Cheap Enough

Cheap Enough

Life here is cheap-

Too many to worry about-

Look after yourself

Because if anything happens

You're on your own.

The rich will have a better class of obsequie

Bigger hospital bills-

More fuss and flather

Bigger crocodiles about them

But that's about it.

They're no more precious

Than any anonymous nobody

If they slip on life's slippery slope

And slide off the mortal coil.

Alive and kicking

Rich folk

Are generally-

Useful.

But dead

We need to look for

Who's taken over

Or going to-

You can't afford to be slack about this

In a country with no Welfare

And subsidies melting away.

And this becomes more true

The fatter of a cat

You are.

The poor make busy

Populating pavements

Copulating for comfort

Three hundred million f'ers

And another three hundred million

Trussed up

Piggies in the middle

Middle-class

Wedged and squealing

Of despair and hope

Slavering

With ineffectual anger and frustration

At their insignificance

They're comical to

The sensibility of George the Beatle Harrison

Reactionaries to the Commie

Given no credits for their humiliation or fortitude

By Lenin or Stalin or Chairman Mao

Who each

Exterminated millions

Of the "starched white shirts".

They

Wannabe

Everything

Everywhere

That they are tolerated

Backs

De-boned-

Manipulated, betrayed,

Vocal

But voiceless-

Damned if you do and damned if you don't kind of coves.

Self-important

Leave them this fig leaf

Because no-one else gives a damn

Middle middlings

Brackets, parentheses, asterisks, footnotes

Explaining, explaining-

With no say-

Though they're loathe to admit it.

All these people

The Jana Gana

Even the Mana

Of our Republic-

Up and down the poverty line

And over the barriers and constraints of middle class dignity

Might be 950 million

Could be more-

Cannon fodder for the Republic

Is plentiful.

Home truths come home-

Only when

Or actually just then

Not

Until and Unless

The deaths

Help some neta's political leverage-

In a diffused

Seva-sucking kind of way.

Truth is the

Convenient dead

Must know that-

The price of potatoes and onions

And rice, wheat

Salt-

Matters more

Than a thousand Bhopals

And terrorist attacks.

That's true for all of us

For over 90%

And the others up top

Are instrumental

In the power play

But only while they're still breathing-

Mind over Maya

Going around coming around karma

Makes you blaze.

We all are handy-

Pawns,

Consumables,

Collateral-

Collectively

Jointly, severally,

Pushing, pulling,

Smelling the rot

Equally.

But we, meaning

Mostly they who survive best

They who can't read this

Can

Be useful

They!

Hail the numerous!

Trumpets

Tamasha time

For votes

For rallies

For panic

For parry

Okay a little thrust too

For pressure

For pleasure

To carry

Insinuate

Steal

Squeal

Bribe shibe.

If you

Want to make something of it

A career-

In the name of nameless people,

Call upon the aam aadmi

But only in the abstract.

But when the

Aam aadmi

Sickens

And dies on the vine

Blight

In untimely, unnecessary ways

Again

And then again

They're what they are-

Random casualties.

Then

Just muddy the water

And grandly announce

Compensation

Those

Amounts that don't get paid

Ask anyone

Who lost someone

Or part of someone

In any Accident/Blast/Terrorist shooting

Or Encounter.

It takes years

And needs speed money-

And oodles of proof that the intended recipient is indeed the intended recipient!

This is a billion plus game

With fifteen million new counters every year

You can't expect so many

To count

Or be counted.

So enumerators sweat

Pencils at the ready

On foot from house to house

With unreformed forms the size of bedsheets-

Like the old votes

Pencils and erasers

Nothing is final.

Cut corners

Right at the source-

Then compound inaccuracy upon inaccuracy

All the way down the turnpike.

We talk about things

We Indians-

Talk a lot but are

Never able to acknowledge the elephant in the room

That huge elephant of callous incompetence

Of a dehumanised, depraved, desensitised reality

That we have made of it

For ourselves, with no help from anyone

To park cheek by jowl

Alongside our 9% growth

To mock it( and put it in parentheses).

Censuses are out-of-date

Probably always have been

Those Romans know

Who invented them.

They liked to count

All the people they could squeeze for tax and tithe-

And it worked after a fashion

Particularly with broadswords handy and plenty of conquered subjects to bully.

But certainly,

By the time the citizenry is enumerated

In India

We will have to conclude

That Nilekani's mess is no worse than Seshan's

Or Chidambaram's

Before him-

Think of it

UIN, PAN, Election Card,MAPIN

Other aborted dog-tags-

Some of us with five PAN cards

And none of us any the wiser!

Nilekani's has had his apprenticeship

Good

Why not move him up to Minister!

So that he's not holding the can

When the failed truth comes back to bite him.

Fact is

He means well

But you can't find a desibhai in Government records

He is many people with many names and places to stay

Plus the great Indian Railways

Hell you can't even find a nasty

Even he has faces and disguises

And instant relatives & friends

Our addresses

However

Are solid enough

Provided we don't move

Migrate

Where our work, needs and stomachs

Take us

Leaving our perfectly solid addresses right where they stand.

Houses are valuable

More so in India

They are reliable

They stand still

To be counted

They are "Property"

Which appreciate

And keep appreciating

Because of cost-push

Pressures from our ever expanding people tree.

But not us

Who live in them

Depreciating with every tick of the metronome

Just fragile bits of flesh and blood

bits and bobs-

For blowing up

Or casting shadows and darkening doorways

For a spell.

Owners or Tenants

No matter-

Because we're all

Not for very long-

Besides, we know full well

There will always be too many

For us

To ever grow

Scarce.

Don't feel bad though

Even as you watch your hide-

Just look at Europe and America

Where everybody looks anyway-

See how they've outsmarted themselves

They're few alright

They're advanced too

They're organised and disciplined

They're free and strong

But most of them

Over 90% just like us

Are broke and bewildered

And just as powerless

At least we,

Are patched up with resistance and dirt in our veins

disease proof, starvation proof, cheat proof, GM food proof,

God fearing, curse proof,

Plentiful, undaunted,

Profuse as cockroaches

And

Cheap enough

To survive.

Hell if this were Bikini Atoll

Turned sub-continental

You'd have yourself nuclear-proof Indians

Perhaps a little worse for wear

But still talking in fourteen languages.

Gautam Mukherjee