Ramu lay lolling indulgently on the verdant green carpet that the school ground had transformed itself into from the proverbial bucketfuls the monsoon had sadistically unladen over Shivajinagar. Musty, moth-eaten Shivajinagar. Refuge of bums, deadbeats and losers. A town that the rest of jetsetting, cola-gulping, burger-chomping, cricket, cinema and rupee-worshipping India had forgetten ever existed. Consigned to history textbooks locked away in rusty, cobwebbed cupboards in dilapidated libraries, library or librarian more rickety being a matter of conjecture. Indeed it was a disgraceful yet undisputed fact that most modern maps of the state callously neglected to acknowledge it’s very existence on paper, preferring instead to mark the location of it’s smaller, yet much more fiscally well endowed neighbor, Daulatganj (aka, money town).
Somu, Ramu’s compatriot, or sidekick as some of more uncharitable bent put it, was at the same time, trying to fend off a neighborhood mongrel desirous of partaking of his zesty mid-afternoon snack, which happened to be a grease-laden samosa from the local Haldiram snack joint. At this sight, Ramu decided that Somu needed a kick up his backside, and swiftly proceeded to deliver one, while taking care to pouch the half eaten samosa just before it hit the turf, all in one languidly smooth motion. This prompted what could only be described as a snicker from the canine onlooker, and alternating expressions of pain, bewilderment, dejection and rage on Somu’s countenance. His eyes feverishly hunted for the missing object, but finding only telltale crumbs on Ramu’s mouth and shirt, resigned himself to warm memories of the other half of the aforementioned object now rappelling down his digestive tract.
Ramu meanwhile, was off on another one of his mental sojourns. He was thinking about the newspaper headlines of the past few days that had been permeating his youthful consciousness like a stench through a lovely garden. Stories of corruption in the bureaucracy, government and industry had been circulating ad nauseam, like a nightmare that continued long after pinching, even slapping oneself awake. The Commonwealth games hosted to allegedly bolster the nation’s pride and image had succeeded spectacularly in achieving quite the exact and polar opposite of that noble aim. Looters at every organizational level in the motley bunch of bureaucrats, politicians and private contractors responsible for the staging of the games had taken the games too literally, proceeding to appropriate the “common wealth” on offer, with the distributions being suitably weighted by rank in an orderly fashion, honor among thieves and all. Media exposes met with the customary loud protestations of innocence, which were also suitably weighted by the level of culpability.
And that was far from the end of it. Indeed a new scandal seemed to erupt with the monotonous regularity of the sun emerging from it’s nocturnal burrow at dawn. And the most puzzling aspect of this sordid drama was the monumental apathy of the very people whose money was being leeched away by these parasites. It was as if they knew what was happening under their very noses as it were, yet were either powerless, or couldn’t give a damn, reduced to lamenting impotently from their drawing rooms. Well, Ramu wasn’t going to lament, nor could he not give a damn. He cared with an intensity of feeling that would have put to shame men orders of magnitude older than him, if such a feeling still existed in their ruthlessly trampled, shamelessly plundered garden of emotions.
As the oft heard refrain goes, what can a lowly individual do? How can an ant hope to move Olympus Mons (the Martian behemoth thrice as tall as Mount Everest)? The answer, at least in Ramu’s head, was crystal clear. One pebble at a time. Abstract philosophizing aside, Ramu’s pique had also been motivated in part by a very real and immediate concern. His telephone had been out of service for months. Concerned authorities had been notified, reminded, cajoled and pleaded with. All to no avail. About the only thing that hadn’t yet been attempted by Ramu’s harried but principled father was an outright bribe, which nefarious path he had neither the gumption nor the intention of going down.
Words spoken by a frail giant in a different era when faced with evil of a different nature rose from the subterranean depths of Ramu’s encyclopedic consciousness. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” was a certain M.K.Gandhi’s response to the uncivil ways of British civilization. And the answer flashed across Ramu’s mental screen as suddenly and with as much warning as a Shivajinagar power outage. Corruption at any scale or level is a transaction between two parties. If one of the parties refuses to participate, then the transaction cannot be consummated. Furthermore, the futility of expecting systemic change from the very parties exploiting the system for personal gain also became very apparent. Change must of necessity, come from the oppressed, not the oppressor. It was time for a new civil disobedience movement, this time to wipe out the phantoms of British rule which had pervaded our administrations and civil society like an atavistic cancer. Knowledge of one’s rights was one of the weapons in this battle, courage the other. “First be truthful, then fearless.” The Mahatma was speaking powerfully to Ramu through the mist of the centuries.
Yet, Ramu was the product of a modern age. The age of the ubiquitous eye of technology, not of the gramophone and silent cinema. The Mahatma’s methods, he was convinced, albeit correct in principle, had to be calibrated to meet the needs of the day. The Gandhian recipe required a dash of Machiavelli to break down the buffalo hide that modern day perpetrators were covered in.
And so, it transpired that Ramu and Somu paid a visit to the STNL (for the uninitiated, Shivajinagar Telephone Nigam Limited - that hideous compromise between parochialism and comprehensibility). Somu, that epitome of loyalty, friendship and universal brotherhood, manfully undertook the onerous responsibility of recording for posterity, the crooked dealings that were about to take place, in shady rooms, beneath dusty tables, and dustier consciences. A concealed miniature video camera beneath his utterly ridiculous headgear captured evidence of illegal transactions transacted with the lowliest doorkeeper to the highest officer. Sometime later, identical discs were surreptitiously mailed out to leading media outlets as well as to the Anti Corruption Bureau, with no return address on either.
The media which was waiting mouth open, tongues hanging, drooling for just such an occurrence, had a field day. As the shit hit the fan, and flew in a 360 degree arc of incrimination, bigwigs scurried for cover. The morally challenged cast of aforesaid video now gone viral, found themselves suspended and forced, even hounded, into a sudden departure from town, bag, baggage and tarnished reputations in tow. The new chief of the STNL, Magan Das, a dapper IAS officer of recent vintage, and therefore less likely to have a record not capable of standing up to media scrutiny, assumed office shortly thereafter, and one of his first priorities was restoring service to the Ramu residence.
A few moments after service was restored, Ramu’s phone started ringing off the hook, ad nauseam. It was the press, hounding Ramu and Somu, the mini-celebrities of the day, for interviews, soundbites, something, anything to lift those ratings, sell more ads and upend those rival channels. Ramu’s father, nearly suffering a nervous breakdown, dispatched Ramu to the STNL office the following day, where he was seen sheepishly submitting an application for disconnection of service.