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Thursday, March 19, 2009

Criminal as Mai-baap!

He sits opposite me and is reading the papers. What's so unusual about him? In his shirt pocket is a pen with a face on it. It's a familiar face. It has appeared on several news stories, keep appearing even now. A politician? Sort of. A star? No. A social worker? Don't know social workers are dime a dozen and you don't know every one's antecedents. Then who? He is a criminal and gang lord who has murdered and extorted money from many. He floated a political party but that couldn't buy his respectability. The police kept haunting him and now he is in jail.

Imagine a decently dressed middle class man wearing polyester shirt and trousers and decent shoes accepting this man, this criminal as his role model, his saviour, his benefactor, his mai-baap (mother-father figure)!

My mind boggles, I cringe at the thought, I am dazed.... Is this what democracy mean to us, making a criminal into a hero?

In passing

My newest poem Barrel of an AK-47 appears here. It's about how the world is exploiting the youth by creating teenage armies armed with Kalashnikovs promising to make them like John Rambo. Do read and comment.

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