In
front of the main building those cars bearing blue license plate and
those distinct ones belonging to the Indians rolled in chauffeured by
emaciated-looking dark-coloured haggard people who lay in their
bright and clean uniform as some malnourished people in borrowed
clothes. Their anxious eyes below their lackey caps and the
discoloured unshaven faces atop the buttoned up uniform, and when
they stepped out in their oversized uniform as stick men in clothes
one could see their unpolished cracked felt or plastic shoes . The
colours of their uniform made them more indistinct.
Through
the opened doors emerging graciously were the obese middle-aged
people with creaky joints, ladies who had been starving themselves ,
and the last kind was the new generation which had been made familiar
and now more or less accustomed to intercontinental junk food, and
who ambled sweating and slightly tinged in known branded shoes,
slopping toward one side because of their physical imbalance. One
shouldn’t underestimate them, for this particular were attending
the best programme-installing schools in the country ,and soon they
would be flown out to be among those places for snot-faced people and
upon their return they would be seated in their reserved thrones and
chauffeured in to their inherited palaces to drive the country
towards a more global direction. In this drive there wouldn’t be
any adivashi , the ‘Maoists nuances’ were some ragtag who just
couldn’t grasp a global India, the Kashmiris and the
North-Easterners didn’t exist, for their coca-cola-soaked vision
were world apart from those nuances. Their justifications ,which came
out in a new language, would have to accepted because their
suave-looking supporters with stamps, which they called mandates ,
would just smack democratic desks with their Nike slippers to express
their unequivocal support.
The middle part of
the glazed tiled steps was below crimson carpet and it ran till the
centre of the foyer where a bronze globe was on the floor, as though
those who had come here should take a look and think of an
ever-growing Indian Empire. To the left was a counter manned by a
Sikh in blue uniform, when I swung my head round I could see bobbing
heads over a few metre-high wall ,and when swung further facing the
opposite direction the sight was that of a star hotel lounge with
paintings of landscapes on those brown thick walls ,and below the
huge rectangular framed paintings were the setees which could have
been mistaken for furniture belonging to the British monarch or some
extravagant czar.
From the manner in
which he was dealing with those elite people one could tell that he
had put an air suggesting he should be courted. The place was built
to dazzle the British monarch and her new loosely tied nations
founded on the flesh and blood of the natives. It virtually drained
the coffers and few siphoned off chunks to refurnish their empires
within this empire. So, this place designed by foreign architect and
built by the horny and cracked hands of those stick people in rags
with TATA spades and imported tools did attempt to dazzle and instead
of applause it was showered with mockeries. Those mockeries were too
much for the emperor’s governors’ to bear, it even shamed them
and compelled a dumb to speak. The degreed people with hard-earned
English proficiency grumbled and hooted their leaders and couldn’t
even sleep. But those migrant workers with horny and cracked hands in
ragged clothes enjoyed the privilege of not being bothered or dragged
into this dug out minefield created by the emperor’s governors.
When someone brought in the news to another temporary settlement on
another construction site they sniggered and dismissed the matter
with “they all are motherfuckers.”
To be continues..................
Comments
Post a Comment