Beaten Blues on the Anvil

It is December, 2009; the city Delhi. The not so glorious UPA 2 innings is almost six months old. People have broken Advani’s dream of becoming the Prime Minister of India. Sonia has got another four-and-half years to pull Italian-smart strings from behind the curtain and India is up to be ruled by the official political head who ‘never spoke’. For ten years the people will just wait and wait for the Prime Minister to speak, speak encouragingly, speak extempore because only then one sounds natural and appeals to the heart, and assuages the ruffled soul. But just like Sonia Gandhi reads her Hindi lines from the transliterated scripts in her white woman’s romanticised accent, her right or left hand man appears saying even ‘Thank You’ from the politically correct crisp note typed diligently for him to read out to the anticipating audience. Possibly India would love a speaking Prime Minister, so in the next term they will choose Narender Modi, who would at least speak to keep the struggling masses’ dreams alive.

Tea sellers do a nice business in Delhi during the winters. Around little-little tea stalls scattered around the metropolitan maze, down to earth people take hot sips of solace, gossip to their heart’s content, and contribute to the tea vendor’s seasonal upswing in fortune. Ram Lubhawan is from Bihar. Stocky and equipped with floral linguistic contours of Bhojpuri, he entertains people with his rural Bihar anecdotes as much as his tea melts the frigid fates lying like iron pallets in the souls of his customers, generally poor Bihari emigrants who work in factories, in security services, as peons in private offices, as rickshaw pullers, etc., etc.    

Ram Lubhawan’s witty rustic humour does not leave the usual cackling peals of laughter like it used to do six months back at the time of the parliamentary elections when they ‘the downtrodden’ people had ritualistically voted for the Congress like their forefathers had done since independence. Once again, terms after terms, in rote repetition of blued thumbs and dreamy hearts at the altar of the Indian Goddess, the democracy.

Anyhow, a political talk always rejuvenates. It might be a fact that our kitty of woes at the hands of our chosen governments just piles up like never before; still political discussions are taken so seriously by the people as if Indian democracy will crumble to pieces without their tongue-tiring part in it. So the smoggy, polluted wintery bride in Delhi is being welcomed by so many political bickerings.

Ram Lubhawan has become serious. Like any other man on the street he is afraid of an impending living-cost disaster. He along with his customers is convinced that if things are not controlled, the already polluted air in Delhi will become plainly suffocating for people like him who have to dig a well daily to drink water.

With a pining fart and gloomy heart a fat customer of his is muttering abusively. The cost of living has multiplied too fast, they agree. Yes, the common man is just groaning with the pain of almost unprecedentedly sky-high cost of living. Bus fare is high enough now to give this pinching feeling to any labourer that he/she is contributing to the infrastructural growth of Delhi just for free. The same people, the people on the street and roads—almost antagonised against the capitalist class, the class of well-to-do families supporting the BJP—are now just rubbing their hands with helplessness. Just six months ago they had come out so proactively to give the new iron lady another five years to further consolidate the first political family’s roots. The common man just wanted to define Indian democracy within the strictly defined loyalties to the Nehru family.

Anyway, the acceptance by the masses of the undisputed axial status of the First Family in Indian democracy meant the Prime Minister in waiting was not allowed to change his status. Now, after so much of polluted sewage has gone down the drains to merge the holy waters, the illusions are giving way to harsh realities. As they discussed their not so important woes to the higher world, Ram Lubhawan sees a pleasant smirk on the face of a rich sahib getting down from the safe confines of his big car. ‘It’s your government buddies!’ seems to be the message from his side. In a suffering tone a labourer is muttering, ‘Only if there would have been elections as of now!’ ‘Spare your voter fury for the next five years!’ the portly, safely rich fellow mused.

Wait for five years! Of course they will wait, but during these five years so many things will keep pending, the hijacked life, the frozen dreams, the hibernating fates. They have played their supposed parts in choosing a supposedly ‘people’s government’, but how the hell things will change for them. The very same things that change for so few almost daily and remain the same for these people around the tea stall for generations. ‘Five Years!’ Ram Lubhawan gets a jolt as the boiling tea in his pan puffs out a revolt and splashes out. A storm in the tea pan. A little stronger than a storm in a tea cup. A bit bigger storm in his heart now. His son wants to become an engineer. The famed dream of a poor Bihari emigrant’s son. Tuitions and tutorials are very costly. He has to save many dozens of thousands during the next four years, exactly the time remaining for his son to have a go at the entrance examinations. Pulled out of the discussion, he counts the customers around him.     

A Daily Pill of Digestive Karma

Just try to do one good deed per day. Hey, don’t worry; it’s not that classical preaching and all that. It’s just about one of the commonest thing coming your day on a daily basis. It can be just a coin given to a really deserving old beggar. Please forget about those stylish naysayers who will spew out millions of anti-beggary words and won’t do even a single deed to justify their theories. Forget whether your one coin will change the life of that person or not. All you need is a big heart and genuine sympathy. A coin given with respect to a fellow human being is far-far more valuable than a hundred rupee bill given with some inhibitions. The lesser fortunate will feel the humanism behind your gesture and reciprocate in equal measure.

Your daily good deed might even include sincere sympathy for someone in emotional turmoil. Just look around and you will find so many ways to fulfil your daily quota of a good deed. Believe me it will require so little from your financial, physical and emotional pockets. Just imagine billions of such little stars of goodness being lit in the lives of countless unfortunates. Don’t you think it will remove so many darker shades from the nooks and corners left out of the mainstream of progress? Give it a thought. Please forget about the larger perspectives. These are simply tiny means to escapism. If you are a real miser and are plainly helpless to dole out anything out of your daily scheme of things, still you can at least chalk out a genuinely good thought. Some say thoughts are things. For the real misers even thoughts will do. But as it can be safely assumed, if you can’t act honestly, how can you think with a pure heart. So be on the safer side and do a tiny Good Deed per DAY.

Delhi Noontide in November

Smog, slog and life on the winter's doorstep, that is Delhi in November. There is enough heat in India; the heat born of the loss of space and individualities; the heat born of many hands prying and praying to collect always deficient opportunities; the heat of summer; the heat of a society torn and pulled in different directions by equally strong forces of tradition and modernity.

Away from all this in the cooler climes of United Kingdom, he felt a sashaying sisterly spray on his face. As a Britisher he was always interested in India, and Delhi of all its places. First time in India, he had envisioned India as a former colony and its people carrying poverty-enforced brooding, agitating look. This day in November but gave him a surprise. With Western curiosity he could spot some traces of lilaceous glow on the people's faces even amidst all this cut throat crowd and teeming competition. His rosy white skin did not complain even though he was there under the open tropical sun. The winter has just starting spraying its aura around, he mused, his mind becoming more positive for the people and the surroundings. November was cool even in Delhi! He forgot all talks of global warming, pollution, dirty political snuggeries, traffic jams, disappointment on the cricketing field when his own home team lost to India, etc. The weather in November appeared to put the common man, the man in the arena of trials and tribulations of saving some grace to see through the day with life intact, on a strong wicket. The glow on common man was just like that was hallowed around numerous faces after witnessing yet another century by Sachin recently in a home series against his team on India tour. He had felt intimidated when thousands of cricket crazy fans went madder than the maddest whenever Sachin hit a century and he found himself lost in the stadium, lost like a drop in the ocean.

Delhi is chaotic. That was the predominant notion in his mind. Certain notions but were for a change this November day in Delhi. Doing a round of Connaught Place he saw that the colonnaded facades were up for some renovation. His spirit got uplifted and as a student of architecture he even felt obliged to the Indians for this effort. Far away from home, still pinched with niggling thoughts of his recent breakup from his girlfriend, he felt the colonial smirkness and efficacy still pervading in smoky, hazy noon slowly passing into the folds of a welcoming afternoon. Going around with a heart that was left injured and vacant after the separating storm in the café where he had said goodbye to the girl in London, his accommodating spirit now realized why despite so many metropolitan outcrops around, Connaught Place is still the heart of Delhi. He felt proud as a Britisher, for belonging to the people who constructed this beautiful architectural heart in the middle of all this chaos and which still throbbed with so much of life and aesthetics. In the fantastic maze turned up by the white colonnaded blocks time, history and efforts at modernity all stood captured in a mysteriously pervading easiness.

Elsewhere in the city, he had found four causes to mutter for a single cause of musing. Metro, yes...a massive collective reason for a bigger musing. Flyovers....again impressed him as he sauntered over in auto rickshaw without being stuck up for hours. However the wound in his heart was still fresh and he had the eyes to spot dirt cheap humanity scattered around below the flyovers. Kids, women, men....black, filthy, sick, torn and tattered dreams wandering in equal measure. The poor human souls left out of the gift of enjoying even the balmy effects of early winter. He had a deep look in the eyes of some young female beggar, and found a big chance for a beautiful life and persona wasted. Whom to blame? Looking at the faceless vault of the sky he asked again and again, ‘Why? If you can give so much to so few, then why not just common minimum for all of them!’ Anyway, disparities have teased us from the times unknown. He had to force this gloomy shadow out of his heart. He was here to cast out the pain in his heart by mixing in the exotic mess India has to offer. But India was giving him flashing moments of agonies and ecstasies. His auto had now fetched him to the Red Fort and he had to start fresh to appreciate its red-stoned architectural glory.   

 

From the Tiny Mirror of the Unseen Past

                            

It was the last week of October. The effusive mix of cool and hot, the coolness winning the lots in its favour to give healthy smirk on people’s faces. The Diwali festival was raising its celebratory hood with bang, smoke, splashes and splendour. We bombard, more than the firecrackers, each others with the messages of ‘Happy Diwali’. It is however another matter that in its modern avatar the great myth—the victory of the good over the evil—with its practical substance has been robbed of its true humanistic essence under the internecine attack of constantly aggravating pathos and passion of the modern generation. All those desirous of having a big bang in life get a suitable bombarding opportunity on this day. When people literally surpass each other in a mock war to split eardrums and leave the air polluted to the hilt, it is no longer in commemoration of the completion of that great task undertaken by Lord Sri Rama validating the eventually succeeding nature of the good over the evil. Most of the revellers in fact grin like the progenies in Ravana’s army. The meek mythological murmur is painfully pinched down by the evil’s fire-banging spirit lurking around on the rooftops on this darkest of the night in the year.

On this day, Lakshmi (the Goddess of wealth and prosperity) is worshipped and true to its nature the Goddess blesses a section of the trado-religious section of all the destitute head-bent humanity. These are the traders, entrepreneurs, people of enterprise and business. For almost a fortnight preceding the festival, bazaars, stalls in narrow streets, shopping malls, mega malls, shopping centres and sweet shops are tested to the capacity of their salesmanship. Festival enthused people just beat each other in taking the traders’ profit to a new, newer and newest pinnacle. During evenings the provisions and the prodigious Lalaji burst out of the narrow confines of the little shops and get adjusted on the stalls encroaching onto the narrow walkways among the beehives of shops. People just unmindfully bump into each other in the mass trail. Even vehicles baulk, screech and squeeze to have their mechanic share in the fun and funstry from the side of the machine world. Especially the ladies and girls attired for a festive outdoor in jeans, colourful tops, fancy salwaar kameez, flowing duppatas and trailing pallus hypnotically move along this logjam, their minds buzzing with indecision regarding what to purchase and what not. In between are the rangeela elements who frustrated and deprived of female proximity born of the famed sexual divide in India seek solace and scent females from the closest quarters, the world from porn movies giving them glimpses of what lies beyond this. Frustration taking sadistic sips from whatever chance bumps, pats on the buts, brush against the shoulder and even pinch at the most delicate parts have to offer.

The shop-fronts decorated with lighting patterns galore as the high temples of the great Indian mass-psychology driven consumerism. The firmly believing devotees meanwhile with wads of money in their wallets moving in a queue to shop mechanically like bottles get along on a conveyer belt to be labelled exactly the same. Truly the festival colours everybody in the same colour despite gravest of differences among all. The high priests meanwhile—the shopkeepers, hawkers, vendors—very expertly perform the plundering rituals of businessmanship. Market becomes the new Dharma. Its scriptural book has the pious injunction: Purchase as much as possible on Diwali eve even leading to your beggarly status during the non-festive days! Uncountable schemes, discounts, credits, cuts, offers and coupons make it seem like the modern ways of subtle pick pocketing! This great predatory peek in people’s wallets using the knife of market principles, using surgically clean and expert fingers by the hand of market consumerism! This is expert encroachment into the corridors of mythology to enlarge its market domain.

The sweet makers start storing the dish and delicacies weeks ahead for there will be a huge rush. Indians are paranoid in certain mass behaviour. For petty selfishness ranging from spitting, peeing on public places reaching to life threatening acts of food adulteration (like fake mawa, urea in milk, poisonous colours in sweetmeats) they behave as easily as just doing the early morning ritual, permitted, allowed both by nature and society. The perishable stale products are attractively packaged to go into religiously blinded guts. On Dhan Teras it is considered auspicious to buy gold and silver. The great myth propagated by the maker of the God, the Super God, the smart selfish mankind. More than any God, it is the jewellers who get propitiated on this day. Outside the glass fronted welcoming exteriors; exquisitely plush furnished interiors; under the glare of all those jewellery items lined almost from the floor to the ceiling, big bloated ladies and gentry religiously put budgetary caution to winds. They stab into their wallets to get finally a bit of pinch on their real skin. Here thousands do not matter. Outside a famished, sunken, skeleton of an old beggar is a pariah and they feel like getting a heart attack even at the thought of giving ten rupees to that unfortunate creature. ‘We do not support beggary,’ they simply quip and take to their smart heels.

A day before the pious night itself, the night of Diwali, there was an unseasonal rainstorm. It occurred at the worst time it can. It stole the festive glitters from the eyes of at least one community, the farmers. Basmati paddy just two weeks away from harvesting, with its grain heads bulging with the pearls of the farmer’s eyes and other varieties (like Sharbati, 1121) already under the process of harvesting, all and more got whiplashed suddenly by the weather spoilsport. Many farming dreams were broken.

The next morning the farmers found the crops flattened. They just got busy in using their mundane calculation abilities to estimate the scale of loss in monetary terms.

‘In the standing crop the loss isn’t much because the yellow traces had started. The grain has been completely formed,’ one quipped.

‘But still it is a big loss. All those grain-heads and spikes which get buried and get into contact with the damp ground will turn black. It’s at least 40% crop loss,’ the other protested. 

‘No no it’s too high. It cannot be more than 30%,’ the simple calculations went forth.

So the farmers debated about the loss. What else could be done? It is the irony with the farmer that both God and the market seldom get propitiated at the same time. They take turns to fuck the farmers’ fate. Just once in a cycle of let us say five years both God and the market bless the farmers concurrently to give them some monetary chance to help somebody go for long-pending house reconstruction, marry off a daughter waiting her dowry to be purchased, buy some long-dreamt electronic gazette, etc., etc.

With fluctuations in their loss figures, their participation in the great and glittering festival time market decorated in cities and towns went up and down. And during those three or four final hours of Diwali celebrations the victorious firecrackers ruled the sky. These were the stars creating a lower vault of human aspirations. With their flash, boom, burst and brilliance, they even puffed out the flickering, faded, silently smiling lamp far away by a poor threshold, a farmer who had possibly lost too much in the storm.                           

The Broken Dream

Well, let us start with a bit of his biographical sketch. It had indeed been a tough ride so far, but he believed that every perspiring step had not been without big-big revelations. ‘The greatness lies not only in achieving lofty targets, but in dodging the failure as well,’ he found himself convincing during those moments that pinched him with the realisation that he has nothing to show as a proof of his tireless efforts. He had been doing it so long that the contradictory thorns dividing success and failure had melted and he tried his best to believe in the Bhagwat Gita sermon that only karma, the selfless work, is supreme.

Everybody believed he had all that requires to become a civil servant, so driven by this belief, he just gave the peak years of his life preparing for the civil services. Civil services, the much coveted government job whose exam syllabus is so comprehensive, formulated under the supposition that it will enable the prospective civil servants to know something of everything, that most of the aspirants are seen tiring out their souls like the Bihari labourers in the fields. It is basically a battle to test ones stamina, of testing the brain’s brawny prowess. In one year of exam schedule, running through the prelims, mains and interviews, it catapults a tired bunch of almost intellectually spent aspirants to take the responsibility of implementing the policies formulated by semi-literate or even illiterate full-thugs, semi-rascals, quarter-criminals,  half-rapists, three-quarter-mafia. Afterwards these young educated males and females expertly learn how to keep their lives normal by becoming part of the ‘system’.

Like a bull pulling a heavily laden cart, almost mindlessly, uncomplainingly, taking it as the only option, with the head bent down, he also kept on moving on the path. By cramming as many things as possible he got interviewed once. The real dilemma but started when he came to face the bitter truth of having spent all his four chances, allowed to the general category candidates, in comparison to the double number of chances available to the reserved category, which finds these panicked young talented souls hating the candidates from the reserved castes for being pampered like this. However, this final fall in the Indian Civil Services was not before a praiseworthy interview call that saved him from the severe jolt of self doubt. In the coveted interview he got 110/300. He knew he had not done wonders like someone who got 250/300. This candidate surely must have broken all limits of human personality performance to get such a high score. But the affably puffed up persona of Mr P K Banerjee, the former defense secretary of India and the interview board chairperson, had other thoughts about his personality. The chairperson smirked, enjoyed each and every moment of his being in the coveted chair, laughed too much, and that perpetual enjoyment and froggy grin intimated the already scared guts of the village urchin.

All judgements apart, it brings to the forefront the main problem in the Indian recruitment system: unquestionable authority in the hands of the interview panel. Unfortunately it is more misused than getting good administrative officers. He was a village frog. With sheer labour he got 1082 marks in the written examination, a decent qualifiable score. Oofs, what range they have in the interview marks--110 to 250. It has all the potential to make or break anybody’s fate. How the hell one will cover up 140 marks?! Nursing his wounded spirit and in philanthropic ways presuming himself to be an intellectual in making, he even suggested the remedies to himself, ‘This all marks possible power in the hands of the interview panel is the chief cause of corruption and facilitation. Let it be made mandatory that the interview board cannot give less percentage marks than the candidate’s percentage in the written part. It will weed out most of the possibilities of misuse of chairs and shadowy recommendations.’ But who considers such unsolicited suggestions from unrecognised common heads.

The Provincial Civil Services (PCS) was available to keep the flame of the undying passion still alive. He belonged to Haryana. As all of us well understand, our choice of the PCS is just limited to the home state, because the way state public service commissions (SPSCs) function it is the open most secret in India. Well, in India most of the corruption breeds from the safe corridors of constitutionality. State public service commissions function as personal fiefdoms of the ruling party. The Chief Minster handpicks his cronies as office bearers to carry out his instructions without ever questioning anything in any regard.

It was Mr. Chautala’s government when he put up his well polished claim for the state civil services. Easily he crossed the hurdles to reach the interview stage with very high marks. But the all-sweeping powers of the interview panel saw him being rejected with just 28 marks out of 75. The chairperson and his cahoots seemed all eager to quash his confidence, possibly they had already prepared the final list, and his name not being there now it was the fruitless endeavour for him to seek out the best out of himself, and more fruitful for the interview board to bring the worst as some justification for himself to be rejected. But he was at his best that day and gave his supper-best. Still does one have any proof of performing good or bad in the interview except the word of mouth which is no proof in the eyes of the law? Just like he could say that he performed better than his 28 marks, the scholarly politician Mr. T C Bangar (who later became full time politician from Mr Chautala’s party) could very easily say he performed even worse than the marks that we gave him. In the eyes of the law the latter will be taken as more correct given his better stature in making this assessment. In the same batch, there were cases where candidates got as high as 70 marks.

Anyway, he learnt a few political lessons, so during the next recruitment, he knew exactly well how to go through the interview stage. But believe it or not, it did not involve any money going out of his already famished pockets. So, all cheers! He went comfortably home with an SDM rank and the future all bright. Everybody knew that nobody deserved to have his/her say in any type of favour done to him, because he thoroughly deserved the post. The destiny was but darkly chuckling because he was one of the 102 candidates of the ‘deer’ fame pitted against the ‘lions’ as we saw in Lion and Deer of the Social Jungle.

However, like Mr. Chautala proposed, Sonia’s Wazir, Mr. Hooda, in Haryana disposed with equal relish. Before he could join, the central government had the chief election commissioner of India dashing down to Chandigarh, announcing state assembly elections, putting all appointments on hold under the election code of conduct. And during this time, the type of wanton drama played by the Governor, state principle secretary and everybody else, it does not even deserve to be narrated to the civilized beings like the readers because it will further erode their trust in such high chairs. The Congress came to power in the state. Elsewhere in India, Sonia Gandhi had already started pulling strings from behind the curtain: the sage of the great Italian puppeteer and the made-to-dance economist Prime Minister.

His appointment denied and after entering the precincts of Punjab and Haryana high court he realised what a powerful entity the state is. It is a big behemoth. The way proceedings were monopolised in the court it made him feel helpless and victimised by the same state that was constitutionally obliged to protect his rights as a law-abiding Indian citizen. But here he was paddling like a skinny dog, trying with his meagre financial resources—the candidates continuously pooled money to get the best advocates for their case—to beat the mighty power and reach of the state. Is judiciary fair? He always had doubts. But with each day, the realisation dawned how fascistically the system of justice works. Who appoints the judges in the first place? Directly indirectly the politicians hold the strings of the puppets dancing on the judicial stage. Each day for a talented unemployed youth is torturous. Here after spending hundreds of thousands all they got was a few minutes stay in the house of justice. For two years the Lord of Justice did not even open its ears to their ever increasing clamour for justice. And then the verdict came, it had all the loopholes to make them sit out of employment for as long as possible. They went to the Supreme Court, lost without much noise, safely and silently. He had no hesitation in harbouring seditious thoughts that like the state high courts are playing puppets to the state governments, the citadel in Delhi is also always under the influence of the central government. After all who appoints and promotes the judges at all levels. It’s just a well oiled machinery of mutual benefits, that’s all…nothing else.

Mr. Chautala had been wrong in installing his stooges in the HPSC before being voted out of power, because many board members were made to resign just in the middle of their term and new faces installed in fresh chairs to sit for the next six years while the other government ruled. So when Mr. Hooda came to power he found a board full of the members with terms for the next 6 years. One unconstitutionality gave rise to another. The new iron lady of India easily got the ever-convenient Lady President to issue a notification suspending all the HPSC members. Meanwhile, while all these stronger wheels clanked on the high road of power, ego and what not, the candidates’ poor heads rolled in the tar and clinker of the pot-holed dusty common road.

The Congress said Mr. Chautala had manipulated the selection process. However, the ever vigilant state vigilance team looking into the case did not find the tangible proofs of the earlier government’s misdoing even after best of its efforts and they just continued eating more and more time. His soul silently asked them what you have been doing all these five years. For one wrong of Mr. Chautala you have ended up doing tens. In both supreme and high courts, the government of Haryana gave the plea that it had not any vacancy to accommodate the new batch. But see what they did. In a suitable month of the same year, they put up the notification for fresh recruitment. Wasn’t it the contravention of their own pledge to the court that they do not have any vacancies? Who cares, because the state cannot be wrong! The batchmates went to get a stay on the fresh recruitment because it was contrary to what the government had pledged in the court that there were no vacancies. And if at all there were vacancies then this duly selected batch should be given priority and allowed to join because the government had failed to present any proofs of malpractices in the recruitment process. But the great legal luminary—having the infinitely open-ended space to write anything suitable for whatever ends he might deem fit—just smartly said no, the government can do as it likes.

Now Mr Khattar from the BJP is at the helm of the affairs. Three governments; three majestic eras in the political history of three political parties; and just one dark endless night in the lives of hardworking candidates who are now moving towards middle age with a broken dream. The new Chief Minister can just walk over the issue, claiming he or his government are not a party to the issue. Moreover, there must be so many in his party almost dying to get their wards selected as PCS officers feeling left out and cheated for so long. The government also must be itching to put some lame duck members in the HPSC to work as their recruitment facilitators.

Now, having robbed of a decade of his penance for the civil services cause, he slogs out in the private sector. His pain is unbearable because as an educated and law-abided citizen of this country he always had this notion—born of his bookish knowledge—that state is there to protect his interests and courts are there to save his skin from the larger forces. He but stands robbed of this fundamental belief. It’s not just a matter of losing a job; it is the matter of losing one’s identity as an empowered citizen of an independent country. Now when he slogs out in most crowded buses, where getting a foothold is as precious as getting bonus from the government, he certainly doesn’t feel like an average country-loving Indian. He feels like an emigrant in his own land. He refuses his office colleagues when they try to put the tricolored flag on his desk on the occasion of Indian Independence Day. He even feels sorry about it. However it is his tiny revenge against his own state. Somehow, when terrorists strike against the state in any part of India, against all his wishes and rebukes by sanity, he finds himself groping for the causes why they are doing this, not being able to condemn it as an outright act of blatant violence.

Sorry, but it’s as natural as this. Just wanted to say something about him. Thanks if you have borne the trouble of bearing with this little story brow-beating the cause of a common Indian! All in all it’s just a terribly manipulated democracy in India, manipulated by our own stronger brothers and sisters. Like him I also feel that we might be just puppets dancing on the make-believe stage while the real game is behind the scene.