The Nation’s Enemy Number One.

Disclaimer: The names of characters and situations occurring in all of the stories in this blog are fictional and any resemblance to any person dead or alive is purely coincidental. The stories in this blog are only for leisure reading and the author at any point does not mean to make fun of or degrade, any nationality, caste, religion or sex in the story. If you think so, it is purely unintentional and the author apologizes for the same.

The Nation’s Enemy Number One.

Mumbai, Khulgayipoll News Desk, May 3, 2010

It is a proud day for the country today. The courts of justice have finally delivered their verdict. Finally truth has won, injustice and lies have been vanquished. It is being hailed as the victory of the people of India. The number one enemy of the nation Khatmal Pasab has been found guilty for the worst ever terrorist attacks which happened in the economic capital, Mumbai, two years ago and the court has sentenced him to death.

The government has been very angry about the attacks since it had once again proved that the country’s Intelligence system, had no intelligence at all. Hence the government wanted that the perpetrators be sent to the gallows as soon as possible. And now they have made sure that justice has been done. The court today passed the verdict declaring that the number one enemy of India Khatmal Pasab should be hanged till death.

On this great day our correspondents caught up with some of nation’s well wishers to get their priceless comments.

Our correspondent Ragda Patties met Bagh Fakade, at his residence, he refused to speak in Hindi or English but this is what he said and we translate:

“It is a great day for the common man of Mumbai (an assistant whispered “Sir Maharashtra”) and Maharashtra that this devil has been brought to justice. And on this auspicious day we declare that we will start a new revolution. We will ask all the television channels broadcasting on each and every television set in Mumbai (assistant from behind again “Sir and Maharashtra”) and Maharashtra should have their logos and names displayed in Marathi only. That is our tribute to the victory of the common man of Maharashtra (assistant from behind again “Sir Maharashtra”, Fakade turns around and gives him a ‘tichyaaila’ type look). I will request everyone to start the revolution from today itself. Jai Shivaji, Jai Maharashtra.”

Our correspondent Pehle Aap Mishra caught up with Behenji Kalawati out side a statue shop in Lucknow, and this is what she said:

“Pasab is a black mark on this nation. He is the enemy number one of this country and I am happy that the court has delivered the justice. It is a big day for all the Dalits and other backward casts of India. To celebrate this victory of the neglected lower casts of the country not only are we declaring it as a public holiday in our state but I have also ordered 1000 life size bronze statues of myself to be made and placed all over, to make our beloved state more beautiful .”

Our correspondent Sattu Jha from Patna met Baaloo ji who was shopping for some Rabri (a sweet meat made of milk and sugar) with his wife Dhibri Devi and this is their reaction:

“I have heard the news and I think this is a very good verdict in favor of the minority community. I think that the government should have CBI investigate the whole Pasab case again, instead of wasting its time in trying to find out which brand of cattle feed I use for my buffaloes. I am going to ask the government to start the family planning program again to celebrate this verdict.”

Our correspondents spoke to the minister of Twitter affairs Mr Haanchee Suroor but he said, “You will have to follow me on Twitter to read my comments regarding the verdict.” Our correspondent is following him on Twitter now.

Our Mumbai correspondent Ragda Patties also caught up with the Bollywood super star Sukh Dukh Kaand for his reactions:

“I am very happy today that now even the Indian court agrees with me, that every terrorist is not a Kaand. If Pasab is willing to change his ways I am ready to teach him acting so that he may act in one of my movies and fulfill the mission that he came for or if he wants I can ask my Dadaji to teach him cricket so that he may join my cricket team. Because you know I am the star, I am the best and my movies are the best… ” Our correspondent had to snatch the microphone away from him.

Our correspondent Koyla Gundi found the missing ex-chief minister Gadhoo Roda coming out of a seven star spa in Mauritius and asked him what he thought about the verdict.

“Dekhiye hum toh gareeb kisaan hain. Humare babuji koyla khadaan mein kaam karte thein. Humare paas toh chawal khareedne ke bhi paise nahi hain. Toh Newspaper khareed kar yeh sab cheez kaha se padhenge. Humein toh Pasab ka ek hi matlab pata tha (raises the pinky on his right hand). Humein jhoothe aaropon mein fasaya gaya hai.” (I am a poor farmer. My father used to work in coal fields. We don’t even have the money to buy rice then how do you think we will buy newspaper and read about these things. The only meaning of Pasab we know is (raises the pinky on his right hand). I am being falsely framed.)

Our correspondent Gend Ball Gilli asked the tycoon who has changed the face of Indian cricket Mr. KhitKhit Godi, but he was in a hurry because his chartered plane was waiting and we could only catch him saying:

“I am still the chairman of…”

These are some of the reactions that our correspondents have collected from the well wishers of our country. We have also received reactions from Gayapapita, Churnanidhi, Moyaamji, Marmar Jhing, Garda Pahar and hundreds of others from all walks of life who have dedicated their lives in the upliftment of the poor of the nation. They have all hailed the verdict of hanging the number one enemy of our country.

I found a way.

The iron tracks rattled by as I tried to follow them with eyes, which were looking at the ever changing future, I felt a soft touch on my hands. I turned and saw a girl, with rough hair dirty cheeks and equally dirty frock raising her small hands to her lips looking sadly at me. I turned my head and saw a girl who looked hardly fifteen wearing a blue saree standing in the aisle looking uninterestedly at me with her grey eyes, I knew the only thing of interest to her was the coin in my pocket. The pug nose and the wheat colored skin that both the little girl and the girl in the aisle had told me the whole story. I ignored both of them and looked outside the window. Dejected they moved on to other prospects.

I took another look at both of them and I knew if they didn’t have enough by the end of the day, the girl would have to find a client at night, she might end up getting pregnant again. As for the little girl, she would inherit her mother’s occupation.

Giving them a two or a five rupee coin would not have been a big deal for me. But every time I gave money to someone who asked for it I felt as if I was encouraging something wrong for easy money. But if I didn’t give them money the girls will end up hooking up with a drunkard. I can’t get everyone of them work, I am looking for a job myself. I thought as stations passed me by and I arrived at my destination.

I checked my mobile it was nine, the office goers all seemed to be walking in the same direction. I followed the throng. Having skipped my breakfast for the early appointment I felt hungry. I saw a bunch of women selling ‘Poha’ on the roadside from stainless steel cans kept at the back of a Maruti Omni van. I had my fill. Further down the lane I noticed another similar van, but this time the sellers were boys who must have been studying in 10+2.

I remembered a couple of years’ back we had a client in Santacruz who belonged to a particular minority group. I had become friends with his eldest son. One day sitting at his office I had asked him “I notice that all the boys working in your office are from your community, why don’t you have employees from other communities as well?”

His father who was reading a newspaper raised his head and replied “People from your community hardly give employment to people from our community, as a result these kids are easily misled by people who take advantage of them. I have nothing against other communities but I decided that I will employ people only from my own community thereby giving them a livelihood and an opportunity to improve their life. These kids that you see at my office all go to evening colleges, this way they stay away from evil.”

Seeing the kids serve Poha, Idli, Vada Pav or for that matter the guy selling second hand books on the road side reminded me of the man’s words. Create employment everything else will fall into place.

Meeting over, on my way back, at the station I saw a man selling Rubik’s Cube. I had wanted to buy one for a long time now. I had seen one at a supermarket but didn’t buy it because I thought that it was obscenely overpriced. I picked the cube and asked the price. He didn’t respond didn’t even raise his head to look at me. “Bees rupiya”, I heard a little girl call out to me from the other side. It was then that I realized that the man sitting there was blind. I immediately took out two ten rupee notes and placed it on his hand. He felt them with his fingers and put them in his shirt pocket.

The guilt of not giving the little girl any money was gone now. I was happy that I had my breakfast at one of those makeshift kiosks by the road which helped those women in making them self sufficient and by buying the Rubik’s Cube from the blind man and not at some mall and giving my hard earned money to some MNC.

I thought if we continued to buy our vegetables and groceries from the sellers in our locality instead of driving down to malls and filling the pockets of these corporate snobs we will be doing our country a big service. I agree that we will have to shell out a few bucks more but you won’t have to spend your time in traffic on a Sunday, all these can be delivered at your doorsteps. The matter of fact is that the Indian middle class today has such a purchasing power is only because we have always been so enterprising.

Until and unless the money trickles down to the very bottom of our society we won’t be able to create wealth. And people become self sufficient and have access to money they will start thinking of better education for their kids, better sanitation, health and hygiene for their family. All this in turn will help us in the betterment of society.

Who knows may be we would even be able to put an end to girls being forced into the oldest profession in the world, after all its true the treasure lies at the bottom of the pyramid.

All Fall Down.

All Fall Down.

There has been a blast!

Fire engines scream, ambulances sing, the souls are all bloodied.

Lives have been lost!

Men and women, young and old, everybody, everywhere scurried.

That’s not the name of my city!

The leader cries, dreams smashed, the swords have been drawn.

Beat that man, what a pity!

Men and women, young and old, everybody, everywhere, nothing but mere pawns.

That’s the man, over there!

The hands grope, the eyes search, the fingers they all point.

We’re the friends, they’ve massacred!

Men and women, young and old, everybody, everywhere, pained and are joined.

Oh, my daughter why do you cry!

Tears fall, the blood is diluted, smile turns into a frown.

Let’s stand again, let us all try!

Men and women, young and old, everybody, everywhere, all fall down.

In The Loop

I push open the glass door and enter what looks like the receptions area of an office. The area looks very empty, there’s a curved wooden desk behind which a lady is sitting and writing something. In front of her is a computer screen. There is a wooden panel with a brown heavy looking door on the opposite side of the door through which I have entered. The upper half of the wooden panel is made of thick glass panel. Through the glass comes in very bright light as if on the other side of the wooden panel lies vast expanse of brightness. And yet the reception area looks dark and gloomy. There is no chair in the room except the one in which the lady sits.

I slowly walk up to the lady. I am surprised at my shuffling gait. I am unable to understand why I am walking like this.

“Is she in”, I ask as if speaking to the shiny black hair on her head which is tied down into a pony tail with a black band.

“Yes”, she says nodding her head but doesn’t bother to look up at me with her spectacled eyes. She continues to write on the note pad lying in front of her.

I try to read what she is writing but I am unable understand a word. It looks like a foreign language to me. She gestures for me to take a seat with her right hand; a silver bracelet hangs out from underneath the grey sleeve of her business suit. I turn around, there is a black leather sofa opposite the desk. I am pretty sure it wasn’t there when I walked in. I sit on the left corner of the sofa.

“She will see you in a moment”, the lady says, her pointed nose still points towards the notepad in front of her.

‘How did she know who I had come to meet and that she would see me in a moment’, I think. I am sure she hasn’t seen my face, neither have I told her the name of the person I am here to meet, nor has she spoken to anyone on the phone since the time I entered. I look confusedly at the white round face of the clock on the wall behind the lady, but I am unable to figure out what time it is.

I look outside and suddenly notice that there is no door, but I am sure I opened a heavy glass door when I entered the room. The outside looks like a corridor of a mall. There are two more floors above the one that I am in and all the floors have shops with colorful merchandise hanging on their windows. I can see the sunlight coming in from the glass roof of the mall. The escalators are going up and down on both the sides. But I am sure I didn’t come to a mall.

I see her. She is on an escalator on the other side, going up, to the floor above mine. She is wearing a short, sleeveless dress with floral prints, which comes up to her knees. As it always is, her sunglasses keep her hair from falling on her face as they flirt with the nape of her neck. The hand bag on her left shoulder has shiny metallic beads, which shimmer as the sunlight falls on them.

I turn to say something to the receptionist. She is not in her seat anymore. I try to run out, but I only manage to move in a shuffling manner. I run as fast as my shuffling legs would carry me towards the escalator she is climbing. I reach the escalator but she has already reached the top and mingled with the crowd. I climb the escalator taking two steps at a time and reach the top but I don’t see her. I see people moving around. Everyone is walking. I see faces but I can’t distinguish them one from the other. I try to locate her by the color of her dress, but suddenly the whole ensemble becomes a jumble of colors.

I look down towards the door of the office that I came out from. She is entering the door her dress flutters as she pushes open the heavy glass door. I run towards the escalator going down to the floor below. As I reach the door I can see inside but the reception area is empty and everything inside is either black or white.

I push open the glass door and enter the reception again. I quietly walk up to the receptionist sitting behind the curved wooden desk she is still writing something.

“Is she in”, I ask the receptionist again. “Yes”, she says nodding her head but this time also she doesn’t bother to look up at me. She continues to write gibberish on her notepad. She gestures for me to take a seat. I sit down on the black leather sofa.

“She will see you in a moment”, the lady says, but she doesn’t look at me. I feel confused all the more.

I look at the clock and I am still unable to figure out what time it is. I look out and again I see her on the escalator on the other side of the mall. I get up to run. My mobile rings, its not there in any of the pockets of my black trousers. I check the upper pocket of my white shire, but it’s empty too.

I turn to say something to the receptionist. She is not in her seat anymore. The ring of my mobile has become louder now. I look outside again she is still on the escalator. I see a mobile kept on the railing in the corridor with lights blinking. I move towards it in a shuffling manner.

As I reach the railing I look at the escalator, she is still on the escalator. She is looking around her and is smiling. I look at the mobile phone and pick it up. The screen blinks and the sound is louder than ever. The screen says, “7:30 A. M. calling…”

The Light at the End of the Tunnel.

India, I think, is one country where you can get into or out of trouble because of your name, your occupation or even the color of the T-shirt. This hypothesis of mine is based on one of the incidents that happened with me a year back, which I have already chronicled in this blog (The day when Anthony Hopkins saved my life). What happened with us yesterday, Friday the 12^th only confirmed the above hypothesis.

I along with three of my roomies had gone to watch James Cameron’s visual wonder called Avatar, in one of the best possible ways we could in India at the Imax theatre at Wadala. Since the tickets were cheap and it was a holiday due to Shivaratri we decided to go for the morning show at 9:45. We enjoyed the movie thoroughly and came out of the theatre at around 12:45. We discussed how Cameron had succeeded in weaving a very strong message into a visual spectacular which broke all bounds of human imagination. The visual effects were just an attraction, a vehicle to deliver the message.

We came out discussing as many things as our ‘creativity handicapped’ minds could think of and saw police personnels standing in small groups of fives and tens at the entrance, in front of the mall, in the parking lot and in the street. The mall was virtually empty. We immediately knew it was due to the MNIK versus SS fracas.

Since the past few days I was seeing how the two parties had hijacked every form of media to sell themselves. The political party was getting all the limelight, even though negative all over the news channels and the Internet. The movie was getting all the hype it required to get a big opening and help the producers in fattening their already obese wallets. The people however just don’t seem to understand that it is all a setup. The herd mentality has taken over and we have moved away from all the realities. The government is happy that instead of taking up real agendas like food prices the media is busy making money from a cat fight.

A couple of day’s back I read an article Mao and the motorcycle Dairies on Tehelka.com about the plight of the Adivasis of MP and Chattisgarh. The article claimed that the state government sponsored outfit named Salwa Judum was almost as good as the Maoist naxalites. The Adivasis are shot, hacked and even hanged without even being asked their names. Due to such atrocities the Adivasis are forced to flee, leaving behind their farms (which by the way are quite mineral rich, and which might just have been an inspiration for Mr. Cameron). Men and women young and old walk for more than two days without stopping to rest or to eat so that they could escape into Andhra Pradesh, where they live like refugees, with nothing to eat.

But sadly none of the TV channels ever broadcasts such news. The news of the Jharkhand and West Bengal naxalites are only coming in bits and pieces these days. None of the news channels ever bothered to broadcast a documentary on these people, the realities behind the naxalite outfits and why the Adivasis were forced to pick up guns. Or for that matter as someone on a discussion panel debating MNIK Vs SS issue on a news channel said why we aren’t talking about the 64 farmers who committed suicide in the Vidarbha in the last one week. The number hit me like a bullet in between my eyes. I am not sure if I heard it right but even if he said one month, how many deaths a day does it make, you do the math. So I decided to learn a bit more about Salwa Judum and Googled it. I found a Wikipedia article which was all praise about the outfit. I got confused and remembered one of the clichéd GD topics that I had got during my MBA days “Whether Internet is a boon or a bane to information sharing”; today I think I would have to make a lot of changes in my answers.

As we enter an era of journalism which I would like to call the era of Twitter journalism, where journalists follow and devour every crap that a celebrity tweets, people have started to happily believe that they can save tigers by signing up online on some fancy looking website or me writing this post will change people’s perspective. But that’s not the exact reason I am writing this post I know I digress I just wanted to convey the fact that people today especially those living in Bombay (read Bandra and southwards) have started to believe that only Bombay is India because anything that happens here makes it to the national headlines instantly. And we happily remain oblivious to the plight of greater India. Yeah there that’s the divide I have created it’s the Bombay India Vs the Greater or the rest of India.

Back to the little incident that happened, as we came out of theatre we saw police men all around. We decided to take a cab to Dadar and have lunch there. We came to street just outside the mall and asked a waiting cab to take us to Dadar, he refused and so did another one. By the time the third taxi driver refused to ferry us a constable walked up to my friend and told him in Marathi that he was being called by his sahib. My friend followed him; we saw that the officer was standing under the shade of a lone tree on the other side of the street along with a couple more constables. We followed our friend but the constable asked us to wait. So we waited as we saw the officer talking to our friend. The same constable came back and asked me “tumcha naao kai”, “Vivek Singh”, I said. “Oh Singh”, he said as if certifying me and turned around went back to his officer.

We heard the officer asking my friend my name as he pointed towards me, my friend turned around looked at me and said something to the officer. The officer asked the constable what had I told him my name was, the constable replied. We saw our friend pulling out the movie tickets from the back pocket of his jeans and showed it to the officer. “Aap jaa saktein hain” (you may go now), said the officer. My friend asked something and the officer replied “Nahi nahi routine check hai”. As we came out of Bhakti Park we saw more police men checking the identity cards of people on motorbikes and cars coming into the premises.

We got a cab from the main road, as I slid beside the driver I asked him why there was so much police around, was there some problem in the city and he said “arey nahi saab who filum aayi hai na My… Nyame…” (No its because of the film) he fumbled and stuttered a couple of times before he could say the name of the movie correctly. We discussed how smartly the officer had checked and confirmed our identities without bothering to see any of our credentials. It was good to see the police doing their job and being smart about it.

We knew that movie goers would be safe. But still I thought of the people who really needed this security and died everyday due to the lack of it were neglected and instead some high flying producer’s movie was given more importance because a bunch of goons has taken offence over the comments of a so called “star” about a money fest and betting racket they call Cricket. I knew tomorrow all the movie goers will be declared as national heroes for daring to go to watch the movie in spite of all the threat. But really does watching a movie really make us a hero, or for that matter will saying “all is well” make everything alright. As I saw the road in front of me I hoped that one day this attitude of the police we saw would slowly trickle down to the smallest police station in the country and everyone would be safe. I could see the change beginning to happen; the tunnel was slowly beginning to brighten up at far end.

As we drove on the dusty highway still under construction my friend suddenly exclaimed, “We were stopped because of the color of our t-shirts”. I turned around and for the first time in the day noticed that he was wearing saffron colored T-shirt and I who already looks like a trouble creator was wearing a green T-shirt.