By Robert Clements
It’s always a good feeling when a talk goes well, and I felt my talk had gone quite well. The audience loved my jokes and even the man I thought was snoring when I spoke, was just breathing hard, at least that’s what I was told later by his sister, “He’s asthmatic, so he breathes, hard like!” she had said, and that made me feel easier, because having someone fall asleep when you give a speech can be caught on camera and then them newspaper reporters, the most unkindest of writers sometimes, will just capture that shot and tell the world I’m boring, which I vehemently protest and say, “I’m not!”
“You’re not boring!” said the man at my elbow.
“Hey! You heard my thoughts?” I asked embarrassed.
“No, you said them loud!” said the man, “In fact you were very good! So I have a question for you, if it’s okay?”
“Sure,” I said, grateful to him for having put my forebodings to rest. “Shoot!”
“What do you think of Rahul being arrested?” he asked, innocent like.
I was startled. I quickly left the man and his question and walked to the end of the hall then looked out. I looked to the right, then looked to the left, then to be very sure, looked up into the sky too. “What are you searching for?” asked the man, a trifle impatiently.
“For a winged horse!” I said.
“Winged horse!” he guffawed, “And may I know the name of the winged horse you search for?”
“Pegasus!” I said slowly.
“Ah!” said the man realization suddenly dawning on his face, “You scared to make a statement because the winged horse is listening in?”
“Maybe, maybe not!” I said carefully.
“No, the only Pegasus’ we have over here, are the peg-asses, or the asses people make of themselves after a peg or two!”
We both laughed together at his weak pun, as a bonhomie and trust established itself twixt us. He proceeded to ask me the question again, and this time I sat him down, and looked squarely into his face, and thought to leave aside my joking spirit and my search for the Grecian horse, which Israel had quietly borrowed and talk only about the matter at hand which was, I gently asked him to say again, the third time, “What do you think about Rahul’s arrest?”
I nodded to myself, and realized I’d given the topic some thought and decided to take it head on, “I think democracy is a competitive race!” I said, and I saw that the man seemed interested and was not going to snore like the asthmatic listener I’d had earlier, so warming up to the subject I continued, “To keep the race or democracy afloat the competition has to be fair!”
The man nodded and looked interested, and actually looked at me with new-found curiosity, “You remember the movie Ben-Hur and the spectacular chariot race between the hero and his wicked competitor.”
“Yes!!” smiled my new friend, “I can still feel the tension, as the chariots raced each other in the arena!”
“What did Ben-Hur’s competitor do? Instead of trying to prove he was a better horseman, a better racer than Ben-Hur, he started breaking the wheels of Ben-Hur’s chariot, even whipping Ben-Hur, to make him injured, so he would be unable to ride, and using other destructive ways to see Ben-Hur would lose.”
“It wasn’t a fair race,” said the man now leaning forward.
I nodded and continued, “We in India as lovers of cricket, are furious about ball tampering and even sledging. ‘Unfair!’ we shout, because anything that stands in the way of a fair competition is injustice!”
“In the same way for the greater good of democracy our elections need to be a competitive race, where the best man wins fairly,” said my new friend, and I was very happy, that he was getting my trend of thought so easily.
“Now imagine,” I said, “a competition, where at the beginning of a 100 metre dash, there’s only one runner with no competition. “Where are the others?” we, the spectators, ask puzzled.
“Some of them got thrown out!” said my listener warming up to my storytelling.
“Some, threatened by government officials!” I whispered.
“Others are too scared that the same will be done to them!” said the man.
“Finally,” I said, “we have a race with just one man running! Can it be called a race? Just imagine the North Koreans with only one man, their leader in the race having the audacity to call themselves the ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’!”
“That’s so funny! Whoa!” laughed my listener, “and disgraceful!”
“It’s like a huge crowd of spectators rushing to a racing track and cheering as a lone man hobbles down a 100 metre track to breast the tape.”
“What a race!” we tell ourselves as we congratulate the lone participant on his spectacular win.
And Kim Jong-un the lone runner, beams and tells the world, his world, his poor, poverty stricken, whipped into silence world how he beat the competition. Oh yes, he did, not during the race but before in prisons, torture chambers and with firing squads.”
“And then fools them even more by telling his subjects their country is a democracy!” exclaimed the man listening to me shaking his head as he understood.
“We cry foul at ‘fixed matches’ but remain silent as the greatest race in a country turns into a no-competition final!”
“Are we being fooled?” asked the man, anger showing on his face, “Are we the people of India being fooled? Are all the competitors for our democratic elections being knocked out one by one, even before the election race begins?”
I hushed him to silence and was it our collective imaginations that we both heard the flapping of wings of a flying horse. “Hey,” I said forcing a grin, “We’re talking about the ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, right?”
“Of course!” said the person who had asked me the question, “It’s safe to talk about Korea here in India, but…”
“No buts!” I said, as we smiled sadly and watched Pegasus fly away then walked outside the hall to watch preparations being made for the 2024 Hundred Metre Dash, with only one participant
qualified to run..!
The Author conducts an Online Writers Course. For more details contact him on WhatsApp 9892572883.