Photo courtesy of Tribune India
The fourth wall has crashed and the audience
is now on stage making tea and frying omelets
in the kitchen, lounging on the guest beds, diving
into the swimming pool. Unheard of, unimaginable
until now these scenes, what Town & Country magazine
would have commissioned for an inside look at how
the rich president lives, exposed to ordinary, starving
people with a sense of fun, taking selfies, recording
on Facebook Live. But nobody is beating up anybody
except for the dozens hurt, two critically, in the initial breach.
This has been largely a pacific encounter with the buildings
of the reviled dictator and the hapless prime minister
who took on the thankless task of leading with nothing
and promising hardship and pain and is now in hiding
while his home blazes. Very sorry that a few miscreants
in the great people’s movement have tarnished the image
of the uprising. At least the p.m. and family are safe.
At least the president has agreed finally to resign. At least
the country can start to get off the front pages. But millions
of people have cut meals to one a day. Millions have no petrol.
Millions have no paper to write their sums at school. Nobody
is going to wake up tomorrow to a miraculous new world,
But it will be brave. and their revolt is right. Foreign aid
will come no matter who takes over administration of
the suffering–and native resourcefulness, wily adaptation,
just like victims of the uncivil war who improvised light
in the darkness, we—I mean of all us with a part in the play—
will find the way out of the maze, will go ahead riding bicycles.
