SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

I pity them. Maybe you should do the same. If you believe in a god reclining on a chaise lounge with a Dell laptop on chest, smugly browsing the integrated data base of humans and eagerly intervening in our mundane affairs (like bumping of your enemy, paralyzing your smart colleague, making the world dowry-averse while your daughter gets married and producing social-scientists clamoring for dowry when it is your son’s turn, and so on), go to the nearby church, burn a few votive candles, kneel and pray. It is doubtful gods are going to take heed and act. You know, they have their own troubles. Many are irascible and fickle when women—yes, the seed of sin and temptation is everywhere—appear on the arena. Singing, dancing, coquetting. Many rishis in India have experienced, to their disbelief and embarrassment, the presence of a sticky thick liquid on their inner garments on seeing these unholy creatures. Of course, it is a moot point whether gods and sages wore briefs. Lawrence Ferlinghetti writes “The Pope wears underwear I hope.”(Watch it on www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8KnMigLGZc). Hopefully we will have an answer in the form of a doctoral thesis like ‘A Priori Self Kenosis: Hyper fragmentation and intertextual (de)politicization of intimate sartorial materials’, spewed forth by a research scholar in English language and literature, most probably from the University of Calicut.

With gods minding their own numerous affairs we have left with little choice and leeway. Look at them. Pudgy and crusty, wrapped in well-pressed uniforms, riding in college buses, hanging identity cards, standing near the Principal shaking and shivering like an autumn leaf when he wills to browbeat, defer to the ‘superior’ knowledge of teachers even though you are damned sure they are little better than chumps. Never mind. In five years you are engineers and doctors though your chances of paying back the heavy donations dear dads with long pockets to get you admitted to these colleges are bleak. Some pretentious intellectuals argue you are a cankerous cancer to the society as you are going to be sought-after professionals simply because of the financial muscles your dads (and moms, at times) were able to flex. They are truculent and need to be dealt with. Such arguments and allegations, we know, are perfectly preposterous, groundless, unfounded and unjustified. By rolling out wads of currency to secure admission to professional colleges, you have actually stimulated the local economy to unprecedented peaks and the future would be indebted to you. Who knows how yet-to-come-and-go generations will remember you?

In fact despite the craps bleated out by our bearded intellectuals, you are our blue-eyed sons, daughters, nephews and nieces. We love you. If common men are not alive to the fact, our student organizations are. The emerging leaders make sure strikes and demonstrations are kept at bay in such a college. You have paid and if you don’t get the right to learn, what is the point in our continuing to call ourselves politicians? But remember all you can aspire is to land some jobs in an MNC. And all the MNCs are crumbling down, you know, like the W.T.O. did in 2001. So there is no threat of western capital finding a way into the fabric of our society and demolishing our culture. Then there is no harm in your sitting tight, mugging things up, scoring high grades, performing well in a GD and even getting a job. All these things are fruits of temptations strewn by the MNC Satan—just like our great forebears were talked into sin by the diabolical creature years and years ago—to lure us. That is why we make sure you are immune to strikes. To make sure the human resource pool of all big shots consist exclusively of young men and women hatched from self-financing colleges, we vigilantly watch students from other institutes and keep them on track. So we interrupt classes in government colleges and schools, at least once a week. If managements are willing, we make sure there are no classes in aided institutes too. We admit some colleges have remained closed for weeks and though rarely for months. But comrades, never forget, the path to equality is tough like the narrow path to the heaven where Urvasi and Rambha twist and turn their bodies in front of our vacillating sadhus!