The Parliamentary Jamboree

New Delhi

 

It was a rousing setting- the sacred portals of the largest temple of democracy anywhere on the blue-brown Earth: The Sansad Bhavan, India’s Parliament House.

The twenty member Public Accounts Committee (PAC), known affectionately as the Pain in the Ass Committee in New Delhi’s power circles, was in full attendance.

It drew its membership from both the houses of the parliament and, in the time tested (but clinically defunct) tradition of bipartisanship, was headed by the leader of the opposition.

PAC’s charter gave it the priviledge of poking its nose into every big and small expense item on the union government’s agenda. And this was a task it performed with a zeal that could certainly be termed fervent if not outrightly missionary.

The fact that half of PAC’s members came from the ruling party and the other half from the opposition, meant that none of its proceedings ever concluded without a generous dose of bickering, mudslinging and hair tearing. But even by its own illustrious standards (and rather chequered history), the task it had at hand that day was something really out of the woods.

On the table was a project that had stimulated emotions across the country on both sides of the aisle. For those in favor, it was the only way the resurgent India of the day could answer the questions concerning economic growth and human development. For those opposed, no amount of chest thumping by its proponents could hide the justifiable concerns of human displacement and irreversible ecological damage it raised.

That two of the five beneficiary states were ruled by governments affiliated to the opposition party made the pitch still querer. Political expediency demanded the members belonging to the two halves to be seen doing what was expected of them- opposing one another. This however was an issue whose resonance went far further than that.

The absurdity called PAC was going to have a tough day.

“My honorable lady”, Mr. Gupta began on a well clipped, practiced and politically correct note, “and the eminent gentlemen.

“Our vision is grand. We want to accomplish something that’s never been been done before in the history of this nation.

“Ever.

“We want to subjugate the unbridled might of three great rivers, channel their unpredictable flow into the Yamuna and herald a golden era of growth, prosperity and abundance.

He took a short pause, letting the words hang in the air.

“We plan to succeed”, he exhailed finally.

The members forming the opposition benches of the PAC sat taut in their high chairs, looking down upon their sub-dued and battered looking colleagues from the ruling coalition.

Their hands fiddled impassively with saucers full of heavily subsidized tea and snacks piling in from the nearby parliamentary canteen. Their faces, honed through years of practiced statesmanship in front of the cameras, appeared like temples of intense, hallucinogenic concentration. Their eyes however betrayed a certain inwardly agitation. They were all keenly aware that they were taking part in an epoch making event. But history, as they all knew, could be a rather slipperly commodity.

It’d been about an hour since the TV crew had come in- the wily chairman of the PAC wasn’t going to leave anything to chance.

Barely minutes ago the portly President and Chief Financial Officer of the Board of the Three Dams Company had been coughing his guts out, trying to convince the august gathering as to why the Indian exchequer needed to bankroll the thousands of crores he was demanding of them in fresh equity infusion.

They were all seasoned politicians and the fat, penguin like man had not amused them a bit. On their way to the parliament, they had trodden the rough, sun-parched and wind beaten fields of the nation. They had waded through the festering, shit infested drains of its villages and braved the asthametic, pollution riddled airs of its cities. They represented the suppressed, poor and downtrodden soul of the nation and were all, without exceptions, sons and daughters of the soil. They didn’t understans the language of finance; nor did they care a hoot. But, they did understand one thing: they were the legal guardians of the humble Indian tax payer’s hard earned contributions (the free teas, samosas, red light cars, aeroplane jaunts not withstanding) and weren’t going to let a bunch of serious looking technocratic gasbags rob them of it.

That at any rate was what they liked to tell anyone who cared to listen.

The TV crew did.

And so, they’d wasted no time telling the fat guy what they thought of his demands. As far as they were concerned, the flabby, double chinned, penguin like gentleman with two sad (and seemingly jaundiced) eyes could go screw himself.

Mr. Gupta of course understood all that. And he also knew that at that level, one’s battles are mostly faught alone. He could hardly feel any sympathy for his voluminous comrade.

Mr. Gupta was a seasoned man. He was a reasonable man too. He liked to think of himself as an eternal optimist, someone who believed in seeing the glass three forths full. And he didn’t mind speaking what he believed. It ofcourse helped that when he spoke, people shut up and listened.

They were listening now.

“We embarked on this pilgrimage four years ago, knowing exactly where we were headed”, Mr. Gupta began afresh,

“We wanted to tame the mighty Yamuna and its tributaries, spread its bounty far and wide across these Great Plains, reinhabit regions in Rajasthan that’ve been parched for centuries, generate billions of kilowatts of clean and free electricity, turbocharge industrial growth, herald the next green revolution and provide a perennial source of dependable water supply to this great city and the capital of our nation.

“This project will make all that possible.

“What are we but foot soldiers on the path the founding fathers of our nation put us on? To borrow Pandit Nehru’s words, we wanted to be ‘the symbols of the nation’s will to march forward with strength, determination and courage’.

“We did more than we were asked of.

“While on the one hand we had the mighty Bhakra Nangal inspiring us on our way, on the other, we’d these hundreds of big and small interest groups, so called civil society evangelists, Western liberals and environmental hawks with dubious funding sources and thousands upon thousands of big and small farmers and villagers blocking our path, barricading us, dragging us back and breaking our souls.

“Western educated, funded and protected armchair intellectuals vomited claptrap hogwash on us, maligned us in the so-called libertarian op-ed columns of the national press, held protest marches, organized dharnas and did everything within their means to politicize and internationalize the issue.

“Hundreds of environmental assessment reports, funded dubiously by NGOs with questionable parentage were heaped upon us, public opinion set against us, suppliers’s credit denied and even the World Bank funding blocked for well over two years.

“We marched on, the end goal our only call.

“Says who that the path of nation building is paved with roses?

“We never doubted the enormity of the challenge.

“We were attacked, we were accursed, our project sites arsoned, our concrete trucks looted, our construction equipment stolen, many of our engineers murdered in cold blood, countless others harassed, threatened, beaten and persecuted.

“None of this has stopped us, ladies and gentlemen.

“None of this will.”

He took another pause at this stage, ostensibly to wet his parched throat but really to gauge the impact he was having on the gathering. 

He need not have bothered. The room that just minues ago have been a riot of jibes, arguments and insinuations, now looked saturated with a loud, open mouthed silence. The opposition benches looked especially ruffled. It certainly no longer looked, or sounded, anything like the piddly little pissing contest they had thought they would mount on the board of the Three Dams Company. They had come prepared with questions, sure of extracting their own pound of flesh. They now glanced furtively at their fact sheets, wondering if it would make a good TV to be seen questioning the nation’s fucking forward march.

The members from the ruling coalition, on the other hand, seemed surprised at the sudden outwardly pressure their swelling chests were beginning to exert on their shirt buttons. Forget the intra coalition dissent. They were the ones to have flagged off the project in the first place, afterall. They had had their own share of brick bats to weather. Rightly then, to them must belong the grapes of success. Mr. Gupta’s speech was beginning to feel like a soothing balm on their few open wounds. The embarrassingly pitiful bleats of the fat (and sad) penguin man now seemed a distant, distasteful dream. That the idiots from the state owned TV station were recording all this for posterity reassured them further. Come election season, these footages would be worth their weight in gold.

“We’re nearly there, ladies and gentlemen”, Mr. Gupta flagged off the second round.

“The arch gravity dam on the Tons River’s been raised to two hundred meters; that on the XXX to seventy five and the gravity dam on BBB to one hundred and fifty. The work on the Sonapur Hydel Barrage and the associated Trans Yamuna Canal is nearing completion. Concrete hasn’t ceased pouring even for a minute on any of the four construction sites in the three years, eight months, twenty three days and five hours we’ve been at it”, he said, glancing at his watch as if wanting to fill in the details on the elapsed minutes and seconds as well.

“The power isn’t exactly free; wouldn’t you think, Mr. Gupta?” the chairman of the PAC began cautiously.

His aides had been through the books of accounts submitted by the Three Dams Company to the ministries of Power and Water Resources.

They looked bloated to him- didn’t they always? The elections were around the corner and the chairman didn’t want to miss any opportunity to embarrass the government.

Mr. Gupta allowed himself a little smile at the question. He liked to be baited sometimes. Better this than having to answer those environment scrutinators.

“You’re right, your eminence. There’s no such thing as a free lunch in life”, he remarked. This brought out an audible murmur of chuckles from the ruling benches. The chairman looked around indignantly, as if wondering who was pissing on whom.

“However, hydroelectricity’s is perhaps as close as you can get to it”, Mr. Gupta continued,

“At most conventional fuel based plants, the cost of fuel makes up anywhere between forty to fifty percent of the total costs of running the operations. A hydroelectric plant needs no feedstock; that is, you don’t need to spend a Rupee buying coal, diesel, natural gas or uranium to burn.

“Moreover, you don’t need to spend a paisa inventoring the fuel stock piles; natural water is freely available. You eliminate working capital; you eliminate interest costs.

“Finally, the immense superstructural strength built into the dams ensures that they are virtually guaranteed to provide a maintenance free service for upwards of hundred years of service life.

“Taken together, the above three take you as close to a source of free electricity as you and I can imagine.”

The great room filled with an audible, appreciative cackle from the ruling benches.

Obviously, Mr. Gupta was oversimplifying things. But what the hell? This was a showmanship contest and every bit as political as that priviledge motion the chairman had passed in the lower house of the parliament seeking a hearing on the subject.

He was hearing it now. And so would the nation when the puppets at the state television would start broadcasting the hearings on the prime time news service later that evening.

“Mr. Gupta, if setting up a hydroelectric power plant is really so simple as a primary school science project then howcome is it that I just heard your colleague demand the government, let me get this right, two thousand, eight hundred and seventy three crores as fresh equity”, the chairman retorted, craning his neck a bit towards the cameras as he spoke.

“Even a free lunch needs an oven to cook, sir”, Mr. Gupta replied simply.

The remark filled the already loaded environment with a loud guffaw of laughter from the ruling benches. Their ridicule filled the chairman with contempt. He looked towards his own benches for solace but was met with stony stairs of silence.

A lone warrior, he pressed his face squarely in the direction of Mr. Gupta.

“I don’t like your armtwisting tactics, Mr. Gupta. You gave a rousing speech just now. So you’re a great speaker. Congratulations. But that doesn’t answer why the project that was originally budgeted for eight thousand crore Rupees, of which six thousand an five hundred were to be provided by the World Bank, now needs a new dose of equity from the central government. What happened to the time tested principles of effective project management and accountability?” the chairman dug the stake deep.

Mr. Gupta spent a few silent seconds gathering his thoughts. The chairman needed to be put in his place; the consequences be damned.

“Cynicism, your eminence, is a good thing”, Mr, Gupta began afresh, “but cynicism won’t get us where we want to be. With due regards, you can continue pounding us till the vutures come home but the fact remains that the project’s been plagued by controversies of diverse nature right from its inseption. We’d to spend precious time getting through the maze of environmental, land, water and a plethora of other big and small clearances. Environmental lobbyists, disgruntled villagers and myriad other trade groups and local business lobbies pestered us on continuously, severely impacting our progress across various phases of development. Mid way throught the construction, the Supreme Court ordered us do devise and implement a new compensation plan for the villagers in the XXX, YYY and ZZZ regions whose lands and villages would’ve been submerged under the three planned reservoirs. Consequently, a significant chunk of the initial equity invested by the centre and the three states into the project had to be diverted towards this.

“As I explained earlier, we’ve tried our best to soldier on under the circumstances, propped in no small measures by the short term bridge financing we were able to secure from the World Bank. Now that the Three Dams Act’s been passed into a law by the honorable Parliament, we believe the time has come for the original project sponsors, that is yourselves and the respective states, to pump in additional equity to enable us to approach the World bank for the much needed term loan financing and finish the unfinished work.

“The dams we’re building would be certified for a design life of hundred years. Having paid off the World Bank loan in its first twelve years of operation, the power plants would all be there for you, producing free electricity (and countless votes for you all) for many many decades to come.”

“But does that justify the bill you’re asking us to foot?” taken aback by Mr. Gupta’s fresh onslaught and the desertion from his own benches, the chairman parroted the only line he could latch on to.

“Sir, our charter and our debt agreement with the World Bank give us the flexibility of raising this capital from the private sector. But why would the honorable member want us to do that?” Mr. Gupta countered with soft words but searching eyes.

This was a key moment in the debate. The cameras bore down on the chairman.

“Why would the honorable chairman want the drive, vision and foresight of this great parliament to be sold to a group of private, profit seeking individuals who’ve had no role to play in this mission of nation building?” he finished his little monologue.

“I would request you to refrain from twisting my words and drawing sweeping inferences”, the chairman belched out in defiance. The issue of privatization was as hot a potato for his own party as it was for the ruling coalition.

“I apologize if I offended your eminence in any way. But, in the absence of any funding from the union government, what options do we really have?” Mr. Gupta craned his neck down in mock deference to the chairman.

“Yes but..”, the chairman began.

“Enough of that, Mr. Chairman”, the diminutive, white sari clad lady from the ruling benches now got up.

She held the portfolio of finance in the ruling combine’s coalition government and shadowed the opposition nominated chairman of the PAC.

“Mr. Gupta has presented his case in a lucid and dignified manner. The books of accounts of the Three Dams Company were made available to you fifteen days ago. If you have anything specific to claim, please do so; else, let’s just get on with it.”

“Where do you want me to start?” the chairman shot back.

“The project’s actuals are slipping on every single line item from the budgeted amounts. Why should we just take Mr. Gupta or the Three Dams Company at its face value?”

“So what’s your claim?” the lady asked.

“Isn’t it clear? The public exchequer is being plundered. Crores of rupees are being siphoned off in the name of nation building. Where’s the accountability?”

“Mr. Chairman. Now that’s what I call posturing. The genleman there has just provided you the details”, she said, pointing towards Mr. Gupta.

“None of us can disagree with what he’s said but obviously, that’s not how you see it. He forgot to add a few details which I’m sure you’ll understand as a man of eminence. So, let me ask you this: do terms such as inflation, interest rates and balance of payments mean anything to you?” she continued.

“Don’t humor me, madam. I don’t need lessons in elementary economics from you or your ilk”, the chairman replied.

“Good. So pray tell me, for how long have you armtwisted us into lowering the interest rates in the name of getting out of the deep recession that your government plunged this country into when you were in power?

“Let me answer that- four years.

“And in those four years, the interest rates have gone down eighteen times.

“Essentially, you left us a defunct treasury and a budget deficit bigger than the hole in the ozone layers over Antarctica. Who do you think we are? Some sorcerers with magic wands? What option did you leave us but to print more money?

“About thirty percent of the cost overruns on this project can be directly attributed to inflation; and all of it’s down to the crassness with which you run this country when you were in office.”

“Oh! So now you want to blame it all on inflation and deficits! Who’s running the government, you or I? Who controls the Reserve bank, you or I? So, whose job is it to keep the inflation under control?” the chairman reminded the lady her duties.

“Mr. Chairman, thanks to you, it’s now a problem for the entire nation. You put us all into this royal abyss and now you want us to keep digging deeper.

“You stonewalled all out efforts to approach the World Bank and the International monitary Fund for help; you forced us to keep cutting the interest rates and increasing the money supply; you left us with no other option but to increase public spending to stimulate the economy and now you want us to suspend all our public works programs and drive millions of hard working individuals out of employment.

“What do you want us to tell them? That a bunch of fat guys sitting in the parliament want to hold them to ramsom? That they don’t want them to work hard and put an honest day’s food on their kitchen tables?”

“That’s not my problem, mada…”, the chairman made to begin.

“Say that directly to the nation if you have guts, Mr. Chairman”, the white clad lady roared like a cornered lioness, pointing a finger in the direction of the rolling TV cameras.

The chairman had been bated.

The Making of Kalki, Part-I

The making of Kalki-I

Circa 1953, Mussorie

It was real, it was cold and it felt wet to touch.

There was just one thing that that really meant.

Trouble.

Down there things weren’t going right. They were going downhill, and rapidly.

But how could that be?

‘Way too cold and wet to touch; no, it can’t really be real. Not this time. No, it can’t be. But what if it is? Oh no; oh God no; no, please don’t let it be real; just this time, God, just this one time’, the small boy pleaded.

He tossed around wildly in the middle birth of his bunk bed, causing its cheap mild steel frame to buckle and rattle wildly.

“Settle down, you little tit eating motherfucker”, the big boy on the lower birth cried out.

The big boy had been masturbating. He was trying a new method that night: positioning his penis between the hard board bed and his stomach and gyrating back and forth- this way he could keep both his hands free, one to hold the pencil torch with and the other to flip over the pages of the pornographic magazine he’d stolen from the warden, Father Costa’s desk earlier that evening. He had just whipped up a passable climax when the little pisspot on the upper bunk decided to start rattling his ass.

The passion had dissipated quicky and this made him really mad.

“Don’t you fuck with me, boy”, he warned the pisspot and planted a hard kick on his bed ply.

The small boy shot off towards the ceiling and then landed back on his bed with a little thud. He was oblivious of all the commotion he had caused down below; oblivious even to the kick that had sent him flying off. He continued wandering the dark, deserted streets of his nightmare zone, all alone. Now he felt thirsty. He felt confused and lonely too. He needed some reassurance. He looked around. There was no one there but an empty shanty town of dimly lit roads, barren pavements, open, overflowing corrugated iron garbage boxes and rats- lots of them, squealing, gnawing at each other’s tails, crawling by the rubbish bins, looking hungry. Finding reassurance there would be like discovering the next Saudi Arabia of oil. But that was impossible- wasn’t that what the teacher told them the other day? Of course, it was impossible, as impossible as ever knowing who’d given him birth or, for that matter, who his father was.

No, there won’t be any reassurances coming forth. He understood it now as he always did when awake. The nightmare zone was impenetrable and nothing more than a corrupted image of the horror that were his waking hours.

Instinctively, he thrust his thumb inside his mouth and started sucking hard on it, emitting slurpy, loud and desperate sounds.

The big boy in the bottom bunk twitched. The magazine was great and he’d found yet another expressive enough photograph in it to set his budding manhood on alert. He pressed his stomach hard on his penis and intensified his back and forth gyrations.

It was coming, it was coming….

At precisely that moment the small child found himself wandering back into the kingdom of wetness. He could feel it now, pulsing and shooting through the capillaries, gushing, roaring, and bubbling, as if on boil.

‘No God no; please, please don’t do that to me, help me this time- this one time; O Lord, how can you be so unkind?’ he continued tossing and turning and rattling the fickle woodwork of the bed.

The Lord wasn’t in a merciful mood that night.

When is he ever? Just keeps peering down from his couch up there, waiting for his folks to fuck things up.

A thick stream of urine screamed out of him and percolated down into the already saturated depths of the soiled mattress.

“You Bastarrrdd..”, the big boy was pissed off. The tossing and turning twat on the upper birth had fucked his climax once again.

He got up from his bed, grabbed a big flop of the small boy’s hair and banged his head into the metallic side railings. It made a loud clang. The sound woke up a number of other terrified boys on the adjoining bunk beds. But, the small boy seemed to be made of sterner stuff. He continued sleeping, tossing and turning. This set the big burly boy’s patience on a decisive, one way street out of the room. With a passion surpassing that which he had been trying to rub into his penis a little while earlier, he landed a heavy punch into the pit of the small boy’s stomach. He followed it with a jab to his kidney; and then he went for the bull’s eye- his crotch.

The little boy had at last begun to show some signs of being mortal; he was trying to stir back to awakening when the big boy landed the decisive blow between his legs. The impact blew the wind out of his little, heaving lungs, making his thighs go numb. The numbness soon assumed the contours of a full blown shock wave. It sped out from the epicenter of the blow in a spherical wave front to every nerve ending in his emaciated body.

The little boy passed out. Oblivious to this, the big boy looked disgustedly at his outstretched hand, still formed in the shape of a fist. It felt moist. He brought it to his nose to sniff- musky, saline smell. He knew in an instant what that meant. He smiled to himself and signaled the other distressed twats to quietly go back to sleep.

By the time the small boy came back to senses the next morning, the sun had risen high in the sky. Strong shafts of sunlight drifted in through the ventilators set high up by the sides of the ceiling. The boy looked down at the big moist marks on his pyjamas and the mattress and shivered in terror. He was ashamed of himself. Father Aneja, the housekeeping manager, would soon be there on his morning rounds. He would have one look at the mattress and then…

His heart filled with frustration. None of his twenty odd house mates had uttered a word when the House Head Boy was busy beating him senseless the previous night; nor had they bothered to wake him up in time to be ready for the morning assembly. His heart sank at the thought. To the seven cardinal sins of Christinity, the god fearing Fathers of the exclusive, boys only Mount Helena Catholic Missionary School had added two of their own: peeing in sleep and missing the morning assembly. They built leaders out of men and what sort of leaders went about wetting their pants and missing the morning drills? A stream of chilly morning mountain air drafted in through the open French windows. Far in the distance he could hear the concerted marching of well rehearsed foot steps to the tunes of a doleful bagpipe. The morning assembly had already begun and so had a new, miserable day.

It was a glorious day.

Father Theodora, the school headmaster, stood on his customary high platform overlooking the big school playground and the mountains beyond. He had turned out finely, decked up in a big, cream colored robe. A big silver cross supported on thick red rosary beads dangled down his chest. He also wore a big cream colored cap with another silver cross embroidered on it. A bevy of visiting dignitaries in the best of their formal dresses farmed out on both the sides of the Father, looking serious and attentive in their ceremonial chairs. That day seemed to be a special day and that caused even more consternation to the already palpitating boy who was now trying to look for an opportunity to slip into his house line unobserved. Father Theodora closely inspected the gathered morning assembly. The students had turned out fine. They stood in attention, distributed in fifteen neat files, in front of him. He nodded his approval and began,

“My dear students, today is the one hundred and seventh founding day of this veritable institution that we call both a school and our home. I joined this institution many years ago as a humble teacher; over the years I rose through the ranks and have had the pleasure of leading this institution to yet newer heights of success and achievement under my watch. However, today that I stand in front of you, its not to talk to you about myself; it is to talk to you and share with you the achievement of many of your predecessors who came to this cradle of leadership as raw, un-cut diamonds just like you and left as intelligent, motivated and worthy leaders of human beings, fully justifying our motto of, ‘Discipline, Leadership and Excellence’.”

The little boy was still at it, trying to sneek in on the sly. The entire assembly including the teachers, the deans and the warden stood in rapt attention, listening to the oratorical magic Father Theodora was weaving in the air.  

“Many of our alumnis went on to become successful businessmen, some became scientists and many others went on to govern the milling millions of this nation as magistrates and IAS officers. We have had the distinction of giving this nation a Prime Minister, two Chief Ministers and many other ministers in the central and state legislatures. How do you think we did that? Good education- of course, good values- absolutely, but most of all, good discipline. Discipline…”

The boy fancied his chances. Theodora had rached his favorite topic and would no doubt turn his real magic on from here. This was his chance. Alas, it, just like most other days, wasn’t his day. Still thinking about the ignominy he had left behind in the dorms for Father Aneja to find, he had just sneaked behind the towering figure of Father Damien D’Souza into his house line when the House Head Boy brought him down to the ground with a sly tackle of his left foot. The little terrified boy shrieked down with an audible thud, enough of Father Theodora to stop in his steps and for the entire assembly to turn their eyes around onto him.

“Oh no, not you again”, Father D’souza said and bent over to pick him up.

“Boy, you will have to pay dearly for that”, he whispered in his ears and pinched him in his arm pit. The boy howled out in pain.

“Shut up, you idiot. Haven’t you already done enough damage?” Father D’Souza said. He gave Father Theodora an askance look who signaled him to take the boy away from the assembly.

Father D’Souza dragged the boy away even as Father Theodora resumed, “Attention! Boys, what you just saw is precisely the kind of behavior that is wholly unbecoming of the future leaders and statesmen that we are trying to groom here. Discipline is the key to…”

“You disappoint me, boy”, Father Theodora said as he entered his chambers. His face bore a beatific picture of poise and outwardly calm. Every step that he took was measured, every syllable he uttered, well thought out and apt. As he approached his huge mahogany desk, he removed his ceremonial robe and hung it on a beautifully warnished coat stand.

“What is the matter, Father D’Souza? Where are we going wrong with this unfortunate son of the Lord?” he asked.

“The boy’s a mystery, Holy Father”, Father D’Souza replied. “Honestly, we’re at our wits’ end.”

“That’s not good enough, D’Souza”, the Holy Father said. “We might never know who funds the trust that pays his yearly dues but that doesn’t absolve us of our duty towards him; and the one duty towards him that we absolutely have to fulfil is to try our best to make him the leader that he deserves to be by virtue of being a student of this institution.”

“Now listen boy, I don’t know who your secret benefactor is. I’m not supposed to know that; nor are you and that’s perfectly fine with me. But, I want you to know one thing loud and clear: leadership and indiscipline never go hand in hand. You’ve got to choose between the two and as long as you’re a part of this institution, that choice isn’t yours to make.

“What you did this morning in your bed and later at the assembly has pained me a lot. I want to share that pain with you. I want you to understand what it feels like. I want you to come here, to my lap, up close.”

The little boy hesitated at the suggestion. The head master had sounded calm and composed. For a moment he’d even sounded gentle and humane. But, there was something about his eyes that disturbed the boy. They crawled up and down his body, as if sizing him up; sizing him up or making him naked. He knew instantly where he had seen that look before- in the eyes of Father Costa, the warden.

He started shaking like an autumn twig about to be detached from a withering branch.

The little child wondered what had hurt him more- the searing fury of the thin buggy whip that had rained down his back side like hell fire or the soft, moaning sound the head master had emitted everytime he had brought it down on him. He didn’t think much of the physical abuse. The bullies that called themselves his ‘house-mates’ had made him impervious to that. No, it were those other things- the hunger in those lustful eyes; those slow, disgusting grunts; that debasing feeling of something hardening between the head master’s legs as he lay across them. Act one of that day’s two part tragedy had just ended for him. This play however had no intervals. Father D’Souza dragged him out of the head master’s chambers and started climbing the steps leding to the warden’s office.

Kalki stirred in his bed. So many years had gone by since the events of that long gone, beautiful, mid-winter morning. It felt however as if he was still wondering the same deserted streets of the nightmare zone, looking for that elusive idea called reassurance.

A slight aside on Mithun Da from the Chhachhrauli days

The jury would forever be out on who the greatest Bollywood star of all times is- Amitabh Bachchan or Mithun Chakraborty. Even as I write these lines, I can already picture a pack of rabid, blood hound film fanatics bombarding their ridicule guns at me and asking me rhetorically- how dare you compare Mithun with Amitabh? Why, how could you even spell the two names in the same breath? Who is Mithun? And what is he in front of Amitabh?

To all these nay sayers, all I say is- go, get a life. Period. For all those brave hearts (and I am the biggest self appointed champion of their lot) who willingly (bought a ticket and) crammed their sweaty asses into the grimy, betel nut spit smeared front seats of the congested, hot and humid cinema halls of North India in the cinemascopic ‘80s and early ‘90s, the answer had always been and would always be an unequivocal- Mithun Chakraboty, aka, Lord Mithun Da.

The history of Hindi Cinema would, for all times to come, be a story of two distinct epochs: the pre-Mithun Da era of sugary love laced mush fests centered on Sri Nagar’s Dal Lake; and the Mithun Da era urban crime, decadence, rape, murder, jealousy and retribution film noir. To understand this dichotomy would require an understanding of the societal forces that were at work in the India of the ‘70s and ‘80s and the way they were (and were not) represented on the celluloid screens of the Hindi cinemas all across India.
I would refrain from going on a tangent here by expounding my theories on what these societal forces were. Many enlightened souls have met their maker begging for a chance to expound some more and God only knows how many countless acres of jungle have been felled trying to accommodate their myriad opinions on this complex construct. As with so many other things in life, here also, the process of elimination works best. And so, suffice it would to say that the beautifully manicured gardens and palatial bungalows, buxom leading ladies in tight fitting chiffons (and cashmere clad tits), and hyperventilating males in stately Impala cars- the props that formed the feed stock of the pre-Mithun era movies (and yes, that includes many of Amitabh’s brain busters), were as far away from the struggles and realities of our daily lives as the Earth is from the Sun.

For months, Pooran tried hard to hook Chhachhrauli’s moviegoers on to these sugar candies with dismal results. Enter Lord Mithun with an ambulance full of badly beaten up thugs in tow and a solemn promise of retribution screaming out from his blood red eyes and, lo and behold, the order was established. We Chhachhrauli folks knew a good thing when we saw one. We saw what Prabhu had to offer and we liked what we saw. Our Friday evenings would never be the same again.

Lord Mithun had an endearing way of announcing himself to us wide eyed followers. After enduring the mind numbing gibberish of the opening credits of the movie (that were presented in three different languages- Hindi, English and Urdu, in those days), we would soon come face to face with our Lord who would proceed to give us a one lined description of his avatar for that particular movie:

“Mera Naam Hai Heera, Maine Chaku Se Bullet Ko Cheera” (My name is Diamond and I have cut a bullet into two with my knife)

“Dikhne Mein Beevda, Bhaagne Mein Ghoda Aur Maarne Mein Hathoda Hun Main” (I look like a drunkard, I run like a horse and I deliver blows like a hammer)

“Main hun Do Nambari- Ek Se Jyada, Teen Se kum” (They call me Number-2- More than one, less than three)

“Tere Naam ka Kutta Paalun” (I will domesticate a dog and name it after you)

“Bheegi Hui Cigarette Jal Nahin Sakti, Aur Ye Tei Hai Ki Teri Maut Ki Taarikh Tal Nahin Sakti” (A damp cigarette won’t burn; and be sure that the day I have decided for your death won’t turn)

Thus, making his intensions clear to one and all (as if they weren’t already), he would proceed to bust the dental (and consequently, the mental) make up of the hapless goons that would go flying all over the screen, screaming in agony.

There was an endearing, assembly line precision to the stories and screen plays of our Lord’s movies- a sovereign promise of the sorts the Governors of the Reserve Bank of India have been doling out to the holders of the Indian currency notes for the last 60 years- I PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER A SUM OF 100 RUPEES (Read in Lord Mithun’s words: I PROMISE TO SHOW MY FAITH FUL MOVIE GOER AN UNENDING ORGY OF RAPE, MURDER AND BLOODY REVENGE- FRIDAY AFTER FRIDAY AFTER FRIDAY).

A la Ford Model-T, you could watch as many movies of the Lord as you liked as long as you didn’t question the basic building blocks of the screen play:

Scene# 1: Lord Mithun's sister is dancing to the tunes of a raunchy song with her lover in the rice fields of her village when a rapacious villain (usually the village landlord or his minions) sets his evil eyes on her heavily heaving bosom (or sweaty legs or navel or heck, all at the same time).

Scene# 2: My Lord's sister is abducted in the dark of the night, gang raped and strangled to death. Her lover dies a futile death trying to revenge his loss (he being no match for the mighty goons).

Scene# 3: My Lord’s old and partially blind mother gets to know of the ignominy and dies of heart attack (occasionally, towards inducing some freshness in the plot, she would turn senile in some of the movies).

Scene# 4: My Lord sets foot in his village after spending a few months as a manual laborer (or truck driver, or auto rickshaw driver, or a coolie at the airport: you see, unlike Ford’s Model-T, our Lord did offer you a generous variation in the shades of the characters he played) in the city.
Scene# 5: Our Lord’s lady love (usually going by the name Bijli) would inform him of his bad luck on his way to the village from the railway station.

Scene# 6: The Lord would pledge retribution on the still smoldering funeral pyres of his mother and young sister (usually with a burning stick from the pyre in hand).

Scene#7 and on wards: Full blown retribution in all its graphic glory

The producers of Prabhu Ji’s movies cut no corners when it came to helping him extract his revenge in as He-Manly a way as possible. The results, more often than not, spoke for themselves in the films’ climaxes:

At the mere hint of Mithun Da’s right hand push, ten tonner Tata trucks would go flying in the air; entire armies of carbine and bazooka wielding soldiers would bite the dust with his carelessly tossed aside hand grenades; on occasions he would catch the hand grenades tossed at him in mid-air and aim them back at the perpetrators with disastrous consequences.

The best climaxes however were those in which, the villains, having pulled a fast one on Mithun Da and tricked him into surrender, forced his girlfriend over a gun point to dance all around him and celebrate his impending death. As fate always had it, unknown to the poor bastards, Lord ji would pull out a carefully hidden blade in his shirtsleeves (he had this amazing ability to think through and be prepared for every situation in advance) and cut open his harness. Under blazing machine guns, rocket launchers and other pieces of heavy artillery, he and his girlfriend would then proceed to finish the unfinished task, sending the villains and their entire armies to the greener pastures beyond.
Watching Mithun Da in action was like watching the living affirmation of the dauntless bounds of the initiated human spirit. No task, no matter how difficult, was impossible for him and by corollary, would be for my young mind. As a Good Samaritan told a young Mithun Da in his golden jubilee movie Dance Dance, “Agar Tujhe Halwa Chahiye To Tujhe Nachna Padega (If you want to eat cake you will have to first dance)”, so I realized that the best and the only way of solving life’s problems was to get up and do something about them- the consequences be damned.

The Enterprise

I saw Changu and Mangu sitting quietly in a dank corner by the school notice board one afternoon. Mangu was busy nibbling on his nails. Changu looked pale- greenish pale, as if he had just puked a bucketful down the stinking open man hole near the notice board. He had an uncharacteristic forlorn look about him, a look that spelled a big fuck up.

“Changu boss, is everything all right? You look as if someone just puked all over you”, I asked. “Did we get licked again?” I enquired, referring to that morning’s cricket match with Bilaspur ‘Lambs’.

“No sonny, we made a delicious goat curry out of them. It’s my goddamned destiny that has licked me”, he said with an unmistakable touch of dejection.

“Since when did you start believing in that bitch?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

“From the fucking moment these two nuts set themselves on that notice board” Changu made a reverse V sign with his fingers and pointed it towards his eyes.



The year still was ’93. We had waited with baited breaths for Changu’s class X board exam results. Some moron at the Haryana School Board headquarters had decided to play the Russian roulette with the students that year. The results’ dates had been announced twice already and unceremoniously dumped, in one case just two hours before the deadline. Students had stopped eating food; some had stopped shitting altogether. Those who did were shitting bricks with anxiety. Many had taken to subsisting on their finger nails. The real jealous ones had gorged right through.



So this was it then. The results were finally out; but if the proverbial puke or crow’s dollop on Changu’s cat licked face was anything to go by, the wait had clearly not been worth it.



“Was it Maths?” I decided to dispense with the, it’s ok boy, shit happens, routine and come straight to the point. I (and he) had worked hard over the entire ‘92, preparing him for his class X Maths. But there are things in life that you are destined to get and things that are always, Oh so out of reach. Maths was for Changu what violence had been for Gandhi or humbleness for Muhammad Ali- a clear departure, a statistical impossibility.



It had to be Maths.



“Noooo- for fuck’s sake; and that’s the bloody racket”, Changu said angrily. His eyes turned red. Mangu, who was hungrily eyeing his toenails by now, was visibly taken aback by his brother’s sudden burst. It was clear that long before I barged in, they had already had their brotherly chat on the issue and were busy thinking of ways of breaking the news at home. I was startled nevertheless. Did I hear him right? Did he just say he had passed in Maths? Really? Holy fuck, in the back seat of the truck! Wow! That was Goood- Goood on me. All that hard work; un-fuckin-believable.



But wait, if he didn’t flunk Maths, then what was the bloody problem? Why did his jaw drop all the way down to the dirty floor? Why did it hang limply, looking like an advertisement for a new broom stick?



“Take a look at this shit”, Changu barked and thrust a small green colored card in my hands. The card was damp and stinky with his sweat. He had clearly left the pigs far behind in the sweating contest those past few hours.



“Mad cow, tell me how”, I barely managed. “How many more surprises would life spring at me?” I literally dragged myself out of tearing my own hair. Written in Changu’s dirty scrawls on the green slimy card were the following stats, and words:



Hindi: 23/100 (FUCK ME)

English: 18/100

Social Studies: 29/100

Science: 32/100

Maths: 67/100



“I wonder who were they humping while correcting the papers”, Changu mocked. “They weren’t straddling human females. That’s for sure. May be a She Donkey or a Pigess or a Pig’s ass?” he continued blabbering to no one in particular. For once, I was inclined to agree with him; I mean, what kind of sick bastard would flunk someone in Hindi?



“Fuccccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk…………………..”, he bellowed out a long, deep wail. It was too much for the half a dozen crows who had gathered on a fat mango tree branch overhanging the notice board and the open man hole. They had been lustily eyeing something in the man hole- may be a dead lizard or some other slimy piece of shit. Changu’s primal cry made them cringe in horror and they flew away in disgust, cursing him with rabid, loud mouthed profanities.



Changu’s wail was more a wail of exasperation than that of helplessness or nakedness or vulnerability. In life, shit happens. Sometimes you pause a moment and tend to ask- why? What was it that pissed Them off? You wait a while- like a child with his ear pressed against the cold steel of a railway track, looking for the vibrations. And then, you get up and get on with it.



For what seemed like an hour, we kept staring at the cobbles in front of our feet. “Have you considered filing for rechecks?” I finally broke the silence.



“Fuck rechecks. I have flunked everything; everything except Maths that is”, he stated the obvious. “Honestly, I’ve had a gutful.”



With heavy hearts we dragged ourselves out the Fort High main gate. There was no way for me to have known this at the time but it was the last Changu would ever see of the insides of any institution of formal learning.



“So now what? Where do you go from here?” I asked softly.



“To Geeta Panwadi; and you are coming with me”, he looked ahead as if seeing something in the distance that I couldn’t.



“Fuck man, I needed it badly”, Changu blew out a dense blue plume of smoke from his nostrils. As always, Geeta had a raunchy Bollywood number blaring out in the afternoon heat,



“Chadh Gaya Upar Re, Atariya Pe Lutan Kabootar Re.. (A Pigeon in heat has climbed me…)”



“Have you ever noticed how nowadays everyone in Chhachhrauli seems to want to own one of these things?” Changu picked up Geeta’s portable audio cassette player and started fingering it. It was a compact device. A small row of five plastic push buttons adorned the front of the player. Directly below them was a small groove in which sat the audio cassette. The cassette was white in color and played the audio track of a movie titled Dalal. It was one of the world record forty nine new releases that Lord Mithun had registered that year. An audio signal cable emerged out of the player and went on to connect with two large sized amplifiers fitted on the two opposite sides of the shop. The acoustic booms of the amplifiers threw out jets of compressed air pockets in our direction.



Geeta had seen Changu pick the thing up. Like a wary bitch out to protect its litter from the prying eyes of the world, he started circling us, mindful of not snatching it out of his hands but wary all the same.



“Relax Geeta! You look as if someone just pried open your fly and squashed your balls”, Changu mocked him and put the device down. Geeta wasn’t one to suffer fools easily. But Changu was a different customer altogether. You don’t fuck around with the keepers of the Jacob’s ladder, now do you? A missing plank here, a cracked one there and you could be lost in the limitless space forever- hey guys, where the fuck did my stairway to heaven go? Can you show me the way please? Ganga motioned to say something but then thought the better of it. The bitch picked up its pup and walked away.



“Did you just see how these motherfuckers fawn over these things?” he looked at me with wry humor in his eyes. “They go all the way to Yamunanagar to buy them and then look after them as if they weren’t machines but their wives’ goddamn titties”, he whispered wickedly to me and broke out into a low pitched laughter.



“Chadh Gaya Upar Re, Atariya Pe Lutan…...”, the amplifiers kept blaring out the deeds of the incestuous pigeon in the afternoon sun.



“Humm..” I uttered, not sure of which way his nicotine loaded head was trying to push me.



“And what about the music?” he asked me.



“Well, it’s a riot. God knows where they get these crazy lyrical ideas these days…”, I said and it was true. Those were the years when the lyricists in Bollywood were at their creative best, thinking up diverse similes, adverbs and adjectives as means of delivering the message and not getting caught in the Indian movie Censor Board’s net.



“Precisely”, Changu exclaimed.



“Chadh Gaya Upar Re,….Gutar Gutar, Gutar Gutar….”



“Why, even AIDS has got bitten by this cassette player bug”, he continued referring to his father’s recent acquisition of a sophisticated music system (we all refered to his father lovingly as AIDS as his name was Advaitanand 'Ichha Daman' Shastri).



I had to agree wholeheartedly with him on that. For years the denizens of Chhachhrauli had woken up to the live broadcast of AIDS’ morning salutations to lord Shiva. High frequency amplifiers had faithfully jarred every inch of the village’s geography (and our brains) with the harshness of his baritone. Many buffaloes had stopped producing milk and many children had stopped drinking it. People had grown sick and schizophrenic but couldn’t complain out of sheer respect for him. Mercifully, about three months ago, a realization finally dawned on him. He left for Yamunanagar and brought back a large cassette player and a big horde of pirated devotional audios.



The move had worked wonders.



Where we had once gone to sleep fearful of what lay in wait for us the next morning, we now looked forward to the melodious hymns of Anuradha Paudwal and Anoop Jalota every morning to gently rub the sleep out of our eyes. Children started liking milk again (for the time being at least). Buffaloes went back to doing what they did best- giving milk and smashing animal fare records. People who for years had been kept away from the path of god felt a renewed tug at their heart; and unbelievably, the attendance at the evening aartis sky rocketed.



AIDS’ life underwent a change as well. Fear of the loss of his voice (needless fear for how can you lose something that you don’t have?) had kept him away from tobacco chewing for years. Thanks to the player, now he could go back to the dear hobby. No need to get up early either. He could get up just to put the player on and go back to sleep again, thick wads of cotton stuck in both his ears.



“What are you thinking son? Why not give them what they want- right here in Chhachhrauli?” Changu had a bright glint in his eyes.



“You mean, you mean set up a shop and start selling audio players?” I was surprised at the swiftness with which he had pulled himself out of that afternoon’s debacle. They way he looked then, he would have made a phoenix look like a common city crow.



“Yes my dear son, yes. That, and the goddamn music”, he said and added, “give the bastards what they want and take the money home”.



So that was it. A chapter in his life had barely closed but the next one was starting already.



-----------------------



“What’s wrong with setting it up at the bus stand?” I was adamant.



“People go to the bus stand to catch a fucking bus, not to buy pirated music cassettes”, Changu had clearly had enough.



I hadn’t however, “yes, but they have to wait there for the bus to arrive. They won’t mind spending that time at our shop”.



“I want to do business, not charity. Those who want to pass their time can use the Haryana Roadways waiting room”, he had the final word on it.



“Ok, screw the bus stand. How about Fort High? Surely, that would be a great place to start the business”, I was excited.



“Half the students at Fort High are like my sons and daughters. How do you expect a father to ask his children for money?” he had a point there. “Besides, I myself have lost count of all those whom I owe some”, he said sheepishly.



“I guess that leaves us with just one place”, I said.



“It does; and believe me, that IS the place where we should open it”, he chimed. The place of course was Sir Chedi Lal Gali, the de facto Broadway of Chhachhrauli.



“The place has a critical mass, a certain culture, a particular vitality about it”, he continued even as I mentally pictured the numerous battalions of pigs and piglets that called the area their barracks. “Thanks to Pooran, people now associate that place with entertainment. They go there to get their minds doped for three hours- and they pay for it. What else can we ask for? Let’s give them what they want”, he ended the discussion.



-----------------------



AIDS threw everything that he had (astrological charts, position of stars, numerology and Vaastu ) at the problem of determining the name for Changu’s new venture. Many hats were thrown in the ring viz, Sangeet Manjusha, Sargam, Taan, Sangeet Mandir, Swar Lehri, among other sleep inducers. Changu grew mad at his father’s daftness one day and tore his charts away. Having already shown the Fort High (and all other ‘temples’ of learning) his middle finger, he decided it was time to do the same to the rest of the humanity. This business was going to be his baby and he knew what name he would give it:



Sannata Sound Service

(Silence Sound Service)



Work on the project started in earnest. The open, muck infested plot adjoining the Meena Talkies was penciled in as the location. Within days, a five year lease term was signed with its owners. A cash reward of Rs. 50 was put on the head of every piglet that Ganga Ram (Chhachhrauli’s head janitor) could herd in.



It wasn’t an easy task. Ganga Ram would spend the whole day luring the pigs away with (drabs such as) freshly baked wheat breads and rice cakes. As Mary Antoinette of France of the, if the peasants don’t have bread, why don’t they eat cakes, fame (or infamy- depends on the way you want to look at it) found out, offering cakes (wheat bread and rice cakes) to people (pigs) clamoring for bread (shit) can put one’s neck in deep, deep trouble; so also Ganga realized his folly soon. The vapid stench of the shit loaded mountains kept bringing the pigs back and one day, Changu blew his top completely.



“What the fuck do you think you are doing feeding them rice cakes and bread puddings?” he fumed in anger, “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” “You have spent your whole life chasing them and still you know nothing about pig psychology”, he said. “These things feed on shit- the more the merrier. Get them a truck load of it and they would follow your ass to the edge of the universe. Do You Get Me?”



The instructions couldn’t have been clearer. Ganga summoned his battle hardened relatives from the adjoining villages. An assortment of assault weapons (booming drums, flash lights, bamboo sticks and long handled brooms among others) was assembled. A big Tata dumper truck was also summoned in from a bridge construction site in Yamunanagar. On a muggy mid-June night that came to be known as the Night of the Big Knives, Ganga and his men attacked the unsuspecting enemy. Screeching wails of pigs, big and small, pierced the night sky as one after the other, they were flung over the dumper’s high walls into its inviting belly full of muck, crap and every other conceivable waste collected from drains all across Chhachhrauli.



The dumper took off for a secret location under the cover of the night. Disjointed accounts of sudden explosions in pig populations kept creeping in for many months from places as close as Bilaspur, Panjeton and Dadupur and as far and away as Paunta Sahib, Maddipur and Salem Pur Kohi. To this day however, no one is sure of what became of the pigs on the Night of the Long Knives.



-----------------------



One Friday afternoon early in July, Sannata Sound Service threw its doors open for business. Changu’s labor of love had shaped up beautifully. Created out of a railway coach purchased in an auction, a la railway station, the shop had the décor of a music station. Three rows of shelves in the rear of the shack displayed the shiny new boxes of a wide collection of cassette players. The front of the shack was full of audios from a galaxy of Hindi movies- new and old, most of them pirated. People had a choice- buy the cassette or get your favorite songs recorded- for a fee. The blank cassette of course had to be bought from SSS.



The opening ceremony was a memorable affair. A beautiful bright red pandal was set up on the open land (that had once been a mountain range of shit) adjoining the newly constructed music store. Thick red carpets covered the entire arena. A motley group of people drawn from various walks of life came for the opening ceremony.



Changu started his opening address:



Brothers (a long silence as if trying to decide what to speak next)….



Brothers and their sisters….



Thanks you for gracing the occasion with your presence (I wonder If you would have really bothered had there been no free lunch)….



Since times immemorial, music has played the role of food. It has been a perfect food for the ears; it has been a food for the masses and a food for the gods. But most of all, it has been a food for the soul. Its aroma has lightened the soul. Its taste has titillated the imagination and blah, blah, blah….



People squirmed at the repeated references to ‘food’. Many of them had skipped their breakfasts and looked forward to loading up on the free afternoon. Their planning had been immaculate. To their bad luck however, today was the improbable day Changu had chosen to hone his public speaking skills:



When I was a child, I would often not eat food. My mother would sing a song to me. She would sing Mukesh’s songs though to tell you the truth, I never liked his singing. As you can see, music, food and Mukesh … blah, blah, blah….



The aromas wafting out of the food corner compounded the agony further. Oh God! How long before the idiot will shut up?



How much can one eat? How much can one digest? And how long can you listen to Mukesh before going nuts? The great Indian musical tradition had feasted on blah, blah, blah…..



Seconds became minutes and minutes threatened to border on the hour. Changu seemed to be in a time warp, unable to move on, unable to stop. People grew restless- was there an end to that madness? They started scratching the ground with their toes (thank god for the carpets). Wafts of food started journeying out the frying pans. As a dog in sight of an inviting bone but unfortunately on a tight leash, they strained uncomfortably in their seats, wanting to break free.



A tiny middle aged man, sitting the closest to the serving table in the last row, was the first to snap. He walked over to the service table and picked up a plate- unchy, munchy, crunchy, I want my lunchy. Hail the pioneer. And, to hell with Changu and his bullshit.



People cut loose. They rushed to the service table, fearful that the tiny one might end up eating everything. Old men seemed to be in the greatest hurry- a lifetime of hunger honed reflexes goading them to get on with it. Hungry mothers followed closely behind, dragging their crying children to the table- they had multiple mouths to feed after all. A minor stampede ensued as an elderly man got stuck in his own dhoti and fell down while running towards the table. Changu soldiered on in the face of a runaway audience. AIDS could contain himself no longer. As the self invited chief guest of the afternoon, he got up quickly and cut the red ribbon.



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There is something to be said about human spirit. On an unending day with nary a drop or shadow in sight, a traveler in the desert may think a while what got him there in the first place. The traveler however must keeps walking for sitting down would be the end of hope. Hope makes a human human, and to be human is to be alive- to the possibilities of tomorrow.



Changu made piece with the reality of his Today; and got busy working on the possibilities of Tomorrow. Tomorrow would come when it would come. And when it would come, it would take care of itself.