THE DIARY OF AN UNREASONABLE MAN Page 8

  ‘I will let it go if he does. Everyone has their two bits to throw in, how the police should work, how the government should function …’ Akram sullenly muttered.

  ‘Don’t we elect the honourable men in white that your department runs around night and day to protect and serve?’ Pandey shot back.

  ‘You sure do … you’re in control … yes, yes … nothing would happen without our Mr Pandey here …’

  ‘Shhh …’

  ‘Let me speak, this man ought to be put in his place.’

  ‘You have to see this.’ It was Arjun, the little helper boy at the chai stall. He was pleading with everyone around him to pipe down and look at the television.

  There was something different playing.

  Everyone’s attention was drawn to the little screen up in the corner.

  ‘What? What happened?’ they asked him.

  ‘Look at the TV!’ he insisted.

  Akram was the first to realize what was going on.

  On the screen there was a chair in front of a plain white wall. On the wall was a banner. The banner read ‘The Anarchist Project’, in bright red on a black background. A traditional Rajasthani puppet, the kind you see on the road almost every other day lay motionless on the chair.

  ‘Turn it up! Turn it up!’ they shouted to Arjun as he scrambled to place a chair in front of the television, in order to reach for the volume button. He succeeded, nearly tipping over and falling in his excitement.

  This is you, my friend. This is what you look like …

  A loud booming voice took over the airwaves, the recording quality was not fantastic, and there was a minor hiss in the background.

  We hate to interrupt this broadcast. We’re sure the dancing and singing will resume soon after we’re taken off air.

  We must get this communiqué through in time.

  I represent the Anarchist Project. You may have heard of us in the news recently…

  The puppet rose and stood in the chair. He raised his hand and the camera zoomed in on him.

  For long the iniquities of the government and the media have played their tricks on us. For far too long have we been subjected to the strategic subjugation campaign carried out by the powers that be.

  ‘I can’t believe it. Those bastards are on bloody television!’ exclaimed Akram as the screen showed a white gloved hand controlling the puppet as it started its dance.

  We’ve been programmed to think in certain ways by sources that aren’t even fully aware of their potential and are usually being used without them knowing it.

  ‘Shhh …’

  Akram stepped out of the tea shop and stared at the busy road. He saw some bewildered people huddled around the television sets in the shop across the road.

  ‘We’ve got to put an end to this. Arjun beta, what channel is it?’

  ‘Now 95, sir.’

  ‘Thanks. Now keep watching it. The show’s about to change.’

  Steel in his veins he began a determined walk towards his bike, pulling out his walkie-talkie and requesting backup. He wanted the entire Mumbai Police to descend upon Now 95’s offices all over the city.

  His burgeoning belly wobbled in his haste. The vibrations of his motorcycle didn’t help.

  ‘Must start exercising more regularly …’

  His friends from the chai stall watched him with interest as he sped off.

  ‘Good luck, Akram bhai!’ some shouted.

  ‘He won’t catch them. They’ll be long gone.’ Pandey sniggered.

  ‘But the broadcast is still on, maybe he’ll make it in time.’

  ‘I hope he doesn’t!’ a tiny voice from the back sparked up. It was Arjun, smiling sheepishly with a glint in his eyes.

  The broadcast boomed louder, a neighbouring mechanic had opened his garage and put the channel on his loudspeaker.

  The one thing that has forever held man to ransom by means of his own pathetic desires is greed. The one intrinsic flaw that has driven him to folly since time immemorial is his own restlessness.

  Fake monopoly money fluttered down on the puppet as he moved from side to side, trying to catch the notes. Unsuccessful, he sat down on the chair, tired and defeated. He started to hit his head with his wooden hands. The loud knocks made by the hands connecting with the head were picked up by the microphones and could be heard.

  Today the media, your government, your friends and your family are all helpless, hapless tools of a system that stokes wants and ignites a passion for this restlessness. Recognition, respect and even retribution come in units of things and items that we can possess. We’ve got magazines, advertisements, billboards and movies telling us what we want. We’re told what to desire and we’re repeatedly told where to get it.

  It is time, my fellow citizens of this market of a nation, to hear a counter opinion. It is time to balance the streams of bullshit that are fed to us every hour of every day.

  We don’t need them. We don’t need their system. We don’t need entire lives to be based on the pursuit of that car. It is ridiculous that a means for transportation is such a status symbol. It is sad that things embody our aspirations. It is unfortunate that we believe things alone will make us happy. What we do for these things is even worse.

  Sirens accompanied the broadcast as a sea of khaki-clad warriors marched into the channel’s office. All the exits were blocked off; armed policemen with their weapons at the ready stationed themselves at every conceivable exit. Other television channels’ crews arrived and general disorder swept across the busy streets, bringing traffic to a standstill.

  Akram had parked his bike at the rear entrance. He panted up the stairs, expecting a gunfight with the evil dung-slingers.

  It is to counter the relentless restlessness manufacturers that I, with my compatriots, led an assault on the recent SHB car launch at the Pirelli Towers on the 23rd of June.

  There will be more such actions, to show our brothers and sisters that greed must be defeated. There is more to live for. We will systematically attack and paralyse the system; we will choke it with its own fodder. We will feed it till it bursts.

  The camera now zoomed in towards the banner. The words ‘The Anarchist Project’ were spread across the screen.

  We would like to clarify that we are not affiliated to any party. We don’t belong to any organization.

  We are you. We are your angst. We are your Anarchists. We will be heard.

  Akram led his men in, checking every room as they inched closer and closer to the row of programming rooms inside the channel’s broadcast headquarters.

  They were met with the sight of a middle-aged man. His shirt was half tucked into his pants, and he seemed exhausted.

  ‘It’s locked, sir, there’s no way to enter the room. We tried breaking it down and entering but didn’t succeed. They might be armed.’

  ‘Which room, where are they?’

  ‘PCR 2, it is down this way,’ he pointed back.

  ‘Take us there. Why haven’t you cut the broadcast? Cut the power … cut the damn power.’

  ‘We can’t, sir, that would disrupt all the other channels that we are supporting.’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘My bosses don’t want to be sued for paid airtime by every advertiser.’

  He was helpless. He looked like he had tried everything.

  Akram and his men doubled their speed, thanks to the flustered employee. He was quite worried.

  ‘I hope she’s okay.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Shahnaz, it was her shift that they hijacked. It was a chunked show of film trailers. Everyone else is at Ms Shankaran’s recording in PCR 1.’

  ‘Ms Radha Shankaran?’ They walked briskly down the corridor as he led them.

  ‘Yes, Radha Shankaran is in the building, she’s still singing in there. I saw it all … I was in PCR 2 with Shahnaz the whole time. I just walked out to take a leak and when I came back, they were on air and the door was locked,’ he concluded piteously. The hand-wr
inging was the ultimate touch.

  ‘I’m going to lose my job over this … we’re all going to get fired …’

  ‘We’ll take care of it. Advani, please take this gentleman to safety. Sir, calm down.’

  The communiqué had ended a few minutes ago. The silence in the long corridor was interrupted only by the trotting sound of hard boots hitting the ground. The trotting ceased. The stillness of the programming room was deathly.

  ‘Come out with your hands in the air,’ shouted Akram.

  ‘We promise not to hurt you, you are under arrest!’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Come out, you coward! Bloody prankster … two-bit crook out to save the world!’ Akram was giving it his all.

  ‘Sir, I think it’s a soundproof room …’ suggested Mukherjee, Akram’s trusted junior.

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘We’re coming in.’

  With that they began breaking the door down. Large pieces of furniture had been placed in front of it, blocking entry to the room even after the door had been broken in.

  ‘What the hell is going on? Remove it all.’

  Mukherjee and the other policemen went to work. They struggled with the door, the couch, and the table and finally made their way into the main soundproof chamber.

  There lay Shahnaz sprawled over the Vision Mixer, her head down on it.

  ‘They aren’t here, the bastards got away!’

  ‘Check on the girl, is she okay?’

  ‘She’s breathing, looks like she was drugged, sir!’

  ‘Bastards!’

  The dejected policeman scanned the room only to realize that the emergency fire escape window had been smashed open. Shards of dark glass lay strewn about on the floor and through the window you could see the landing for the fire escape ladder.

  ‘We’re too late.’

  13. THE FIRE PRIOR

  ‘You do realize that this is dangerous?’ I said.

  ‘I do,’ she snapped.

  ‘Are you sure you want to be in on it? We could break in and do the needful.’

  ‘That would be even more dangerous, Pranav, and unnecessary too. Do you want my help or not?’

  ‘Of course, I do.’

  ‘Then it has to be done this way.’

  She was a brilliant accomplice, my dear old friend and by far the bravest woman I knew. It was Shahnaz to the rescue, all the way. She had it all worked out; a well-timed alteration in the close circuit television system, some insane toiling with furniture followed by an act of self-intoxication that most WWF wrestlers would shy away from.

  ‘You don’t have to do anything, just pass me the minitape and adapter well in time.’

  ‘And the liquid.’ Abhay was fidgeting about.

  ‘Yes that too, make sure the bottle doesn’t leak in my bag, there will be traces otherwise. I may also faint on my way there.’

  ‘Listen to Agatha here!’ I turned to Abhay as he smiled.

  I wrote and rewrote the piece for the communiqué. Somewhere along the way it became our communiqué. I liked that there were people willing to go the distance with me.

  ‘Do you want to burn the puppet in the video and film it at the end?’ she joked.

  ‘For what? We’re trying to free him, not kill him,’ I sneered.

  ‘For drama, Pranav, drama!’

  Asking her for help in the beginning was not easy. First she laughed at the thought that we were the Anarchists.

  ‘You guys?’

  ‘I would never have thought, Mr Expensive Ad-exec and Captain Chemical would do anything but sell Swarovski or pollute God’s green earth.’

  ‘I swore off the Swarovski pretty early in life … was just looking for some purpose and realized I had it with me ever since I was a teen. Captain Chemical here is coming in handy as he is.’

  ‘Hmm, I never thought he’d be able to do what he wanted … Anyway you both used to talk a lot about mad schemes like this!’ Abhay justified.

  ‘Good to see you’re getting into it now,’ she snickered.

  ‘He still talks a lot,’ Abhay observed, with a solemn look in his eyes.

  ‘I bet he does, our man invented his own language when we were what … eight?’

  She had been my friend since the time we used to climb trees and play in parks. We had our own special language, even a form of karate that was unknown to the rest of the world; until we realized how lame we were.

  She read the announcement to herself.

  ‘Tone it down a bit.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Not the message, the language. You want to be understood by everyone, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a very wide range of people that tuned into her channel. Their TRPs were through the roof. The slot was ideal for hooking up with a massive audience.

  We just needed to be careful and to squeeze in our material at the right moment. At first I was unsure if she could manage that. I was also a bit worried about getting her involved in general, but all my doubts were put to rest by her disarming confidence and intrepid determination.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she assured us. …This is what I would like to say on air myself!’

  ‘I had no idea …’ I smiled knowingly.

  ‘Yeah, I would probably get fired the same day. We’re practically going to get away with murder here, if all goes well.’

  ‘Well, that’s an inane thing to say. What could possibly go wrong?’ said Abhay smugly.

  Fortunately, it didn’t.

  14. JAMES BROWN KNOWS THAT I FEEL GOOD

  ‘I didn’t know what was happening, he just came up from behind me and before I knew it there was a hanky in my face. I can still smell the terrible fumes … my back up had just gone to the bathroom …’ Shahnaz gripped her throat and coughed, her agony was real. Seated on a hospital bed, she answered the policeman’s queries as best she could.

  ‘It was chloroform, crude, possibly home-made. Did you get a look at him, his hands, his clothes, anything?’ Akram growled.

  ‘No, no I didn’t. He wore gloves though, they were white surgeon’s gloves.’

  ‘Yes, we found them in the dustbin next to you.’

  ‘They must have been waiting outside for an opportune moment, to get in and play their video,’ she pondered aloud.

  ‘Did anyone catch a glimpse of them? As they escaped or entered … anything?’ Her honest eyes were moistening. Her basic theatrical prowess came in handy.

  ‘No. Strangely no one saw anyone suspicious come through. We’re looking into it. Even the close circuit televisions are not showing any unidentified people. It’s really baffling.’

  ‘Crooks,’ she pronounced, gravely.

  ‘They broke the large window in the waiting area in your office.’

  ‘Oh, they must’ve gone out through it …’

  ‘Right.’ The policeman stared down at the green linoleum floor, lost in thought.

  ‘Did they say anything to you?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘No … at least I don’t remember anything.’

  ‘Lastly, ma’am, do you know of anyone who might be capable of this?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, is there someone you suspect? We’re just trying to figure out why they chose your channel … and your show.’

  ‘We have a lot of viewers … Mr?’ she said, proudly.

  ‘Akram.’

  ‘Mr Akram. I don’t know anyone capable of doing this stuff.’

  ‘Thank you. We hope you feel better soon.’

  ‘Thank you. I hope you catch them.’

  They left despondently. Shahnaz smiled to herself.

  ‘What a dump. I hate hospitals!’ she stared up at the tube lights above her bed.

  ‘But a girl can change …’ muttering the American sitcom cliché to herself, she curled up in her blanket.

  A nurse entered the room and asked, ‘How are you now, Shahnaz?’

  She just slept calmly. In
her head James Brown was singing about how good he felt.

  I too lay resting in my apartment. The view from my bedroom had never looked better. I nodded off and fell into a deep dream. It was a sincere dream. I wafted through the air on a busy road, watching people around me. Everyone shouted out to me.

  ‘I hear you!’ they cheered.

  They pulled a cart behind them. There was an enormous, beautiful white horse on top of it. This was no Trojan. It was a real horse. It’s gorgeous mane waved in the sunlight as the gentle wind lifted it and made it bounce. The people in front of the cart toiled on. The beast on board neighed and blew out from its cavernous nostrils. On either side of the path were long stretches of undulating green meadows.

  ‘We hear you!’ they shouted.

  One by one, they started stepping back from the cart. With a look of relief on their faces they moved to the side of the path. The horse on the cart stood unmoving.

  It was a beautiful requiem in anticipation of the changes we all wanted. I smiled in my sleep, as I felt my self-esteem return.

  15. GREEN IS THE COLOUR OF LOVE

  ‘Do you mind carrying one of these bags? I’m carrying all of them and they weigh a ton,’ Abhay whined.

  ‘Hold on, I’m trying to figure out the best route to take.’ I was pondering over a map.

  ‘My hands are hurting.’

  ‘Let’s stop for a bit then, put the bags down.’

  ‘Didn’t he draw you a map with his favourite places?’ The scorn in his voice was evident.

  ‘As far as he’s concerned, there is no official record of these places.’

  ‘I suppose they don’t have a filing system for sources of bribes.’

  ‘They should! Since it’s such a widely accepted “we don’t know you exist, you don’t come out of this place” policy.’

  We stopped below one of the lamp posts that lit up the roadside with their pale orange light.

  ‘Now that’s the way to Mariana Street.’ I gestured towards my right.