The Strange Story of An Emperor

This is the story of an emperor who, as behoves an emperor, had a vast army of servants (AOS.)  The emperor was earlier subjugated by another power and this subjugation lasted a long time.  This alien power created a new AOS and gradually turned it into spies and tormentors.  This AOS helped the aliens in draining the gigantic treasury of the emperor.

This AOS persisted in its ways even after the Emperor somehow manged to wiggle out of alien's subjugation.  The struggle left the Emperor quite weak and this helped the AOS in their nefarious designs.  Some of the emperor's own people who were clever enough to conserve their energy for later took quick steps to occupy the alien's positions saying that the order and structure must be preserved.  The collusion that earlier existed between the aliens and the AOS was restored between these clever people and the AOS.  These clever people called themselves Netas and so we will call them Ns.  As the euphoria of casting off subjugation wore off, the emperor started getting restless and irritable.  To placate him, he was told that that Ns will rule in his name and he will have the right to periodically choose new Ns if he was not happy with the current set.  After all, he was a free emperor now.

The emperor had by now been pushed out of the inner sanctums of his palace.  He could often be seen loitering in the gardens with despair writ large on his face.  Ns and AOS were quietly slipping into spaces that were part of the sanctum sanctorum.

Nimble Ns, existing and aspiring, were quick to form a closed group and make it difficult for newcomers to break into their fold.  The ongoing loot of the treasury nurtured them financially and helped them in this venture.  At the same time they subdivided themselves into groups to keep the emperor from feeling that he was left without a choice.

The emperor took time but ultimately saw through this game.  With great efforts he succeeded into smuggling one of his own people into the closed group of Ns with a mandate to restore emperor's supremacy.  This chap advocated that important decisions be taken by the emperor himself instead of the vast hierarchy of his AOS.  As he opposed the organized hierarchy, Ns were quick to label him as anarchist and they made anarchist sound like Antichrist.

However, looking to the fact that this new chap, let us call him NC, was too close to the emperor, the closed group of Ns brought forward the best of them who acknowledged the damage done to the kingdom by all the other subgroups and promised to undo all of this.  The Emperor was persuaded into appointing him the head N, the servant-in-chief.  He sincerely hoped that the existing hierarchy will be reformed and made responsive to the emperor by this very different N.

The emperor started to feel frustrated as he didn't find any real change in the whole scheme of things.  The new N, a strong advocate of hierarchy, is now seen to be advocating that emperor directly question any member of AOS who may have caused him a grievance.  He says that no one above or below the grievance causing member of AOS is to be questioned.  After all each one of them, right up to new N, has been appointed in the name of the emperor only.

When everyone is responsible for himself only, this seems akin to a state of anarchy that was so ridiculed and condemned by the new N.  This confused the emperor.  The confusion notwithstanding, he asked NC to follow this advice.  However when the NC tried doing so with some of the departments in the section entrusted to him, he was told by the offenders that they were not responsible to him!

Now, dear readers, do we have anarchy or don't have it?  And if we have it who is its champion? How can the emperor salvage his position? An INR (67 to an USD) for your thoughts.

A Letter to Sri Kapil Sibal

Dear Mr. Sibal,

Like many of my fellow countrymen, I had known little about you till you surfaced on the political scene as a minister.  Most of us had an initial impression of you as a learned man with a cheerful disposition and felt happy that people like you could make it to politics.  I searched out your bio-data on the internet using Google and the bio-data, as provided by you or whoever, seemed to confirm the initial impression.  However this image gets a severe blow as one scrolls down to the end and reads the angry comments by visitors on your recent move to censor social media on the internet.

It seems that what is exercising the collective public consciousness and hogging the eyeballs today is not your impressive bio-data.  Instead it is the collection of vakeel-like tricks that you have been trying out, albeit unsuccessfully, to confound the 2G case, then to browbeat Baba Ramdev, subsequently to infiltrate the Anna Movement and tarnish it jointly with another outspoken colleague from your profession.  I have deliberately used the hindi word vakeel as like neta it is used in a not-so-flattering sense and no longer commands the respect that it may have initially done.

It is sad indeed that you remain undeterred by your failures and are now trying the same dirty tricks to force censorship on the social media on the internet.  You cannot be fool enough to believe that you will succeed in this matter that is so close to the hearts of public at large.  And you must also know that you are making yourself look like the villain of the piece.  And if you still persist in the matter, it must be on account of a conviction that the electorate is powerless against you and your class.  Perhaps this is why you and other of your ilk keep on challenging Anna and other crusaders to contest the elections.  And this is why the politicians are even more afraid of demands for changes in the electoral system than the fight against corruption.

Well this state of affairs will not last forever and your own actions will provoke the public to force changes down the collective neta throat that keeps gulping nation’s resources shamelessly.  But till it happens, enjoy your antics.

Yours musingly

JANATA