2. Sri Lanka is exchanged for Sicily: The similarities are too obvious - both are small islands located below the tip of a much larger country; both have a high level of internal violence; nationals of both countries have settled in affluent countries only to indulge in gun-running and money-laundering. The advantages of the exchange - Sicilian girls (remember Michael Corleone, when he went into hiding and got married, in The Godfather?) and sicilian slices of pizza. Yea for Sonia!

3. Grand-daughter of fascist dictator joins politics: There was a lot of hub-bub when Alessandra Mussolini entered the electoral fray in Italy. We don't know any of it was because she wants to revive her father's policies, but we feel it was because she was a hot babe. The Indian counterpart: Priyanka Gandhi of course. She fits two of the three criteria: her grand-mother threw democratic norms to the winds for 19 months in the mid-70s, and we don't know if she'll subscribe to the same policies, but one thing we do know - she IS a babe.

4. Drug-taking athlete joins politics: Ok, okay, so Maradonna didn't join Italian politics, he went one step further and joined one of the football clubs. That's close enough for us. Mohd Azharuddin acts as if he's on drugs, though in his case, it would have to be sodium pentathol. When he got hooked is irrelevant; with one fell swoop we can get him off the cricket team and send him somewhere where he and Sangeeta Bijlani can continue their high-profile existence while doing no harm to anybody - the Rajya Sabha.

5. Calendar artists emulate Leonardo: Jaal is talking of Hindu deities suddenly looking like Sonia Gandhi. Imagine the Louvre replacing the 'Mona Lisa' with the 'Mona Lakshmi'? Or Ganesha suddenly looking like the most perfectly sculpted man to adorn a fresco? Perhaps it would be too shocking for our middle classes to go to their local jewelers and be given a calendar with their favourite god, but painted in sombre colours and muted tones. And knowing our lot, the artists would probably misunderstand the whole thing and depict the deities jumping off the 1997 version of Titanic.

6. Qutab Minar tilts: And will be renamed the Leaning Tower of Bina (Ramani).

7. Indians get over their mother-fixation: There appear to be a lot of people to whom the idea of Sonia Gandhi ruling India is repulsive. Yet they must realise this is only a natural culmination of the Indian mother fixation. Orphaned Congressmen sought her out as their replacement 'ma', after the original Mrs G. It's a deep habit ingrained by a diet of Hindi films where Amitabh Bachchan prefers an impoverished Nirupa Roy to wealth and fame. So perhaps Sonia's becoming PM would be shock treatment to most Indian men. Except she comes from a culture where the Mama's boy reigns just as strong…

8. Dhabas start to serve Campari: More amazingly, cross-country truckers say they actually like the stuff, and that it doesn't taste like cough syrup! Now we know the secret of Mona Lisa's and Sonia Gandhi's enigmatic visage. Imagine the improvement in the quality of Hindi films when the frustrated hero gets drunk on Campari instead of toddy. The only imaginable problem on the horizon: the BJP touts toddy as part of their swadeshi campaign.

9. The Cosa Nostra takes care of the ISI chief: Finally, someone gets rid of India's problems by giving the mafia a contract to take out Lt Gen Ziauddin. Witness a spectacular gangland killing when the ISI chief is gunned down while have gosht balti in an open-air café in 'Pindi! Or imagine Nawaz Sharif waking up one morning to find the ISI chief's decapitated head in his sheets! Or how about the ISI chief getting shot in the eye in the middle of a massage he's receiving from some young, strong Pathan!

10. Eritrea's relations with Bhutan improve: Eritrea used to be part of Ethiopia. Ethiopia was Italy's only large colonial possession, till Patton chased Rommel out of the desert. So do you see the connection? You don't? What about the fact that Emperor Haile Selassie's greatest warriors were excellent archers? And archery is the only Olympic sport Bhutan participates in… Come on, don't knock it, this is bound to be Sonia's biggest foreign policy achievement, given the fact that she won't be able to do take any policy measures that open her to the charge of being a Western agent.