I have never fully understood what was so terrible about Nero fiddling. As a lover of music, I have some form of it going most of my waking hours. If the mentioned Roman emperor was blowing a horn (never mind if it was his own), tickling the ivories of the Steinway in the corner or even if he was drumming his fingers impatiently on the dinner-table, more power to him.
True, there was the little matter of a conflagration in Rome around the same time, but the Italians are known to have short fuses. You can’t stop the music when the families decide to mix it up.
So, during an inclement mid-February 2021 in Texas, when the mercury was in free fall and the lights went out in Houston, Senator Ted Cruz decided to fly family and friends south to the warmer climes of Cancun in Mexico. We can only speculate if he was whistling a cancion.
I wonder why the Americans are going ballistic. Considering that he believes that his favourite boss has already built most of the wall, he couldn’t just drive across the border. No, it had to be Flyin Ted.

Now, New Delhi suffers power cuts too in the peak of summer. That’s when there seems to be more generator sets than eve-teasers in operation. You need power, not passion to keeping the air-conditioners running!

To think that Texas, reputedly an energy rich state gets blacked out! All that oil spouting out of the wells and your homes are freezing! Strange are the ways of the first world.
Now I have no pretensions of understanding politics, especially the American kind. But I can recognize a good guffaw when I hear one. While the people who made him senator stay hungry and freeze their butts off in the dark, flyin Ted takes off to cavort in the warm beaches of Cancun and enjoy its dazzling nightlife!

I wonder why though, Ted didn’t think of cruzin’ off to Florida. It is reputedly warm there this time of the year, and his favourite boss is still chief, lording over mansion, clubhouse and eighteen holes of manicured greens. But then, maybe he really is a music aficionado like Nero was, escaping to Mexico to listen to his favourite mariachi band!

The unfortunate bit is that he was recognized boarding a flight. Dozens of fellow passengers had a field day taking pictures of the senator heading for the good times.

Ted didn’t have much of a holiday… or warmth for that matter as it turned out. He was back next day emerging bearded, disheveled and tired in similar fashion to Sadaam Hussein crawling out of a hole somewhere in Iraq.

In one day, out the next…it could be argued that a revolving door does more about turns, but not all would be convinced.

Apparently, all Ted wanted was to be a good father, taking his two daughters along with their friends to sunny Cancun. At least that’s what he claimed. Can’t see much wrong with that, especially when power outages had left home turf dark, freezing short of food and water…and toilet paper.

One must admit, putting one’s daughters out as the first line of defense (or throwing them under the bus as some would have it) has merits. But if one is to go by her e-mails, it turns out that it was his wife who planned the trip: “FREEZING… Anyone can or want to leave for the week? We may go to Cancun, there is a direct flight at 4.45 pm and hotels with capacity. Seriously.”
Trust Ted to take the credit!

Now if Ted spins this whole episode as a strategic retreat, he perhaps has something going. Famous generals have done that. George Washington pulled out under cover of darkness after a disastrous defeat in the battle of Brooklyn in 1776. “Retreat, hell! We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction,” was how Maj Gen Oliver Smith described the Korean War’s battle of the Chosin Reservoir. The British backed off from Dunkirk to fight another day.
So, it could be that Ted needed the sunshine to charge his batteries. Or, like politicians in Karnataka from an erstwhile power-grid, he could have gone off to Cancun on a study tour: to figure out why Mexico City is so bright while Houston was so dark; why Cancun is so pleasant while Texas was shivering…

Another turn of the revolving door, and he should be good!