Months after the article was published, the C Party won key state elections and handed over Orissa’s bauxite mines to more favorable industrialists. The party rewarded Lakshman for his services by securing him a position as an MD in an international media conglomerate.
Three weeks after Gautam’s article came out — in London and in Delhi — a Criminal Bureau of Investigation probe was launched. My name came up during the investigation, but I’d long since made it abroad with my Indian pie dog. Ashok Kumar was arrested and caged in Tihar for a few months, where he was allowed to bathe in milk on Sundays. He was of course freed.
In the days immediately after the article’s publication, newspapers printed gushing obituaries about its author, referring to Gautam as “one of India’s finest young minds.” Delhi’s intelligentsia lamented his tragic death over kebabs and mojitos for a few months. Then they forgot he’d ever existed.
The scam
by Tabish Khair
Jantar Mantar
A little Turd sits outside the metro exit closest to Jantar Mantar and offers to polish your shoes when you leave the cool, clean interior of the underground for the smog and heat of the pucca-baked roads. You say no, having little time for Turds of that sort and because your boy-servant has already polished your shoes twice this morning, once of his own volition and once because you were not satisfied. So yes, you say no, and plunk, the little Turd has deposited a real piece of turd on your shoes. Oh, you do not see him do it, but where else does real turd come from if not from little Turds like him? See, see, saar, says the Turd, speaking Ingliss to you because he can see that you are the type, not phoren but polished. See, see, saar, he says. Ssuu durrty.
The little Turd has made a mistake. Just because you are polished does not mean that you only speak Ingliss. You slap him on the head, twice. It is a language he understands. You thrust your shoe out to him, and say in Hindi-Ingliss-Punjabi: Saaf karo, abhi saaf karo shoes, harami, and you add a few choice gaalis in Punjabi which need not be put down on paper. If you had not added those gaalis, the little Turd might have raised a racket. But he is convinced he has made a mistake. He was fooled by your patina, like those Spanish adventurers were once fooled by the shine of the copper on the Indians in America: What glittered on you was not gold. The little Turd realizes his mistake. He is a quick learner. You have convinced him in two expressive local languages: Punjabi and Slapperi.
He wipes your shoe with a rueful pout. Then as you turn to leave, he cannot resist the question. He is still intrigued. He needs to place you. Perhaps he maintains a record of his mistakes. He is a professional, just as much as you or anyone else in Delhi these days. So he asks you with a comic salaam, still in Ingliss, Vaat you do, saab, vaat job-vob, saar?
You have won this battle. You are in an expansive, forgiving mood. You decide to answer him, and mention your profession.
Repoder? Jurnaalis? he says.
Then he shakes his head, as if that word explains his mistake. Jurnaalis, he repeats. Jurnaalis. Repoder.
The street outside Jantar Mantar is a favorite haunt of journalists. Next to the nineteenth-century observatory, there are broad sidewalks, and these broad sidewalks often host impromptu protest groups. Sometimes for months. There is one occupied by victims of the Bhopal gas leak. They have been sitting there, on and off, for at least a few years, down to five or six people now, mostly ignored by journalists. A much larger group, bathed in camera flashes, belongs to the Narmada Bachao Andolan. They are an intermittent fixture on this road, and because their champions include celebrities like Arundhati Roy, they attract media flashlights once in a while.
Actually, they are the reason why that little Turd doing his supaalis-and-turd-on-shoe scam made such an error of judgment when staff reporter Arvind Sinha of the Times of India exited from the metro. Reporter Sinha has long harbored a crush on Arundhati Roy. Hence, he had dressed up with extra care this summer morning and left his Bullet motorcycle behind to avoid the blackening traffic fumes, before doing his round of the Narmada Bachao Andolan protest. Not that it is going to be noticed. The famous Roy is there, but too uninterested in her fame to give interviews, let alone be whisked away for a fawning chat in one of those three-, four-, five, and probably-more-star hotels around the corner.
So, after jotting down the day’s press declaration in his spiral notebook, and pocketing the day’s press release, Repoder Sinha heads for one of the four-star restaurants on his own. The Sangharsh Morcha had announced a press meet there, and now that Sinha is here he might as well look in, collect the releases, and, hopefully, guzzle down a cold beer or two. On the way, he notices that a new tent has come up at the corner of Jantar Mantar: It bears the obligatory banner stating, Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied, in English. There is no one under the tent — a rickety affair, broad enough to hold four or five people at most — so Repoder Sinha cannot inquire about the nature of the justice that has been delayed or denied, though it is doubtful that he would have stopped to do so anyway.
Past the revolving glass doors of the restaurant, in the air-conditioned, potted interior, Sinha spots the table reserved for the press meet by the Sangharsh Morcha. Not much of the press has met. Apart from Sinha, there are only two other reporters, one of whom is actually the editor of his own newspaper and, it is rumored, subsists on the beer and snacks offered at such meets. Handouts are handed out, appropriate noises are made over soda and lemonade — it appears that the Sangharsh Morcha has a Gandhian aversion to alcohol, which might also explain the low turnout of reporters. Just when Sinha is about to sneak away from the rather drab press meet, the room is visibly brightened by the entry of two women.
Two very different women. Sinha knows one of them: Preeti, who works for one, or probably more, of those internationally visible NGOs. The other is a sturdy blonde wearing a kurta and jeans. Preeti is wearing a kurta and jeans too, but while the blonde looks tired and sweaty, Preeti, like all women of her refined class (at least to Sinha’s working-class eyes), never looks ruffled or unkempt. Sinha has seen women like Preeti step out of forty-five-degree heat in July without a bead of sweat on their foreheads, no sign of a damp spot under their armpits. He suspects that their air-conditioned cars offer part of the answer to the riddle of their unruffled coolness, but there are moments when he feels that they are another breed, a superior subspecies that has evolved beyond bodily fluids and signs of discomfort.
Preeti spots Sinha and, ignoring the others, launches into the kind of direct speech that, Sinha suspects, is also part of the evolutionary progress of her subspecies. For God’s sake, Arvind, she says, what are you reporter-veporters doing here in this fake palace? There are two dharnas just outside, near Jantar Mantar.
Been there, Preeti, replies Sinha...
Not the Narmada one — Preeti is too radical to espouse specific causes — there is another one. From near some Tikri village in Bihar, where there has been a caste atrocity which has not been reported by you guys.
If it has not been reported, it has not happened.
Oh yeah? Ask the woman sitting there and her cute little son. They have experienced it. Father killed, uncles chased away...
Just two? A woman and a child?
Both Preeti and her foreign friend nod in affirmation.
A scam then, pronounces Sinha. Look, Preeti, these days you cannot have a caste atrocity without a couple of politicians turning up to squeeze the last drop of political mileage out of it. If it’s just a couple of people, it is a scam. Another way of begging...