaji Vidyalaya.

In any case, it is also only a matter of time till, in their pursuit of the urgent national endeavour of naming things after Chhatrapati Shivaji, our legislators turn their eyes abroad. When that happens, I expect them to make one or many more official taxpayer-paid visits to Stockholm to persuade the Nobel people to call it the Chhatrapati Shivaji Puraskar. To shop, too, though we all know that would only be a sideshow on these official trips at others' expense.

And you know what really makes me happy and proud? That if the Nobel people agreed on both counts -- to rename the Prize and to award it to the caped lady of Tamil Nadu -- referring to her would take an entire paragraph by itself. For she would then be "Saviour of Social Justice Puratchi Thalaivi Doctor Jayalalitha Jayaram, Chief Minister and winner of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Puraskar." Does she deserve any less? Sign painters in the southern state would be ecstatic too. Just the amount of paint needed to plaster that entire title on your average wall or major billboard would give a whole new lease of life to the painting industry.

The only snag, of course, is that the Saviour of Social Justice is no longer CM of the state. A minor difficulty. If she can win the Chhatrapati Shivaji Puraskar, she can certainly become CM again. In fact, if she wins that Puraskar, anything at all is possible. Even my longtime dream to become the Crown Princess of Easter Island.

Moving north, we might find ourselves in New Delhi. On at least one day a few years ago, parliamentarians in that capital city were just as diligently at work on a vital task as legislators in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have shown they can be. However, theirs was a vastly different problem. But I assure you it was one of just as much importance to the country as procuring a Nobel for a once-chief minister. Or a second cape.

It took the vice president's special talents to solve the knotty Delhi problem, but I am glad to report it was finally accomplished. His Excellency, whoever he was at the time, ruled in the Rajya Sabha that the number "420", being just a number, was "not unparliamentary."

At last this national dilemma can be laid to rest. May I offer thanks to the then vice president, whoever he was at the time, who finally fulfilled the promise that elevated him to his post in the first place.

The trouble arose when a honourable member from the BJP objected to a parliamentary question being numbered 420. He thought -- and naturally this reflected the views of all concerned Indians -- that 420 was an unparliamentary, improper, putrid and generally disgusting number. Other members agreed. Some offered the excellent suggestion that the question be given a new number, 419. Others even took the risky step of suggesting 418. Oddly, nobody thought of calling the question "Chhatrapati Shivaji."

Perhaps the honourable members from Maharashtra were asleep. Anyway, we were told that there were "sharp exchanges" among the Rajya Sabha members on this critical issue.

Then the vice president rose to save the situation.

The Rajya Sabha, and indeed the whole nation, should be grateful to the vice president, whoever he was at the time. Had it not been for his intervention, the honourable members of the Rajya Sabha might have forsaken mere "sharp exchanges" in order to slap each other over the issue of 420. Then where would we be?

We'd be in the happy situation that Taiwan finds itself in, that's where.

In Taiwan's Assembly not long ago, a ruling party lady member laughed at an opposition member -- another lady -- because her underwear was showing: the opposition member's underwear, you understand.

Apparently in Taiwan it is a tremendous social gaffe to wear underwear once you are elected.

OK, so that's not true. Perhaps the first lady member was jealous because she was not wearing any underwear herself. But not being one to take being laughed at lying down -- besides, lying down would mean more underwear was liable to show -- the lady with the underwear walked over and slapped the lady we shall presume was without the underwear. Within seconds several lady members, the status of whose underwear remained unfortunately unreported, were slapping each other. One even fainted in the general excitement.

Now that's the kind of public service we don't want to see from our elected representatives. Still, I think it's time they all wore underwear.

Dilip D'Souza