[Reader-list] Haeppie Holi

[pratap pandey]

Dear All,

Wish you a happy cliché, that is to say Haeppie Holi.

No, no. That's not cynicism. Fact is I am, right now, extremely disappointed. It is the day before Holi (although, as the auto-driver pointed out today while trundling me home, nowadays all festivals are beginning to get spread over 2 days). Yet no bomb has gone off in any bogey of any train anywhere in the country, as it did the day before Muharram. Disappointing. I wonder if I should call up LK and rebuke him. I mean, give him deputy gaali.

I won't. The man's too busy, I know. Consider the day before Muharram, itself. It is late at night, and the man sits at his bureau in his study. On the meticulously clean glass surface phones gleam, as religiously as the shine on his pate. Not pulling at his affectedly miniscully sheared moustache, LK cons a lengthy document.

The phone rings, the blue one.

LK: Tell me?

Unidentified Person (henceforth UP): Sir.

LK: Hanh!

UP: Sir, the President is awake.

LK consults his watch. It is 11:23.

LK: Tell me.

UP: Sir, he is walking up and down.

LK: Up and down?

UP: Yes sir.

LK: Not down and up, like that slimy, cowchild-eating bastard muslim Dracula who used to crawl down and up walls as recorded by Veer Stoker?

UP (after a pause): No sir. Up and down. (Another pause) Sir, he's stroking!

LK: What? What is he stroking?

UP: His hair, sir. Again and again.

LK: O.

UP: Yes, sir.

LK: Yes. Good. Keep it up.

The presidential bedroom is softly, but also ominously, lamp-lit. APJ Abdul Kalam strides up and down. In his right hand, he has a tiny toy whip. As he walks, he flicks the whip on the index finger of his left hand, jumps and goes "oooh!" It is obvious to all (watching and not watching) he is extremely disturbed.

The heavy curtain on one of the presidential bedroom windows rustles. APJ, being a scientist and not feeling any breeze whatsoever, immediately turns towards it. "Call Him," the heavy curtain whispers.

"Missile, da!" says APJ in genuine admiration, completely off protocol.

The phone rings, the yellow one.

LK: Tell me.

APJ: Is it Him?

LK (tone changing): Sir, it is! How do you do?

APJ: Not so fine. The missiles are firing tonight.

LK: Unh? What? Please hold on!

LK presses buttons on the purple, red and magenta phones, converses alertly. Then he goes back to the yellow phone.

LK: Sir! No missiles!

APJ: In my mind, LK

LK (after a pause): That's a de jure thought, Sir!

APJ (pause): Yes?

The phone rings, the blue one.

LK: Sir, hold on!

He cradles the bulky blue receiver in the palm of his smooth unlined hand.

LK (confidently): Tell me.

UP: Sir, he's talking on the phone.

LK (alarmed): What? Who?

UP (after a lengthy pause, punctuated by many beeps): Who what, sir?

LK (tensely, losing his temper): Who the chodum chodey chodani is he talking to?

UP (after another lengthy pause — punctuated by many more beeps — hesitatingly): Sir. You. Er
 Sir.

LK (breathes out heavily): Okkay. I thought it was my bete noire, that fuckabhyam Osama. Or that One I could never be. That ultra-rich babe-fucking mafia Muslim who still manipulates Bal Thackeray and therefore me: Dawood Ibrahim.

UP: Sir?

LK: (Pause; is himself again). Good. Keep it up. Are you sure he's talking to me?

UP (confused): Sir? Yes, sir.

LK: Good! Keep it up!

He turns to the yellow receiver.

LK (all honey): Sir, have you held on?

APJ (all sulk): Yes. But I have taken time off to stroke my hair, and think about the global space programme for peace.

LK (honeyer): Yes, sir. I loved that Science Congress speech

APJ (all excited): You did? Then you endorse it? A global system of satellites watching over all humans, for peace? I have been dreaming about it! Just imagine! Swarish! A satellite goes! Swarosh! It knows everything! Swarajish! I control it all! 

LK (sympathetically): You called me, sir?

APJ (suddenly sober): Yes, yes. This train blast


LK (interrupting matter-of-factly): Muslims, sir.

APJ (after a pause): But a day before


LK (interrupting indignantly): Godhra, sir!

APJ (now alert): No, that's


LK (interrupting with finality): Terrorists, sir!

APJ (after a pause): Are you


LK (triumphantly interrupting): Tell me sir, what is common to small farmers, polio and Muslims? 

APJ (completely foxed): What?

LK (triumphantly triumphant): Total extermination of the virus, sir! Happy Holi!

LK bangs the phone down. Educated chootiya, he mutters. He folds his specs and places them on the gleaming glass bureau table-top, and leaves the room

FINIS?

 

 

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