A Slapdash Approach

The first time i heard the phrase (directed at me or otherwise) , i was probably 7 years old . My failure to comply with my Maths teacher's instructions had majorly upset her. She started to tremble in her fearsome South-Indian rage and said , "IWILLGIVEYOUONETIGHTSLAPPP !"
She said it loud enough and fast enough that i braced myself for the slap that didn't come.

Variously referred to as a kantap , a chaped , a thappad , a jhapad ; it has many names but one unmistakable sound.
Part of growing up and living in India is learning to live with the constant threat of slaps , usually the tight variety.

If you don't fall in line in school , you get One Tight Slap.
If you don't get your act together at home , you get One Tight Slap , or atleast live in the perpetual fear of.
If you are a young , break-dancing cricketer and you piss off Harbhajan , you get One Tight Slap.
If you are a state cabinet minister who goes to wake Yeddyurappa up on the eve of his resignation , you get One Tight Slap.
If you become the Minister of Agriculture and the prices of daily commodities go up , you get One Tight Slap (!).

As Sonakshi Sinha so memorably said in Dabangg , "Thappad se darr nahi lagta , saheb , pyaar se darr lagta hai."

A few years back , the Iraqi journalist Muntadar el-Zeidi tried to turn shoe-throwing into a trendy form of political protest by taking aim at the monumental retard in the personage of George W. Bush , missing both times. Despite his shoddy marksmanship , the symbolic enormity of his action led to a temporary rise in the popularity of shoe-throwing.

Soon enough in India , shoes were aimed and thrown at ministers such as Suresh Kalmadi , P. Chidambaram and others ; missing their marks in every case. And since they weren't struck at all , the wily politicos were quick to beatifically "forgive" their attackers and gain public sympathy and the upper hand in the process.

Things were going south. A few of us introspected and quickly began to realize why the indigenous One Tight Slap had always been so potent a weapon.
The closer you got to your target , the better your chances of hitting it.

A young auto-driver named Harvinder Singh took it upon himself to resurrect this dying tradition. Ex-Minister Sukhram and Agriculture Minister Pawar were both slapped publicly by him and then Harvinder himself was slapped by Pawar's supporters. All within one week ! The slap was well & truly back.

Please leave the pieing , the punching , the kicking , the shooting , the shoe-throwing to the rest of the world. We are a slap-happy country after all.