Just a fortnight back, as a part of my 3 day countryside trip, I took my first pit stop in Pune. Feasting on the small and sweet meal made by my friend there, I heard upon a gory tale which happened to my friends roommates BF in Pune. This guy, hailing from north India, was studying MBA in one of the many edification institutions in this so called Oxford City of PUNE – a melting point of students from different cultures and backgrounds. About 2 days back from the day I visited, the guy in question had just dropped back his gf at her house and was biking it back to where he stayed at around 1am (I guess the usual time to finish a movie night at our age). Just nearby his house, he was stopped by a tiny mob of drunken locals. The first thing they asked him was where are you from? The guy, quite overpowered by the sheer size of the group, in utmost nobility uttered his origins. As soon as they heard about his Northern background, one person removed his bike key while the other pinned him down to the ground. They asked him if he has any money on him, all the while using derogatory remarks about his family and roots. They asked him if he could speak Marathi, for which he again replied in a negative. They kept poking and manhandling him and asking him to learn Marathi and speak in the native language. Outnumbered that he was, the guy fought back with words after a point where he could not stand humiliation spat against his family (including the worst possible swears on his sisters and mother). One of the guys simply picked up a huge rock (with both hands – so try and gauge the size of the stone) and hit the guy on his head a few times. Leaving the guy in a sticky pool of his own blood, they casually walked away as if a GAME OVER sign flashed on the video game they were just playing. The poor guy somehow lifted himself up and took a rick to the nearest hospital and crashed at the entrance.
Seeing him lying in his ICU bed today, still in an unconscious state, his parents are still appalled at the outrageous face of the Maharashtra “Marathi regionalism” politics. The boy did not even ever wantingly participate in Politics, nor had he ever chosen any sides of right or wrong, or displayed and inclinations or apathy towards any local political party. But he was still a part and victim of the new “Sons of the Soil” campaign started by a desperately novice politician. Is this the wholesome picture you painted Mr. Raj – a massacre of innocent students at the hands of locals, who motivated by your fiery speeches about “Marathi Manoos”, taking law and order and justice in their own drunken hands?
Being a Marathi manoos myself, I simply cannot comprehend the motive behind your ramleela gimmicks. I remember your uncle retorting to similar tactics with his lungi hatao pungi bajao andolan against the south Indians in the 1960’s. That decade’s old campaign had still certain characteristics to it, as all the businesses in the state capital were controlled by gujrathis/marwaris and all white collar jobs by South Indians. The locals welcomed your uncle’s efforts to secure jobs in banks and PSU’s as a fight for survival agitation. But what is the exact motive of your stunts Sir? What do you intend to do by forcing the entire labor class out of the financial capital and the most industrialized state in India? Are your brethren and party activists ready to accept jobs currently being run by these so called UP bhaiyya’s and biharis? Will a Marathi man in his utmost sense of dignity ever drive a taxi or run auto rickshaws in numbers that the north Indians runs them in Mumbai today? Are locals ready to accept linemen jobs in mtnl, make and sell chat on roads, take up worker and laborer jobs in construction sites and state wide MIDC’s and industrial units? Are you aware that just a single EXODUS caused by your campaign led to fleeing of about 25k laborers from Pune and 15k from Nasik? The state had a loss of 500-700 crores with this loss of laborers, the construction for 2008 commonwealth stadium was on a standstill, industries in Nasik and Pune were at a standstill, and all this do you think was for the benefit of the state? Running with a torch of Marathi culture, your party activists were reported forcing premium convent school principals to admit their respective wards in these ENGLISH speaking schools (funniest incident of them all). Why are you and your party activists shy of taking admission in Marathi medium schools while running a statewide Marathi propaganda? Moreover, I seriously doubt your attendance in whichever school you have studied at during your education (assuming the fact that you studied at all), as I was specifically taught in my school that "India is not an association or confederation of states, it is a union of state and there is only one nationality that is Indian. Hence every Indian has a right to go anywhere in India, to settle anywhere, and work and do business of his choice in any part of India peacefully." And what are you creating the ruckus for, wasn’t your own father a student in Madhya Pradesh? I so badly pray that you are thrown back in time into your past and you and your family suffer the same treatment by Madhya Pradesh locals having a problem with your origins. Like every other person in Mumbai, din’t you Thackerays too came to Mumbai for jobs two generations ago? You absolutely have no right to assault those coming to the financial capital in search of livelihood. Please go back and read your grandfather Prabodhankar Thackeray’s autobiography which clearly mentions your fathers (Srikant Thackeray) and Bal Thackeray’s MP origins and school time days. He has clearly written about how he travelled to other states for livelihood. “This proves that the Thackerays, who are not original inhabitants of Mumbai, came to this city in search of a livelihood”, so then what in God’s name are you bragging about? Being a Maratha myself, I strongly object to your pathetically desperate tactics to gain media attention. I will be truly glad if the Election Commission bars your very entry in the elections for polluting national unity and causing nationwide disharmony on the basis of religion.
(On a lighter note) Thinking about this entire fiasco, my pea sized brain habituated with the fissure reactions caused by such topics, entered into yet another chemical altercation causing me intense stress and gastric complications one full night. With so many chemical momentums inside my frail physical frame of the brain, I was lost into a Jim Morrison style trance, in deep solitude dreaming of the entire situation 10 years down the line. I see a scene where the entire Mumbai metropolitan region is now devoid of its immigrants, the sons of the soil campaign has taken a very serious toll on the life in Mumbai and all the non Marathi speaking people have now been asked to leave the island city. Walking by the crowded marine drive pavement, I see men in dhotis and Nehru caps alongwith their navvari (nine yard saree) clad women, dirtying the already wasted pedestrian walkways. I see bullock carts running on the marine drive 6 lane road instead of the old Porsche cayenne’s, Maybach’s, SUVs and other luxury cars. There on a big wall I see a poster of LATE MNS Cheif, the founder of NAVNIRMAN MUMBAI – the new name for the Metro. As I pass by the poster, the chieftain winks at me from the poster and calls out to me. Here is how our conversation goes:
Poster: Hey you, Boy… Wasaap .. Kasa kay pahuna !!
Me: Huh… who , where , why , how ? (mouth wide open looking at a guy in the poster talking to me .. a mosquitoe comes and lays its eggs,, the new baby mosquitoes fly out and my mouth is still wide open)
Poster: I am talking to you re porga,, who else ?
Me: uhhhhhhh, how can a poster talk to me (mouth still open)
Poster: I am not a poster you fool, I am the Late R__j T________y . (for the uninitiated, kindly read between the lines)
Me: ohhh , when did you get late ? I mean become late? Ohhh sorry, ,I meant when did you achieve martyrdom (trying to use my words carefully so that I am not thrown out from the city)
Poster: Ahh that’s a long story,,, forget all that. You tell me – how do you like the new place? Beautiful isn’t it? (Grinning happily from ear to ear)
Me: (making a popeye face with the stench around me) Well I haven’t seen much of it somehow, I am just back after a 10 year sabbatical to the city. But tell me one thing, where are the clean pavements gone? And why are there only bullock carts on the road?
Poster: (looking here and there to check if anyone is hearing into our conversation) well my boy, don’t tell anyone. But what happened was that I initiated a very intense campaign and brought 100% reservations for Marathi manoos in Mumbai and then in Maharashtra. Slowly all industries closed down. All IT firms have shifted down south,, Automobile has gone to Gurgaon and Chennai , Stock Exchange has shifted to Ahmadabad , port has closed down and nothing is left but old memories of the financial capital (trying to look happy at the sound of it)
Me: Whaaaaaaaaaaat !! (mouth closed once was again open with another GASP – I never personally remember having that stoned speechless look on my face in the 25 years of my existence, apart from the last time when I met Mona Lisa). So what are people in Mumbai doing?
Poster: ohh they are back to farming, suburbs are now empty and people have shifted to the island city – which is sinking by the day, suburbs have been converted into farmlands and agriculture is the new occupation (grinning happily again from ear to ear)
Me: Agriculture is new? I thought it was old means of making money.
Poster: ohh no no, they don’t make money with it, that’s only to sustain your 1 time food requirement
Me: one time? (I don’t remember eating anything less that 5 meals a day since my nappy days, ya ya - you can call me the mini kumbhakaran of sorts ..)
Poster: (with a candid look, which reminded me of my MBA days where my fellow students desperately tried to make the professor believe in their presentations) ohh yes, they do not have enough food for having more than one meal a day; Rest of the day they spend in the farms.
Me: (mouth is still open , the mosquitoe family has by now quadrapled in numbers) but you still haven’t answered me where are the cars gone?
Poster: Arey vedya,,, 80% of pvt cars were owned by nonmarathi people, so they took it away with them. The remaining cars were either sold or burnt in riots caused by my supporters (I see a grim look on his face for the first time during this conversation). It started with shutting down of industries as the labor class went away. Then it started with shutting down of petrol pumps, restaurants, roadside stalls, vegetable bazaars, dhobi ghaat, everything just collapsed one by one. In a bid to save the culture, I have sacrifice the economy of Maharashtra. But look at the bright side, you can see Marathi sign boards everywhere, Marathi people everywhere, isn’t that a lovely sight?
Me: (getting very very very irritated, yes yes normaly i am a very peace loving person) Excuse me, by lovely sight are you referring to the dirty streets , the dung infested pot holed roads inhabited only by bullock and horse carts, dirty beaches filled with human filth and feaces?
Poster: ohh I forgot to mention, the cleaning class in Mumbai also disappeared as well as the laborers who mended the roads :)
Me: Ohh great, sone pe suhaga offer – mighty deed you have done Mr Marathi Hitler? You have led to a comfortable Balkanisation of the entire state under your watchful eye (feeling miserable about my existence in the city of stench). And where have the rich Marathi people disappeared?
Poster: ohh them?? Those gaddar buggers have all left the city and state to other states which offer them better avenues for business. All white collar idiots like you have also crossed state borders and are working for various companies in these other rich states offering them job opportunities. But they forgot how badly we had made the immigrants flee from the state, and now they are suffering atrocities at the hands of locals from the other states.
Me: (smiling for the first time during this conversation, with a closed mouth.. yeaa i swallowed the dam mosquito khandan) So you mean to say, the only Marathi people who were the last chance to build the Maharashtra economy have fled out due to your Sons of the Soil Campaign, and are now facing threats, manhandling and mayhem from the locals there all at your cost? The very culture and people you tried to uplift are now at the receiving end of the massacre you started and have no choice but to accept it as it is? The entire state is back to its civil war days of the British and is dirty like a garbage dump just because of your desperate requirement of votes and getting elected and media attention? The full country is reaping benefits of globalization and people here do not even have food to eat?
Poster: (finally confessing the truth) Why do you think I committed suicide? Now you know how I became the LATE MNS chief. I realized that the prank I started to remove the uttar bhartiya people from Maharashtra, as uddhav had started wooing them for voting towards shivsena, had turned completely upside down. I became blind with the media attention and power. Lalu was right when he quoted that I was very young at politics and just a novice. Now even after death, satan is not ready to accept me in hell – scared that I might try and play division politics even down there. Heaven ka toh chance hi nahi banta :( ... and I am stuck in this small poster ever since, singing only one song 24/7 – Jayee toh jayee kahaaaa :(.....
Me: (Gasping with surprise, burping out a few mosquito wings) Serves you right you moron. Don’t you find it ironic to humm hindi songs when you were dissenting the very people who spoke this language?
Poster: (seeming oblivious of my existence, he starts humming his song again) Jayee toh jayee kahaaaa….Jayee toh jayee kahaaaa….
I start Walking ahead on the pavement, and instantly hear a loud crack and a thundering sound of a lightning. I see a big ray of light striking the poster and the leaders soul being drifted towards the sea. I assume the fact that he pleaded to his sins has led to the mukti of his soul. God bless him !! (yeaa i do feel pity on dead people at times, what the heck)
“Lavkar utttth kartyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa , 9 vajlee” (get up u punk, its 9 am) – said my mom turning on all the lights in my room, making it look like the flash of light I just saw in my dream. I guess I had forgotten to put on my alarm the previous night in this entire thinking chaos (As thinking as an activity comes to me very very very rarely). God I need to rush to office now, my RM had just yesterday sent a mail to be in office dot by 9am and call him if there was even a 5 min delay. Looking upwards and praying to god, I called my RM:
Me: Sir,,,,, something came up last night and I could not get up on time and … I am really sorry.. but I will be late to office today !!
RM: ohhh, someone is seeing a lot of dreams are they? You better reach office by 10am or else you are on LOP today …. Hurrrrrrrrrrrrry up now !!
And thus ended my dream endowed night right below the shower, hurrying up to reach office on time, thanking god that IT still existed and what I had seen was just a dream. Looking at the shower panel, I started humming my fav song…. “Dhaga la lagli kala,, paani themb themb gala”… (the clouds got a pain, water is leaking drop by drop) …. :)
