The Minister was late, which was normal and was expected of a man who headed the Rural Affairs and Agriculture of an entire state. The horde of IAS officers, assistants, staff and “well wishers” ( candidates who wanted party tickets to the upcoming election), followed him out of the Cabinet meeting which was being held at the Chief Ministers house this morning. As s he descended the stairs, he was temporarily blinded by the flashlights that were lighting up the entrance to the CMs residence.
The babble of media voices, a phenomenon he hated but accepted as part of the job, greeted him as usual. He waved them away, ignoring questions like “ Your Comment on the Fodder Scam” and “ three more farmers hung themselves today” , knowing that these losers will write whatever they wish irrespective of his “comments”. Plus one of his guffaws recently had caused a huge furore in the Parliament, and he had promised the Sardar (the CM) that he will use his words more carefully.
He stepped into his Toyota Fortuner , white , big, conveying authority and completely bulletproof, and was comforted by the blissful silence inside. “Ghar Chal” he snarled at the driver, a cop atleast five years older to him. The driver started up, and and the Minister waved at the parting crowd through the bulletproof glass,smiling.
“Asking me to control my tongue… Bloody Sardar. Bloody first control your dick Saale!!!. That young actress whom you meet at the farmhouse was 3 months pregnant. Did I get a sabaashi on how I handled that situation??.. Noo… But I make one bloody comment on women dressing up provocatively and the whole fucking Ministry is out to get me!! Bloody Behe%&ods all of them!!” The minister started as soon as the car made the turn out of the CM’s residence. “ You see Swamy, you see .. Next Elections me Saale ka Ga#$d nahi phaada to mera Nam hi badal dunga!!!”…” he turned to his side, expecting to see the fat Madrasi Dr. Swaminathan , IAS batch of 85, who was his pet-dog-IAS for some time now. But there was no Swamy today, but an arrogant little prick whom the Minister stared at for a whole minute, a luxury only a few people got….
The Prick was tall, for the spacious leg room provided by the custom built Fortuner still made him sit at an angle. He wore a black Suit, a red Tie on a White Shirt and Black pants, and Shoes that shone like they were picked out of the showroom a minute ago. He was watching a news clip on an iPad ( the smaller new one which the minister wanted but didn’t have the time to pick up) and was nodding, as though the news reader was talking to him. He had an long face with a French Beard that made him look like one of those Louis Vutton models you see on the big screens on the roadside. The Minister hated him already!!
“ I am afraid Dr. Swamy is feeling under the weather today Sir.. I am Yash.. I will be..umm..assisting you today. “ the Prick talked with a polished accent , probably acquired before the IAS training centre.. “Kay, You know the drill Yash”, the minister said , “just jot down whatever I tell you after the meeting and fix up my appointments, answer the calls, filter them etc etc. And make sure Swamy gets back tomorow”, the Ministers day wasn’t improving, and the doctor had warned him about his blood pressure. Atleast he will be home soon, to some whisky and peace for an hour before he heads out for the campaigning. He remembered the schedule , he was supposed to go ask for votes to some stupid villagers a hundred kilometres from the State Capital..Not a good day, not a good day at all…
The minister looked at the prick again, who was busy working on his iPad. What arrogance!! The older IAS chimps that were sent to him usually pissed in their pants whenever they heard the Ministers booming voice, knowing that ignoring a State Minister can screw their careers with one simple signature,. This one was bolder, for he seemed to be working in the Ministers presence!! “ So Yash, where are you from?”, the Minister asked, deciding to take the high road.. “Umm . down below.. “ Yash said, still displaying a hint of busy- ness..”Down below ka matlab? South India? Kerala? Tamilnadu? Yeh down below kya hota hai!!” This fool was getting on the Ministers nerve already. Any other IAS officer would have told him his hometown, his place of birth, what his parents did for a living, bloody even his birth star and Gotra!! This one needed to be taught a lesson.. The minister made a mental note..
“Oh somebody needs a lesson alright. But its not me”, Yash spoke, looking the Minister directly in the eye. The minister recoiled, for he was sure that he saw a glint of red in those black, almond shaped eyes. “How…” , the minister began, now starting to feel a bit scared now. “ I come from a place where the trees look something like that..” Yash said, tilting his head outside. The Minister looked outside, and let out a small yelp!!
The landscape was not the neat buildings and the clear city roads that the minister expected but a barren, wasted country side that was completely black , the land seemingly covered with ash. The sky was blood red, as though painted in blood, and the wind carried with it small gusts of ash that was caressing the Fortuners window. But that was not what had jolted the minister. Occasionally, he could make out a dead tree, with people hanging by their necks from it, their tongues sticking out and their mouths frothing. The car was moving at a Snails pace now, so that the Minister was greeted with the sight of three Villagers hanging from a single Tree Branch, their Necks clearly broken and their legs suspended in the air, eerily. Their tongues were sticking out and their eyes were bloodshot, but the seemingly lifeless eyes were following the Ministers vehicle.
“What is this place?” the Minister began, feeling beads of sweat form on his brow. “Oh this is all your doing”, Yash said, a glint of anger in his voice. “ Those three guys, they are farmers that commited suicide today coz you took their land away from them. For you it was a cool deal of 30 crore rupees from that Conglomerate who bribed you to get that Special Economic Zone. For these guys,it was ancestral land handed over to them over generations and their only source of livelihood”.
The car moved on, and in the roadside the minister saw a bunch of famished children squatting on the ground, their bones visible through their shrunken bodies. The children were staring at the car, their accusing eyes never leaving the minister.He realized with horror that the children were eating the ash, the same ash that was covering everything else around. Some of the children smiled, and there was ash dripping to the ground from their mouth. The minister vommitted all over his seat, unable to keep his breakfast down. Yash gave him a white hand kerchief to clean himself, before he spoke “ That’s pretty much all that the farmers and their families had to eat… You had taken away everything else…”
The car slowly came to a halt, the minister hoping that this horrific ride through horror land had somehow come to an end. At the far end, there were some young men standing by a huge banyan tree that was also dead, like everything else around him. Some of them had bullet holes on their clean white shirts, others had their various body parts quashed, and the minister saw one particular young man with his head beaten I,n, his one eye popping out of its socket and hanging by some flesh, grotesquely. All the men had their hands crossed, their angry eyes all eyeing the Minister hungrily. “These were the officials that got in your way and you took care of them, one way or another.”, Yash said. “So I’m here today to take care of you. Go on, they are all waiting for you”… Yash suddenly pushed his hand cleanly through the Ministers white shirt and into his a chest. He felt a small force squeezing his chest, and within seconds, felt the last of his Breath leaving his Lungs. The last sight he saw the Young man squeezing his heart as though made of pulp, his other hand browsing pictures of Water Buffaloes on his iPad….
Myocardial Infarction, also known as. Heart Attack, was a common cause of death among men his age, so the Doctor who wrote the Autopsy report did not have any doubts regarding the cause of the Ministers death. What he did have issues with was the severity of the Heart Attack, especially to a man whom the Doctor himself had given atleast five more years of good health. The police also found the behaviour of Dr. Swaminathan suspicious, for he swore he was dozing in the back seat of the Fortuner and remembers seeing the Minister stepping in.
The only witness to the incident was the driver of the Ministers Vehicle, and he was declared insane, based on his story that he had seen a tall young man talk to the minister inside the car, minutes before his death. The Young man had then ordered the driver to stop in the middle of the road, thanked him politely, and then gotten out before riding away on a Buffalo…
The third story in my Collector series of stories which has been brewing for quite some time. I Dedicate this to the memory of Satyendra Dubey. If you don’t know who he is, go Google him
