Sab Moh Maya Hai!

(This is entirely a work of fiction and any resemblance between the characters and persons living or dead is purely coincidental.)

As I walk past the security that thoroughly checked me all over, I try to pinch myself into believing that I really had clinched an interview with one of the most sought after politicians on the scene today. This particular person in reference was the leader of one of the largest parties that thrived on the support of ‘minority groups’, and was also one of the most major harassments that the government currently faced. Nervous and excited, I enter the large gates to her bungalow.

The long, long passage is lined with enormous white statues of that enormous animal that’s her party’s symbol—arre that grey one with something sticking out of its nose? Rhino, yes! (Did you think an elephant? No no!)  There are also some bust-like statues of things that look strangely like...handbags.

By the time I reach her office, I’m half panting, half scared, half apprehensive and half eager (that doesn’t satisfy arithmetic rules, and I don’t care.) to meet this lady who has made me travel so far.
And there she sits—Chhayadevi, the Chief Minister of one of the largest states of the country.
She’s wearing a dull, pistachio green suit, with a dupatta wrapped all around her neck like a cervical collar. Her face is smothered with unevenly dabbed powder, and even as she sits on a large chair, a handbag of the highest order of hideousness hangs on her left arm.

I tell her she looks very nice. She passes a genial yellow-toothed smile at me, and I reciprocate with a meek, half-nauseated one.

She tells me to wait just a moment as she talks on with a kaaryakarta from her party, who seems to be on a repeat playlist going ‘Ji shishter, haan shishter, yesh shishter’—as was customary to call her (Shishter Chhayadevi—it gave the public a very ghar-ki-baat feel).

I look around the room as I wait. The walls are barely bare—anywhere. It’s almost as if one painting leads to another poster to another photograph to another—ohh you get the gist. The paintings, somehow, are all hers. The photographs are hers too. And the posters are, well, the party’s, but they have her face splattered across them anyway.

There is her on her birthday, laden with diamonds, wearing a 1000-rupee notes garland (that was reportedly worth Rs. 22 crores) round her neck and waving to the public as she held a brown handbag in the other hand.
There is her in front of the Taj Mahal. (Ah, irony.)
There is her in front of herself. (I mean, err, in front of her own statue.)
She is in oil and print, on glossy paper and on plain one, framed and unframed.

Having had an overdose of Chhayadevi’s pictorial gallery, I turn to the lady herself, who still sits in front of me, winding up her chat with the kaaryakarta, as another man approaches her. ‘Shishter, phood?’
‘Haan haan, le aao’, she rasps, and within a millisecond, a servant and a butlery looking man enter the room with our food on two large thaals. Chhayadevi does not immediately start in hers, nor does she show any inclination towards having it.

And so being the hungry man that I am, I throw aside my bachi-kuchi sharam and dig my spoon into the ghee laden sooji ka halwa. And then, she bellows, and I swear I’ve never known anything worse.
‘ARE IYOU OUT OF IYOUR MIND?? VAAT EEF EET EES POISONED?!!’
I start. Stammer something incoherent. And then, slowly, regretfully, lower my spoon of the lovely golden brown halwa back into the bowl. The lady on the CM’s chair gives me a ferocious look and I gurgle out a few sounds again.

She then motions to the butler looking fellow, who reaches into his apron and fishes out a fresh spoon. ‘Shishter needs to always make sure her food isn’t poisoned,’ he tells me, taking a bite out of Chhayadevi’s aalu ki sabzi, and then out of mine. ‘Majority groups ka bol baala hai sahib, in partiyon se Shishter jaisi minority leader ko bahut khatra bana rehta hai!’
I nod. Of course.

Having had my food inspected thoroughly through completely modernised and hep means (I mean a food taster—wicked!), I notice that the food on my thaal was considerably lesser. Thinking of it as a small sacrifice made in the name of security, I once again dig my spoon into the golden brown ghee laden sooji ka halwa, and bring it up to my lips—
‘VEEKEELEAKS!!’ Chhayadevi roars, and my spoon falls to the floor, taking the halwa down with it. ‘Kya bakwaas hai yeh! Who ees these Juliet man?’

‘Julius,’ I correct her sadly, looking down at my spilt halwa. ‘Julius Assange—that would be, uh, the Founder of Wikileaks.’

‘Juliet! Julius!  Eets all the same! Sab Shakespeare ki dein! Has he gone mad? Vaat ees he saying? How..’, and she goes on.
Somewhere in the middle of her rave, rant and chatter, I realise that Wikileaks had released cables that had the US calling her an egomaniac who was obsessed with becoming the Prime Minister and was rather paranoid about her security. Ah well, hurt ego.

As I sit there listening to her go on about how we need an extra bed in the Agra ka Pagalkhaana to accommodate Assange, I wonder what ever made her so upset anyway? After all, the CM does boast of having exceptional time management skills. In a state like hers, where poverty abounds and hunger takes lives left, right and centre, Chhayadevi has the time, mind space and intellect to send over a private jet all the way to Mumbai to bring in a pair of her favourite black ugly shoes for her. Last I heard, they were still making very nicely-ugly black unisex shoes in her state—only if Chhayadevi would for once look down at the privilege ridden world she’s the ruler of.

My chain of thought is broken by a harried Chhayadevi telling me that she was now ready for the interview. I get up, fold my hands, say dhanyawaad, and walk out, amidst the shouts of the karyakartaas saying ‘There goes another one! We need another bed in Agra next to Juliet’s!

I had heard enough.