"If this was any other democracy, by now the Prime Minister would have sacked the minister or the press would have hounded him. But then, this is no ordinary democracy. This is a Gandhian Democracy."
Pronunciation: di-'mä-kr&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
Etymology: Middle French democratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek dEmokratia, from dEmos + -kratia -cracy
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2 : a political unit that has a democratic government
3 capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the United States Democracy -- C. M. Roberts>
4 : the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
5 : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges
The newspaper column is a cry of anguish that underscores ' 5. the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges'. Where has this democracy taken us that in 60 years of freedom we cannot take our citizens and free them from hunger, illness, illiteracy? A single word describes them all...poverty.
It encompasses not those who suffer from the connotations of the word that flare up like an ulcer that refuses to wither away into oblivion. It encompasses those who are stricken with the poverty of ideas, a feeling for the fellow being who having slept a fatigued-with-hunger-drifting-to-death-now-and-drifting-back-to-life, wakes up to a dog snarling at the half eaten wheat pancake also known as roti tucked away last night in his dirty, patched single bag that carries all his world, for a morning meal as the sun rises on the pavement of his bed, now invaded. We watch the scene from our balcony, sipping our darjeeling and langorously flip through our colored-print fix eager to know who slept with who and got found out on page 3, all the while watching the almost macabre surreal drama being enacted right outside our gated commune with its walking tracks amidst lush green created-foliage circling clay courts for half-volleys and the blue-chill of a sparkling, glinting-in-sun-pool where we go to gorge on others spouses and ssssshhhh our pesky children who want to know if there are more like the spectacle that they see from above holding on to our, bought off the rack, silk pyjamas from Benares.
And we turn and stride with a purpose to the intercom and orally dress down Shatharam, the poor bugger whose misfortune it was to be there at that moment to service our every whim and fancy, waxing our just-imported Bugatti Veyron that can only be driven on a speed track but not over the potholes and sits there in its parking slot, gleaming and unused. We ask him to, " uss, bhikaari ko bhaga de, Shantha, varna teri naukri ki vaat laga duunga", blissfully unaware that for Rs.3500 per mensem, Shatharam gets to oil and massage the memsahib too, when we zoom away on our chauffered-company-ka-diya-hua-sadela-kaar to a ambience controlled work station that links us to our MyWorkSpace in cyber-abaaads littered all over the globe and housed in gleaming chrome-steel-glass forests of ever-gouting concrete, that line the horizon of a version of illusion called MyReality.
We live in denial. Denying our kids the real version, a la Siddharta and expect them to grow up real in a surreal world made by our poverty-stricken-bereft-of-ideas-implemetation government, peers, friends and those who populate our 3D world. We deserve the government that we democratically elect and get ruled by a minority which scoffs, ridicules and puts a girl in jail simply because her brothers have done a vanishing act and companies go scot free for having not done their jobs properly. We shrug ourselves away with the standard, 'saala ye poora system bakwaas hai' and motor away to our club to discuss the latest take over bid on MyCompany and the latest we have launched on that, ' arre woh toh ek choti si start-up hai aur koi direction nahi hai yaar, sab bacche hain, kam-se-kam ek Stake toh milega' in our gravel-ly voice warbling out from a parched throat quenched by the smooth downing of a bacardi with lime-soda as we glance over Mr.Kapoor's latest cutie with envious lust filled eyes making a connect with Mr Usman's philandering hag-just-returned from a hymenoplasty and a bust-job as she shows off her latest stud to her coterie of drooling, dripping-wet clefts.
We glide away to our commune at the end of a 'hectic-day-at-the-office-honey' and reach the same sorry man trying to sleep a sleep-fatigued-with-hunger-drifting-to-death-now-and-drifting-back-to-life, sleep on his antyast dreaming and waiting for his antyodya........
