Who will watch the watcher?

Who will watch the watcher?

In Latin it is: quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Meaning: Who will watch the watchers themselves? This Latin, like Sanskrit, is a dead language that refuses to lie down quietly. It pops up every time someone tries to get to the root of a thought, and so here we are, bitching about watchmen who can’t be trusted to do their jobs unsupervised, and Latin it is that has already, in the BC period before the AD, put it just so.

The duly elected watchmen meanwhile, nominally led by one aged person in sky blue turban, recently called in a bunch of the most arthritic editors in the burg, and complained non-stop, albeit in a barely audible monotone, that the media acted, he implied unfairly, but then he would, wouldn’t he; as judge, jury and hangman, in an atmosphere of the greatest “cynicism”.

As Head Watchman First Class Duly Elected For Two Concurrent Terms Like Predecessor With Half Bloomed Rose In Buttonhole, Blue Turban was aggrieved; because said arthritic Editors Khap were wilfully refusing to excuse his ilk for non-performance, despite neither blue turban nor any of his band being issued with a “magic wand”.

The arthritic editors did what they do, and put in the blue turbaned one’s observations on the front page of their newspapers with large banner headlines and no complaints of their own. If they had been permitted their TV cameras, they would have done likewise on the box, in a muzac-inspired-elevator-monotonal-loop-without-end, at least for a few 24x7s to come.

This watching of inefficient watchmen is definitely the theme of the season, with the right hand checking up on the left, and both hands trying to adjust a variety of knickers in a twist; and the reason is because there is a general lack of credibility all around. All the truth tellers seem to have gone/long time passing/long time ago etc. Maybe the Pied Piper of Hamelin led them off the cliff or every last one was taken into the forest and shot.

One Pontius Pilate, from those very Latin speaking times, the best known hand- washer of all time, meditated on truth as Christ, of BC and AD and Christianity founder fame, stood bleeding in front of him.

Christ was bleeding from having just been administered a horrific hiding by the trained in the techniques Roman havildars, dressed rather better in scarlet, than our men in wardi, who are nothing to sniff at in the hiding skills department though. They beat Christ for not answering questions properly, for answering them in monosyllables interspersed with unintellible Aramaic, yet another dead language like Avesta Pahlavi in our neck of the woods, topped by some vague superciliousness which suggested Christ had someone looking out for him from the upside of the cloud cover around Calvary that day. (For further information and graphic details, kindly download The Passion of Christ made by Mel Gibson, the award winning Roman Catholic, duly praised by the German Pope. Said film was made moreover, when Gibson was dead sober).

Meanwhile, the Jewish High Priests, Christ’s unworthy Opposition, bayed for his blood in Pilate’s courtyard, because Christ had cleaned out all the shops from the temple corridors, in a spectacular MCD cum men in wardi style operation, while chastising the very people who were thus braying, no baying, for the rest of his unspilt blood.

Now Pontius Pilate, being a fastidious sort, knew he was looking at an innocent man in a crown of thorns when he saw one, and so he passed the buck, in good Indo-Italian bureaucratic tradition, to Herod, who happened to be a Jewish Roman administrator with fetching ringlets and kohl rimmed eyes, (but the cosmetic treatment is definitely another story); so that he could take a call on the called for crucifixion of Christ.

Herod did. Mel Gibson made the gory movie. And crowned it with a drunken anti-semitic rant, much after the fact mind you, but the public put two and two together, made a resounding four, and steadfastly refused to believe old Mel when he said he had nothing against the Jews.

But where were we about the watchmen, and indeed where are we about these guys who won’t do their jobs?

(702 words)

30^th June 2011

Gautam Mukherjee