By Robert Clements
Watching A Beheading..!
Since I’ve been driving round England, Scotland and Ireland the last few weeks I’ve been visiting a number of castles, and hearing much about powerful kings who loved giving their subjects plenty of entertainment in the form of beheadings! Also watching the TV serial, ‘The Tudors’, what fascinated me were the crowds that gathered to see the bloody scene. They came in hordes, the common man and his family to attend a beheading!
They came for two reasons, one, that with no other entertainment, this was great fun, and I am sure better than looking aimlessly at the walls of their miserable huts, and secondly and more importantly, because they loved seeing the rich and famous brought to dust. They had seen these same people in their carriages looking down at them, and beheading was when they could level off with these same snobs!
It was a time they could laugh and mock those on stage as they walked to the block of wood where they rested their heads in dread before the designated chopper did his job. When the victim tried to say a few words before their execution, the crowd booed them. They did not want to show any pity, they did not want to hear whether he or she was innocent or guilty, all they wanted to hear was the sound of the head falling on the ground and then they cheered lustily.
All this took place hundreds of years ago, and you’d think, that with civilization becoming better, and entertainment more available, what with a thousand TV channels churning out soap and other serials every day, that people had a better sense of fun, but feelings haven’t changed: The best entertainment for the poor is for the rich to get humiliated!
Watch when an accident takes place in our country! Even if the victim of the accident, is squirming in pain, even when he desperately needs to be taken to hospital, the crowd is so busy beating up the owner of the car, pulling him out by his tie, hitting him till he is black and blue, kicking him, and roughing him up that many a time the accident victim shouts out, “I’m dying, please do something!”
But nobody heeds his cry, because it’s not justice the crowd wants, it’s about getting even, hitting the person for acting superior all this time, and here’s the chance to level the score.
Opportunities for such leveling up aren’t many, because the rich generally have their security around, but instances like an accident, sometimes even strikes and morchas throw up situations where the poor, the otherwise weak and destitute are given proximity to the wealthy and a golden chance to do what they like with the rich and famous.
Robin Hood understood this well, and used this concept well. He robbed the rich, but never the poor, and the poor shielded him against the Sheriff of Nottingham, and the poor officer never could catch the wily thief. Back home the late Veerappan, the sandalwood dacoit also knew this strategy was a good one, and made off with hundreds of crores of sandal wood, guarded and shielded by the poor villagers around.
Coming closer in chronological time, Vijay Malya watches in astonishment from England as the common man in India bays for his blood. “But,” thinks, the king of good times, “I gave them good times, I gave them pretty air hostesses, I gave them their fantasy, why are they after me?”
“Well sir, that’s what happened at the beheading, five hundred years back in the very Merry England you have run to, the poor love a beheading! And a beheading is what they want to see!”
I have reasons to believe that our bearded head of state also watched the ‘The Tudors’ serials, because the scene a few years back in our country is strikingly the same, and if I may say so, was well- orchestrated.
Thousands of men and women stood in queues outside banks to get a few rupees out, and Rahul and his men, seeing their plight, thought that with this they would win the 2019 elections. They made demonetisation the poll issue, but our prime minister was made of sterner stuff, “Brothers and sisters,” he shouted, “I have caught the rich and you will witness a beheading!”
The poor stood in the burning sun, some fell because they were old or tired or hungry, some died, but all of them even as they suffered felt the rich were suffering even more.
They actually believed they watched a beheading. They felt grateful to the man who ordered the entertaining scene they were called to witness. What fun, look at the rich being dragged to the block of wood, with their ill-gotten black money and swoosh, their money has disappeared and they are finished!
They laughed and grinned, sweating outside in the sun, watching in their imagination the beheading of the rich. Then they ran with the only item of value they possessed, their vote and gave it to the man who had ordered their entertainment!
“You gave us a show! Here is our payment!” they said as they came out with ink on their finger!
But as I followed the history of the ‘beheaders’ and the game they played with the public, I realized that finally the people saw through the game, and most of these kings and even queens became unpopular.
Ah well, I wonder if the same is happening here in our country, where the man who gave this entertainment to the people is being found out.
“Hey,” says the poor man as he watches the vulgarly lavish wedding of the Ambanis, “it looks like we were the ones who were beheaded..!”
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