Footballs of the System: Fifteen Months Between Hope and Betrayal

December 20, 2007

I have very particular reasons to hate the Congress and Congresswalas as a class. Some might find it a political thing, but no, it is a real one in my case.

Merciless, cold, vindictive steps taken by the Hooda government have almost destroyed my career. It is an irremediable dent in my life, in my career, in the prospects of a long-due happiness for my unjustifiably suffering brothers, sisters and parents.

The state roller-coasted over us—the entire HCS 2004 batch—like a great stone crusher, a great road roller, a massive juggernaut, making dust of the unwanted pebbles of me and my fellow batchmates, crushing our dreams, the fruit of our efforts, mercilessly, heartlessly.

For fifteen long months, the Honourable Supreme Court of India—dishonourably played the game of cat and mouse with us, showed us all the possibilities of justice, and in the end, apparently in order to appease the iron lady at the helm of affairs, allowed the blinding cloth on its eyes to turn a blind eye to the pathetically suffering cause of common men, common men like me.

The Nyaymurtis, according to me, in my suffering judgment, appear like annyaymurtis without even a single moral ruffle in their souls. They gave a green signal to the bandwagon of politicians playing ping-pong with every type of constitutionality.

“The government has the power to do what it wants to do. We can't interfere with the judgment of the High Court in this matter.”

This is the summary of their happy chorus.

They don't seem to be prepared to ruffle political feathers for a little cause like giving justice to commoners. If they were so helpless in this matter, then why, in the name of God, did they entertain our SLP in the first place?

The sham show of fifteen long months could have been avoided. At least some of us, like me, perennial believers in the uprightness of the Honourable Supreme Court, would have been saved from further delay in charting our alternative plans to make a career.

This belief in the system of justice has boomeranged like a fatal, self-inflicted arrow through our ribs.

And where do I stand today?

Thirty years of age, yet to earn a single penny for my near and dear ones.

People will easily put my tray full of agonies in the dustbin by saying I should seek alternatives, or rather should have done so a long time ago. But what of the betrayal by the very same arm of constitutionality which is always portrayed as the keeper of your rights and dignity?

Where are my rights and dignity after all this nonsense at the highest level in the judiciary?

If the Honourable Supreme Court judges are recommended and appointed through a thoroughly political process, how can they—the poor human beings pretending to be gods, or nearly so—escape being shackled politically when the matters involved are related to the mammothly inflated egos of those who facilitated the ascension of a man from a lower judicial status to that of a judicial superman?

Why aren't there any clauses in the Constitution to put the errant judiciarywala behind bars like a criminal if proven guilty? They keep all the laws in their pockets. This fraternity to always protect, at any cost, their class interest has now spawned the gutter of illegalities ranging from bureaucrats and politicians.

Where is real justice in India?

It is a false play of justice. In reality, the political class has its unlawful say in the end through the grossest misutilisation of state resources.

They are too big boulders, bigger than the puny iron wheels of the dispenser of justice, which enjoys its worth and significance through its crushing, crunching, dusting forays over weak, fragile pebbles like me.

So, a big shame on the face of the judicial system. What else I can say after my decade long hard work being splashed into the gutter by powerful political forces? 

I now consider it just like any other petty government institution, always under the threat of being misused to settle political scores that crush the spirit of justice.

The macho man drunk with power and thousands of glasses of alcohol—I wish he were his own urine drinker like Morarji Desai—now rules in the coveted seat, claiming it as a political victory of his government over the Chautala government.

But in what way does Mr. Chautala suffer from the judgment?

In no way.

The Puffy Gullu can't even dare to touch the strongman of Jatland. So the poor liquor-guzzler, with a puffed, bloated face, joker-nosed, is having potshots at anything related to the past government. As a wronged citizen of India, seething with impotent rage, this is all I can do to keep my sanity -- call names like a cheap idiot. 

Whenever there is a rally in Haryana where his mai, his Italian mai, comes visiting, the poor idiot, the believer in feudal aristocratic democracy, fumbles for words, always falling short of ideas in the presence of Madam, his bones shaking with fear as if she will drop him from the throne for any miscalculation.

So the ever-cringing chief schemer at the state level presents her with gold-framed pictures of her late husband; ever singing accolades for the first politcal family to keep sticking to the hot seat. 

Put to smithereens by the storm, lashed by him, I cling to hope.

What hope can there be for me?

As the elections come near, I am left with no alternative other than becoming a full-time noisy worker of Chautala party.

The Honourable Supreme Court has allowed us to remain as poor footballs, being kicked from this side to that.

It would have been better had the Honourable judges dismissed the petition altogether. In that case, at least there would not have remained any further possibility for political kick-starting.

But as it is, it is one of the most depressing, ambiguous, vague, slightly open-ended judgments, leaving us at the mercy of a political shark who will play cat and mouse with us.