Autobiography of A Mad Nation

By Sriram Karri

If I had to choose between letting down A friend or my country, god, give Me the strength to betray my nation. I was born in a mentally retarded country.' Thus begins this provocative, stylish, and racy literary rant against India by a twenty-four-year-old awaiting capital punishment; hoisting so huge a historic and political canvas to paint upon— opening at the Emergency that almost murdered Democracy and culminating in the Godhra riots, which almost destroyed secularism— a canvas so grand, it will leave you staggered . . . . . . and set the tone for a modern story of an ancient Mad Nation! Longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, Autobiography of a Mad Nation is written on an epic scale— where history, personal friendships, love for a nation and belief in its values, sense of great literature, fight against censorship, passion for ideas, and a zeal for unforgettable characters and dialogue fuse— to leave a mesmerizing impact on the minds of readers who discerningly distinguish between great, and all else.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fingerprint Publishing
• Release date: Mar 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9788172345631

Book preview

Book 1

–––––––––––––––––––––

SENTENCED TO DEATH

I was born in a mentally retarded country.

Way back. Long, long ago. Several years prior . . . but nothing has changed.

When some change did come, it became worse. For we then had, as we have now, imbeciles, idiots, knaves, charlatans, mountebanks, petty-minded donkeys, untrainable apes, brainless, feather-headed dodos, stupid, silly, deranged morons making up my countrymen, the fake collective—We, The People.

These people were my family, friends, relatives, neighbours, peers, colleagues, mates, comrades, partners, compatriots, and fellow citizens.

Within a few years of my birth, I bitterly realized my nation’s biggest secret and truth. It was: intelligence was not an unrecognized virtue in the Sovereign, Socialist, Democratic, Republican Morondom of India, it was a much hated vice.

My intelligence and sense of freedom, therefore, made me an outcast. An elite untouchable to be ridiculed, punished, and tortured. Every time I would think, say, or do a brilliant thing, it was High Treason against the Idiotic Paradise of the Multiplying Amoeba Colony of Indians.

If my country was mentally retarded at the time of my birth, it registered a terrifying descent into sheer lunacy by the time I was a kid, and then progressed alarmingly into rabid madness before I turned a teenager.

Even by the abysmally low standards of the world, where asylum inmates roam merrily in madhouses like the presumptuous United Nations or the irrelevant Non-Aligned Movement—comprising of such perverted psychos like Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan—or such nannies suffering from Civilization-scale Parkinson’s like England, France, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, or the Alzheimer’s-addled once-upon-a-time-significant dolts like Italy, Greece, Norway, Spain, Egypt, or megalomaniac retards like the USA, Russia, Germany, China; amidst even these hopelessly mindless, my Moron India stood out for the hollowness within its skull.

Did I forget to mention Switzerland? It is that absent-minded, not-too-easily-classifiable lost backbencher who draws pencil landscapes in chemistry class. God bless its indifference, disguised as neutrality to the world.

By the time I was legally a major—when my comprehensive package of citizen rights were passed on to me from my parents, its guardians and trustees for the first eighteen years of my existence; my parents, who never cared a hoot about rights, theirs or mine—my country was beyond therapy, counselling, or hope.

It was brain-dead.

But it’s not that India is comprised of idiots alone.

We did have brilliant people, real smart intelligent beings. But they left for a Green Card to become, for the first time, Citizens of countries afar and better.

But even that is not completely true. We still might boast of some 9.24 independent intellectuals of integrity. They have no chance, whatsoever.

One of them is 0.24 per cent intelligent and 0.76 per cent drunk.

One is an author who won some Booker Prize, and then quit writing; busy now with social activism, jail trips, controversies, and international awards.

One is a President, busy inspiring children, selling dreams, crafting nukes, and attempting to teach virtues to politicians.

One is a singer who never got a career break.

Yet another is a painter who will die starving before painting anything significant.

One is a human rights activist who will die in a police lock-up. Death by torture.

One is a finance manager working in one of those Tata Group companies.

One is a little boy preparing for a future that will never be.

Yet another must be that still-to-be-born girl, who in all probability will die as an aborted foetus. Or if birthed inadvertently, will be strangled by her horrified father who would not be able to afford dowry. And if she succeeds in getting past the potential horrors of early years, will be child-abused, raped, and murdered; and if she can circumvent such disasters too, and fight against the odds to reach school and college, she will be the victim of a spurned lover, who would throw acid on her face for rejecting his love. And beyond all this, if she goes on to get married, her in-laws would burn her after torturing her for not bearing a son or not begetting more dowry. But she must and will die without a meaningful chance in life.

Then, there is me.

Waiting for the cops. To come and arrest me, charge me, put me on trial, find me guilty of murder, and sentence me for life or death. But all that is okay. For I have just now, at the acme of my frustration with life, with hatred for my intelligence and disgust at my country’s lack of it, axed, yes axed like Raskolnikov, axed the teenage moron next door.

Let me explain. I had written a poem yesterday and I found the paper missing. I searched my entire house, upside down. My books, bags, everything, but could not find it. I angrily stepped outside for a moment, and hey presto, there was our neighbourhood moron—with my paper, poem on it.

Metamorphosed, my poem and paper, like Kafka’s character, like Plato’s Reverse Philosopher’s Stone, turning gold into lead, no longer serving the original profound purpose. Instead, there he was, village idiot, making a boat out of the paper and my poem. His act, summary and synopsis of all anti-reason movements, and he, in his last act of mindlessness, their final perfection, had taken the country’s unlimited license to act against wisdom without fear.

The boy who never grew up, who never went to school, who scandalized our locality with impunity, was grinning, putting my poem paper boat in a mud puddle, sailing it lazily, splashing mud, and smacking his lips at the final nadir of madness, when I swung my axe into his uncomprehending head . . . hoping to kill along with him everything that he represented, to hurt every unintellectual peer of this imbecile and make my strongest protest against the madness of my country.

Thus he died, and thus I was, an axe in hand, his head crooked in my other arm, a last stupid grin still daring me . . .

You see, the poem was my answer to Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice.

The President stopped reading and slowly looked up at Dr M Vidyasagar, who sat respectfully across the table. They were in the President’s personal office, a small cosy room where he received guests for friendlier and unofficial meetings.

Incredible, isn’t it? he remarked.

Dr M Vidyasagar nodded, wondering why he had been summoned.

Sagar, have you heard about Vikrant Vaidya? the President asked.

Sir, of course I have. Who has not? It was all over the news.

What did you think about the case?

A lunatic affair, sir.

Lunatic? Which of the two of them is a lunatic? The young man who committed this mindless murder, or the teenage boy who got killed?

Both of them were abnormal, sir, though in different ways. Iqbal, the murdered teenager, was certified as mentally retarded. Vikrant, the killer, was supposedly highly intelligent and neurotic, the kind who reads and thinks a lot and begins to assume that their intellect begets them extra rights. A special right to kill, perhaps.

The President smiled. Like Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, whom he invokes, eh?

The file you were reading . . .?

It was a page from his diary, the President nodded. He sent it to me, along with a long personal note instead of a pardon petition. Rather interesting, I thought. Read this note for me, will you, Sagar?

The President passed Vikrant’s note across the desk. Vidyasagar took it and read aloud; initially with a trace of surprise, then contempt, even anger, and finally, with a sense of bewilderment.

April 25, 2007

Mr President,

They call you the People’s President, and even I, generally a bitter critic of yours, am forced to acknowledge that you have brought an enigmatic and effable quality to the office of the President of India. You might have learnt from media reports and some of the correspondences to you that soon, very soon, I will be hanged to death; a sentence awarded to me by our country and confirmed by the Supreme Court only yesterday.

My lawyer, a typically small-minded pygmy—forgive this candid appraisal—predictably wants me to seek mercy. Of course, I will neither seek nor accept mercy.

I had written to you once before, demanding you reject the stupid Farooqi woman’s petition. Yes, that very woman who gave birth to the pain that was Iqbal for nineteen years, before my axe ended his petty, miserable life. He was an embarrassment to our colony, causing misery to everyone whose life he touched. He should have been brought up better.

Since there is no point in two unmarried men like you and me discussing the finer points of motherhood, let’s move on to the reason I am writing to you.

This is my emphatic assertion and a consistent continuation from my previous letter to you: No, mercy won’t do, sir. No, it won’t. No mercy for me, thank you.

You see, one of the many things I find wrong with our world is mercy. It is in such poor taste, very unpoetic if you like. Incidentally, I don’t like your poetry at all. You are too unpoetic for poetry. In any case, poetry is dead. It died centuries ago. Our age has replaced poetry with communications, emails, text messaging, and all that. Everyone communicates these days, therefore very few write, orate, emote, express, or do anything like that anymore.

Besides, to critically analyze your poetry, it is no good because you say too many things without being charming or stylish. You see poetry is all about style, about saying a lot without really saying it. I can tell you a lot more about poetry, but let me not spoil your mood with my views.

Let us revert from this digression to the central issue at hand: my life, which our nation has decided to halt. But in case you want me to comment on its politics before I continue, let me state clearly with moral emphasis: I am all for death sentence, per se.

Not for me a sissy so-called humanitarian view that killing by the State is murder. No, sir. A man who does not respect another’s life must find his own rights suspended and surrendered to the State. And with that surrender goes his right to seek protection for his life. Finish!

I have never condoned wrong thinking on any matter by myself or by anyone else, nor will I ever err by claiming that circumstance gives anyone a special right to a wrong premise. It is amazing how often this actually happens.

You would have noticed this, especially if you watch TV, though I doubt you do, because even I don’t watch TV. Not much, anyway. But from the few odd times you might have watched news on TV, you will be able to know what I am talking about. When a murder or a rape takes place—I am obviously talking of those reported on TV, the rest don’t matter anyway—the relatives of the victim become strong supporters of death sentence. Some even demand horrendous punishment not available in the Indian law, like death by public stoning. In contrast, the family of the crime’s perpetrator become champions of the humanitarian perspective, going on and on about the immorality of killing by the State.

The irony sometimes grows bizarre. Remember that case when a brother killed his sister—honour-killing, media blokes called it—because she was in love with a man of another religion? Consider how confused the father must have been. He had no precedent to follow. He would not have known whether to grieve for his daughter or defend his guilty son . . . whether to seek a harsh punishment for his daughter’s killer or mercy for his son.

In any case, my view is that death sentence is the moral right of the State, even its responsibility, if it truly wishes to protect innocent citizens’ right to live. What I therefore now seek is not pardon—one thing I have never sought, and therefore won’t do now, is to live on a wrong premise—but justice.

Justice! How much nobler this word, sir. How noble for those who understand this justice thing, more than mercy or forgiveness can ever be, in its fullest implication.

Oh! People’s President, truth is I did not kill the boy, never even thought of killing him or anyone else. If you will, therefore, instead of pardoning me, use your powers to prove my innocence; else let me die, it won’t matter. As the gadfly of Athens would say, if your mad country, like Socrates’ Greece, sins against wisdom, it won’t matter. Even if the wisdom here is an aspiring one, maybe a bitterly aspiring one, it is fine; I can empathise. For wannabe-wise is all I will remain before a dark cloth covers my neck and I go from this world like Wilde’s Reading Gaol ballad hero, wearing a purple cap on a last trip, looking wistfully at the sky . . . Now that is poetry, but let’s ignore poetry for now.

It would be a small inconsequential error of society if they hang me, wrongly, but society, given its right to sentence a guilty man to death, must be passionately guarded against even the tiniest of errors in the exercise of hanging a man to death.

I learned from newspapers I occasionally see that you are on your way out. Is that right, Mister President that politicians can’t stand you? You must be a good man, then.

Here we are, both about to be kicked out in different ways. Powers that be don’t want us. We are unwanted, you see, perhaps guilty of the same sin—intelligence, backed with moral conviction, integrity, and courage to act.

What an explosive combination!

Hey, Mister President, I almost forgot. The word explosive must have a special meaning for you. I keep forgetting that you are some kind of a nuclear scientist, are you not? Wow! Did you actually let off a few nukes into the air, or soil, or water, or wherever it is you do explode them?

Truly wowed!

Did you actually press that button? Now what is it also called—Panic Button, Sovereignty Button, National-Pride Trigger, or Red Button? Strange how political stances impact vocabulary. In any case, I am very impressed. If I was not lodged in this high-security prison, awaiting untimely death, and were you actually not a President about to demit office, I would have liked to meet you. We could have talked about nuclear weapons, deterrence, war and peace . . . No, I will stop this rambling now and get back to my business with you.

Me, as I already said, did not kill that boy.

Come on now, you might be thinking is that not what they all say? But then I am not ‘they all’. Yet I don’t expect you to believe me.

You see, that day, that fateful day as one newspaper wrote . . . No, let me start again without the ‘fateful day’ bit. I was sitting in the balcony, writing yet another page in my diary—hoping to get it published as a novel one day—and also handling a camera, a digital videocam to be precise. Me, an aspiring amateur philosopher writer, transformed for a moment under a nice warm winter sun into an amateur film director. And guess who the model and actor in my film was . . .? Yes, the tin drum from the house opposite.

Okay, sorry, I am not supposed to be insulting the dead. But he really was a dud, stupid Iqbal—smiling and waving hands his usual way, head shaking without purpose, tongue hanging out. I was preoccupied with filming, kind of enjoying it, so I did not give my usual shout to him—yes, for over twelve years since they settled in next door, I have been shouting at that mad moron: ‘heeeeeeeeeee…….y MOOOORRRROOON’—when this loud noise . . . Yes, a sudden noise from a motorcycle startled me.

My camera moved all around, jerky and shaky for a few seconds, and I got all these blurred images of a dull sky, a few bally, soulless homes of my neighbourhood, and then this motorcycle—real loud one, ones that mechanics drive—caught on it. Is that not amazing, too? How most mechanics in India are Muslims . . . They are good too, these Muslims, as butchers and mechanics. No, no, I must not say all this, it is blasphemous, unsecular, but is it compulsory to be secular in a secular nation?

Anyway, here the bike came, with two guys on it. They also startled our moron, they did. Those guys, crazy dolts they must have been, on a charging bike, wearing masks, screaming . . .

I have captured it all in a single frame. You see, sir, I do this crazy thing of keeping the camera steady, like those groovy MTV veejays. Do you know veejays? No, of course, you don’t. Not a botany term, sir. I am not talking of birds or bees. Veejays are these guys and gals on TV who wear weird stuff and have crazy hairstyles. Now, don’t get personal and take me wrong about the hairstyle bit, I am not talking about you. Anyway, these veejays, they speak some language that sounds like English, and teenagers across the globe ape them and all. Right phrase, ape—but anyway, like these veejays on TV, I bring my face close to the camera. Here, you must not confuse this cinematic technique; it is not the camera zooming into a steady face. No, not at all, sir. Instead, it is my face zooming into a steady camera. Anyway, I am sticking out my tongue in a classic veejay pose, hand held steady, in my firm grip this new camera, now my face with tongue out and all, staring dead close into the camera, when this bike comes close to our startled moron. And the second guy, the one who rode pillion, takes out an axe and . . .

Yes, the guy on the bike did our mad Iqbal. The bike slowed—I was hidden, thankfully they did not see me behind the balcony wall, or maybe they did not care, with masks and all—and that guy made an unerring shot: one classic swing, like a golf stick. Mad boy—see he did not run in the face of danger—terribly mad, tin drum, idiot, dolt, remained squatted on the ground next to a mud puddle, grinning, and off his head went, and he died that very instant.

They stopped, the masked pillion guy jumped down, frisked our dead moron, looked into his pockets, and once satisfied, as if tin drum was hiding a treasure, retrieved something and then shot off.

Why, you ask, Mister President, should you believe all this? You must, sir, because I am enclosing that film now to you right here, to see and judge. With three months to go before you leave office, can you, People’s President, honour my rights and try to get me justice? It is of course fine if you don’t care. I know you presidents have protocols to take care of, ceremonies of exit, preparation for handing over of power, and all such constitutional highbrow stuff. But if you can find the time and do something for an innocent youth, it would be nice and fair and all.

You see I am innocent, and I believe it should be an important point to consider.

What would you have to say, though?

I will, needless to say, eagerly await your reply.

Vikrant Vaidya, the condemned as of now . . . wrongly, of course!

P.S. Have you read The Catcher in the Rye? If not, you should. What’s the point in life if you can become the President of a country but have not read Salinger?

Sounds like a very unlikely tale, sir, said Vidyasagar, once he was done reading the letter. Moreover, it is too late for a retrial or to go back to the question of primary criminal evidence.

But what if the film . . .?

Sir, I am sure there is no such film.

He did send one along.

What? No! I mean it would likely be a fake, sir. Young boys these days can be exceedingly good with graphics. Photoshop goons, they can morph images.

A lab report is enclosed. The film is undeniably authentic.

CDFA labs, sir?

Yes, Sagar, there is no doubt. The film is authentic and legally admissible. The President passed on a few snapshots taken from the film to the stern-looking man in front of him. One snap had captured the moment described in the letter—a tongue-fluttering veejay, face nose-length away from the camera, and behind him, nearly twenty meters away, the axe of a masked man almost touching Iqbal’s neck.

Vidyasagar shrugged helplessly.

I don’t know, sir.

I want you to find out, Sagar, and I want you to do it in a very short time. The President looked resolute. You will be on your own, a personal assignment, nothing official, but don’t spare any effort. Use any resource you need, unofficially, any resource except time, but find this much for me—what really happened?

"Have you considered releasing the tape to the media and getting a retrial ordered? Maybe the courts can order a suo motu retrial?"

No, Sagar. I read the summary of the proceedings of this case. And in the light of this evidence, something strikes me as very wrong. There is more to it, and I wish to know it. Next few weeks is all I have to give you, unfortunately.

Vidyasagar nodded. I will do my best. Are you considering getting yourself re-elected?

The President shook his head.

Time for me to go. I have had enough of politics. But before I leave office, please help me clear my conscience in this matter. If I am indeed a People’s President, let this young citizen’s plea be honoured during my time.

I will try my best, sir.

Vidyasagar stood up to shake hands with his old friend of decades, and noticed that the President clasped his hand a moment longer than usual.

Coming from the best Intelligence officer our country can boast about, it is reassuring, Sagar. Very reassuring.

They walked along the corridor, joined by the President’s Protocol Officer, his ADC, and a troupe of security men.

You may get in touch with my adjutant for reaching me or asking for anything. Just a few weeks and all on your own.

Vidyasagar had a sparkle in his eye. Neither can I refuse you, nor can I resist the lure of my old profession. I’ll do it.

A few hours later, a cryptic fax reached the nondescript office of a man universally known as Gajju bhaiya. He worked and lived there, at the Office for Preservation of Indian Democracy and Heritage Studies, a quasi-government body. The fax read:

Respected Bhaiya,

At 1100 hours today, subject held an unscheduled, non-minuted meeting with former CBI chief, Dr M Vidyasagar. Proceedings not known, but subject may have asked him to investigate into that matter.

Yours truly,

PD

P.S. Not confirmed, but subject maybe considering giving a pardon to VV.

Gajju bhaiya studied the fax, muttering each word slowly, and then repeated it from memory. Satisfied, he tore the fax sheet into two and threw it into the shredder, watching it die into dust, from whose oblivion the words could never be recovered.

Vidyasagar, he thought. Vidyasagar.

They had come up against each other only once before and he, Gajju bhaiya, had managed to win, as he always did. But it had taught him enough about the other man. Since then he had managed to keep their paths separate, even if he had secretly wished for a romantic confrontation.

Maybe it was time for that duel, he thought with a smile.

Vidyasagar, an espionage and counterterrorism expert, was efficient and dangerous. He was the one who had ensured that the Western world never got an inkling of the secret Indian nuclear testing. He had also, during that same time, fixed for the defence minister and the head of India’s premier nuclear agency to be whisked away secretly and be shown the nuclear site to oversee the final preparations. It had sounded so innocent back then, when no one knew about the testing, these two important men losing their way and hitchhiking back to civilization on a truck.

A cheeky trick; typically Vidyasagar.

A rat, that is what Vidyasagar was, a rat who could disappear underground and reappear elsewhere to achieve his goals in any mission. But what was the President up to mere weeks before he was to be booted out?

He called his assistant on the intercom.

The assistant, Ramashankar Shukla, answered. Gajju bhaiya?

Come in.

He gave him detailed instructions which Shukla broke in his mind into three categories of activities, and then conveyed to the three people who were to execute it separately.

It has been done, Gajju bhaiya. Vidyasagar will be watched every moment till the new President takes oath. No government agency or employee anywhere in the country will cooperate with him. He will learn nothing in the coming days. He will be completely muddled in red tape that will keep blocking him everywhere.

Ramashankar, keep a close watch and keep me constantly updated. This rat is very slippery. And his master is completely mad. How many more days does he have to go?

"Bhaiya, ninety days . . . only ninety days."

They planned and conducted the nuclear testing project together just a few years ago in that many days. Don’t underestimate him. Keep a close watch.

Yes, bhaiya, we will.

Vidyasagar smiled at the waiter as he finished his coffee.

One more cup. Make it strong, he said.

Turning to his notebook he felt an admiration for the expertise of the man seated at a corner table in the restaurant, who had been following him since morning.

Back then, he thought, a few years ago when he headed the Central Bureau of Investigation, he would have enjoyed this man’s performance and audacity. He had obviously been trained well, and yet he did not look like the product of any Indian intelligence agency.

He saw him order a plate of French fries.

Excellent