The Prime Minister
a serial novel
 

by Rattan Mann
 
 
 
 

Tatyana Kuzntesova -- Amberland

	Web www.oraculartree.com

Preface

This novel was started more than twenty years ago in 1977 in Sweden, "continued" in India and Norway, and finally "finished" in 1994 in Lappland, among the great Lapp people, with finishing touches in Greece and Romania the next year, and final touches in the United States, and after I undertook a pilgrimage to Sri Lanka and prayed to Lord Kataragama that with his blessings and grace, the novel be finished at last. 
 
 

Hindi Terms

Lulu: is a useless nut who can never get anything straight. It is not a name in the usual sense.

Chachi Jaan: is a more respectful term for aunty. Chacha and chachi mean uncle and aunty and Jaan, meaning life, adds more honour to the term. It means "aunty, my life". It is not a name in the usual sense.

Jhuggis: are shanties in a shanty-town, and jhuggi-wallas are those who dwell in the jhuggis. 
 
 
 

Dedication: To Rashmi who is still too young to understand fully how her uncle can love her more than Maria. And to Maria who did not live long enough to see how her dad's works have finally started to tumble out of his closet.
 
 
 
 

"Where would you like to be shot?" they asked him.

"Anywhere except in the heart," the nut replied.

So they shot him in the heart.

"Till the last day of his life this idiot could not call a spade a spade, and a club a club. Everything was a heart to him. No wonder he lost the game. If he had given a more sensible answer he might have lived a little longer. “Who knows, the President might even have pardoned him," said the little hero, the leader of the mock firing squad, amazed that already at this young age, he could accomplish so much with so little - kill two birds with one stone, enjoy a game and kill a man by merely twirling his fingers into the shape of a mock but smoking gun.

But it was no game for the idiot. It was all very real to him. He really fell into the gutter.

Thick bubbles of dark mud, mixed with human and animal excrement, began to rise from the bottom of the sewage and cover him from head to toe like an army of black cockroaches on a food-gathering expedition. An intolerable mixture of stench and stink rose in equally thick but invisible bubbles in the otherwise fragrant evening air.

"He is drinking urine!" A shocked murmur ran in the crowd.

"No! Not at all! He is eating shit!" An equally shocked protest followed.

"It is actually cow-dung that is in his mouth!" suggested still others who were not yet shocked enough to think rationally and observe keenly.

"Horse-dung, I say! Who dare challenge me?" flared up Tutu, a very dangerous muscle-man, equally feared by those living high up in the skyscrapers, as well as those living down below in the jhuggis in the backyards of the skyscrapers.

To some he was terror-incarnate. No doubt, without provocation or warning, he reached for his pocket.

The next moment, knives were flying out of dozens of pockets. Daggers flashed in the fading twilight. Blows were exchanged. Cries of anger and pain, and screams of frightened women were heard. Without rhyme or reason, suddenly everybody was at everybody else's throat.

Urine and shit, cow-dung and horse-dung became instant slogans, battle-cries, and rallying-points of the unruly mob which loved nothing more than lawlessness. People went wild with fury, and were willing to kill or die, make their or someone else's wives widows and children orphans to prove their allegiance to shit or urine, cow-dung or horse-dung.

"Lovers of Mankind! Guardians of civilization!" suddenly a voice of reason arose above the mad battle-cries, and a man moved quickly towards the center-stage to grab the attention of the crowd. He was Pupu, another feared-by-all-hit-man in the payrolls of the skyscrapers. As soon as he reached the center-stage he raised his arm like a great dictator and an immediate silence fell over the crowd of urchins from the skyscrapers as they waited for their leader to speak.

"Lovers of Mankind, custodians of womankind, men of race and superiority, we have not gathered here to fight among ourselves. We have gathered here to have some fun. Let us have it and dammed be that son of his mother who dare spoil it even if it is at his expense."

Pupu stopped deliberately and melodramatically to heighten the tension in the crowd. He stood motionless with folded arms as he hypnotized the crowd with fixed eyes. Once he had seen Hitler speaking on TV. Since then he knew how to mesmerize a mob. Every face was burning with great expectations. But Pupu remained silent till the crowd could bear the silence of the fuhrer no more and began to scream for his words. Then, at the right psychological moment, Pupu spoke again, as if he were announcing the invasion of Poland.

"Balwinder Singh Mann, do it!"

Every eye that was fixed on the fuhrer now turned towards Balwinder. Balwinder was taken aback by the sudden but expected attention he got. Somehow he knew it had been going to come, but still he was utterly unprepared for it. He would have preferred to die rather than receive such attention on such an occasion. He knew his answer by heart. After all, it was supposed to be a drama - a harmless game in which nobody really got hurt.

"No, I won't do it. Kill me but I won't do it. I promised Kali I would never do it again. A promise is a promise. And Kali would kill me if I broke my promise. You know her temper. You know her temper. When she is angry she becomes like the Goddess Herself." Balwinder was screaming against the wind. He wished he had never been never born.

The next moment the agony was all over - gone with the wind he was battling. Suddenly the leader of the mock firing- squad, a ten or twelve year old dandy in brand-new clothes, stepped forward and announced confidently in a clear and loud voice which everybody could hear, "Let Balwinder go to hell. I will do it. Kali can't do a fig to me. I know her temper, but she doesn't know mine. She is no Goddess. She is just a stupid little girl. Who is afraid of her?"

“If I can kill a man so easily, just with a mock pistol, I can definitely make this dying man talk without a hitch,” he thought to himself as he moved towards the gutter where his victim was lying. His neck was stiff with confidence and determination. In less than a second he had eclipsed Balwinder, his arch-rival, because now every eye was turned on him instead of on Balwinder. For the crowd Balwinder had ceased to exist. This is exactly what both Balwinder and his arch-rival wanted.

When he reached the gutter, the little darling of the crowd stood absolutely still for a long time to tease every eye that was fixed on him. He had learned from Pupu what Pupu had learned from Hitler. Then suddenly, without shame or warning, he tore the buttons of his battle-dress, and urinated on the man he himself had shot a short while ago with his phony gun. The mob went wild with joy and sounds of loud cheers and applause could be heard miles away. The rape of Poland was complete.

"He is drinking urine again!" a unanimous chorus rang through the crowd of urchins from the sky-scrapers and this time there were no dissident voices and no hands slipped into pockets to draw out blood-stained knives.

Intoxicated by the frenzy of the crowd, the little fuhrer bent forward towards the man in the gutter till he could take the stench and stink of the gutter no more. Then he stopped, looked at the crowd again, smiled like an emperor, and began to whisper in a very gentle tone as if he were talking to his pet Alsatian rather than a human being, "Prime minister, prime minister, can you hear me? Just now somebody has shot you. He has blown your heart away into a billion pieces. You are dying. Yes! The prime minister of India is dying. People cannot believe what has happened because it all happened so suddenly. The whole nation is numb with shock and deeply sunk in helpless sorrow. Weeping men and wailing women have surrounded you and are paying their last homage. The state radio sees no better way to pay its last tribute to you than by broadcasting all your speeches once more.”

“Listen! Now they are broadcasting the speech you gave on the eve of the last general election - the memorable speech that suddenly turned the tide in your favour, and against all expectations, made you the prime minister of India. It was the only speech you ever gave in Hindi, and therefore, the only speech that the poor, illiterate, and down-trodden masses of India could understand. Yes! The Hindi speech - it was this magic wand that suddenly turned you overnight from nobody to somebody.”

"Prime minister, prime minister, can you see or hear what is happening now? As usual, the electricity has gone out when it was needed the most. Damn the power grid. The radio has fallen silent. We cannot hear this historic election speech anymore. I never heard it before because I am too young and innocent to take interest in our rotten politics. And now I can't hear it because the radio has fallen silent. Oh cursed politics, what should I do? 

"Prime minister, prime minister, do you hear me? Your soul is about to leave your body and enter the next world. But before you turn your face away from our miserable world forever please do me a favour - the last favour - and please grant me a wish - my last wish to you. Please tell me what you said in your election speech that moved the hearts and souls of the mute and helpless masses of India so much that they made you their prime minister against all odds and solemn predictions of the pundits. Was it that it was the only speech you ever gave in Hindi in your whole life, and therefore the one and only speech of yours that the masses could understand?”

“Speak, prime minister, speak! Pour your heart into the budding soul of a nation that is so deeply sunk in sorrow that it will not unfold or move except by your words. Breathe a new life into the nation before yours is snuffed out forever so that eternity can say that you never died, that you still live and breathe and walk among us all."

The man in the gutter twitched, indicating there was still some life left in him. His lips began to move as if he were trying to clear his throat before saying something. But his first words were so mixed up with human excrement that nothing could be understood. Slowly, after coughing a lot, his mouth became cleaner and the words more distinct and audible. He started weeping as if to recollect the past hurt more than lying in the gutter.

"Lovers of Mankind!" he suddenly wailed like a desperate animal caught in a trap, and then abruptly switched to Hindi.

The Election Speech

Lovers of India, I have not come here today to beg for a billion ballots. I have come here today to tell you things that you know but dare not admit even in the silence of your heart. The entire nation - no, a sub-continent itself - is covered by a huge cloud of mist and darkness. But this cloud that hovers over us is not the awaited harbinger of life-breathing rain. It is a locust-cloud, a vast poisonous fume of corruption, gangsterism, and lawlessness that is bent on devouring a whole sub-continent and reducing it to a lifeless desert.

Mothers and sisters of India, I have not come here today to take away from you your beloved sons and brothers for a ritual sacrifice on some distant and unknown battlefield in name of patriotism, I have come here today to give them a new life and hope, a new vision which blind patriotism can never buy.

Lovers of a nation, hear me out for once without plugging your ears or closing your eyes. Lend me a few seconds from eternity that your deaf ears have at their disposal. No! Lend me a few seconds from somewhere, anywhere, and let your deaf ears play with the rest of eternity for ever. Lend me the pupil of your eyes for a moment and for your own sake so that the light that shines inside me can also be yours.

Lovers of light, the soul of a nation - a giant star in the firmament - has stopped shining. It flickers or throbs no more. It smoulders in dark anger, resentment, and pain. Lovers, rekindle it in one heroic effort by pooling together the tiny flames that still flicker in your billion individual hearts. Lovers of light, be your own light once more.

Lovers of love, take your heart and pin it to a goal. Take your soul and pin it to a vision. Take your body and pin it to a hope. But lovers of love, never ever again pin your love to the cross to be spat upon, insulted, and flayed in public. Love may be blind but it is not without honour or devoid of pain.

Lovers of pain, when wolves howl, silence is broken. When rabbits howl, heart is broken. When women howl, man is broken. When canons howl, courage is broken. But lovers of pain, when fools howl, let not a five-thousand-year old wisdom of a nation explode in painful agony and scatter into a billion broken pieces.

Lovers of hope, despair not if today the chains of despair and helplessness that bind and strangle you seem unbreakable. One day they will surely snap and set you free. That day may be far away from today, but it will be within reach before eternity sleeps. That day - ten billion years from today - the stars will recede into oblivion. The sun will be a dark and frozen black-hole, shivering like a baby in its own coldness and hiding behind a self-imposed darkness. The moon won't be there to shine anymore or bathe in reflected glory. The earth, oh, our Mother Earth Herself - even She won't be around to see if the moon is still shining or bathing, or just gamboling idly across the empty heavens utterly dark and unobserved. Nor our beloved India left to find out where the earth has gone looking for the moon and dragging her back to us. Nor even us Indians to grieve that India Herself is no more - that even our Mother has deserted us when we needed her the most and left us orphans. Then the chains of poverty that bind you and me and hold us prisoners will also be gone for ever, setting you and me free at last.

Lovers of tears........

He could continue no more.

He was weeping uncontrollably as if some black-belted karate-guru had him pinned to the gutter and was pressing that nerve which hurts the most. The gutter in which he was lying, or the stench and stink around him, or even the urine and shit in his mouth, were no problems. The problem was the pain in his heart - no, the problem was his heart itself because if there were no heart there wouldn't have been pain in the first place.

It looked as if innocence and virginity themselves lay raped and defiled in the gutter.

But he was a fighter. He tried to rise and began all over again.

"Lovers of Mankind, steal anything and everything from anybody and everybody, but never steal away dreams and visions from dreamers' and visionaries' hearts. The universe can't ...."

He could not finish his speech because suddenly a girl's shriek pierced the twilight zone and threw him out of balance.

"Balwinder, you urine of a dog, you shit of a prostitute, you have done it again. You scoundrel, you dirt, you rotten plague-rat, you promised me you wouldn't do it again - never. You promised me, you remember, you promised me," the girl was screaming as she pierced her way through the crowd towards the gutter.

When she reached the gutter and saw what they had done to the man lying there, she burst into spontaneous sobs.

"Radha chachi, Radha chachi, they have done it again!" she somehow managed to scream through her choked throat.

Radha heard the SOS call and knew what it meant. She left her cooking and instinctively reached for a pail of water and then ran bare-footed towards the sewage. Tears were already welling in her eyes, and she too burst into sobs when she saw him rolling in the gutter, waving his arms wildly as if he was addressing a huge rally, and screaming and shouting in a frenzy as if all that lay dead and buried in his heart for so long had found a voice and a new life once more.

"Lovers of democracy, democracy collapsed long ago. Now communism has also collapsed. Nothing is left, absolutely nothing - except you. Your hour has come. Don't betray mankind again as communism did. Stand up, you living-dead, and rise up to the historic task that lies ahead of you. Now you are the sole masters of the universe, beyond communism, beyond capitalism, beyond all...."

Radha couldn't see him making a laughing-stock of himself and everybody else who loved him. She felt defiled. She threw the pail of cold water on his face to stop him from babbling any further. She felt so angry at him that she could have smashed his teeth, if she had to, to prevent him from making a fool of himself.

"Why have you to do this? Why? Why? He has done no harm to you. Why can't you leave him alone," she was screaming again and again at the crowd, but so great was her anger and feeling of helplessness that she could not look at the crowd, penetrate into their individual faces. It would have defiled her more.

Nobody in the crowd answered, but everybody was staring at her, as if nobody understood what all the fuss was about.

With great trouble, the woman and the little girl of nine together pulled the man out of the sewage, and started to clean him up.

Nobody in the crowd of urchins from the sky-scrapers felt any remorse or pangs of conscience as they continued to stare at the trio. On the contrary, some even felt as if it were they who had been wronged. Others started giggling and murmuring, "Look boys, how they are crying like sissies over a useless nut as if somebody has killed him. What a fuss they are making over a madman. We were just having some innocent fun. Weren't we, boys? What can we do if he loves eating cow-dung and horse-dung? Is that our fault? If the whore is so interested in him, she should tie him to herself. Then he won't go around making a fool of himself."

Radha felt as if her protests and her tears had lost all dignity. They too had been defiled. She had been humiliated enough for the day. So she did not want to humiliate herself further by answering.

But the answer came - from a direction nobody had expected. 
 

to be continued...
 

Copyright 2004 Rattan Mann
Oslo, Norway

 
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