Saturday, February 10, 2018

Preview: It took a village to kill Jayalalitha

It took a village to kill Jayalalitha

Preface

On December 5, 2016, in the early dark hours, the aircraft landed on the Chennai international airport. In spite of the massive propaganda on e-governance, visa on arrival, it has been a long waiting in the immigration line. Once you have gone through the immigration process, you may be prepared to pick-up your baggage and to leave the airport. At this moment, your friends and relatives waiting outside of the airport would suggest you that you better exchange your dollar bills for new Indian currencies. After a long journey, you may have an anxiety to meet with your friends and relatives. Also, you would like to see all the latest physical changes in the landscape of your city. Above all, you are eager to enjoy the fruits of the economic development of India.

At the outset, Modi Sarkar appears to be real, genuine government engaged in elimination of illegal money and rapid growth with economic development. But, soon, you would realize that you are one of the victims of the chaos and the confusion of the Modi Sarkar. Initially, you may refuse to accept the failures of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policy; then, you try to justify the Modi Sarkar policy with your logical reasoning; and finally, you would realize the truth about your own sufferings. 

By the time you try to escape from India to nearby countries like Sri Lanka or Singapore, it would be too late. In this period, it would be better to avoid visiting India. Instead you may visit the neighboring countries, such as Sri Lanka, Burma, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal or Pakistan and you shall ask your friends and relatives to come over there.

Together you and your families shall have a good time in those countries. To attract visitors, Sri Lanka may advertise:

Don’t get trapped into India’s experiment on cashless society; instead visit Sri Lanka and you shall exchange your Dollars, Euro or any other currency into Sri Lankan rupees and enjoy your vacation in Sri Lanka. You don’t earn your vacation to visit banks every day in India to exchange your Dollars into 5000 Indian rupees. In modern India, a foreign visitor could exchange only for 5000 Indian rupees a day; that is the limit for a single passport. So, it is better to avoid visiting India in
this current period.

It was my turn to exchange US Dollars into Indian rupees. At the airport, they have further restrictions. They have 2000 rupee notes only; you could exchange foreign currency for 4000
rupees per passport; you would get two 2000 rupees notes; and it would be very difficult to get change for the high-denomination 2000 rupees note. We got 12000 Indian rupees for three family members, for a very low exchange rate and with a high service fee.

With that high-denomination 2000 rupees note, you cannot buy a cup of tea or a banana or a trip in auto-rickshaw. In the airport, the low-level staffs helped us to collect all those heavy bags from the conveyor belts. We would like to give them small money as a token of appreciation; but we didn’t have low-denomination currency; they understood our problem and suggested us that any currency was okay for them; we gave them one Dollar bill and they accepted it. It was not a bribe, but tips. They do accept any currency as tips at the airports in India. As a true patriot, we had not given up our hopes and convinced that all these sufferings would be over in two months. Now that we realized the value of cash, we did try booking the airport taxi with debit card; to our surprise, it did work.

.......................................................

Next day early morning, I went to Elliot beach in Besant Nagar for a walk. After a long walk on the beach, I had breakfast and got on a bus to Parry’s corner. When the bus was passing by MGR memorial, I saw people were going towards Jayalalitha’s burial place. Somehow, I felt like going over there and got down from the bus and started walking towards the burial place. A few years ago, I did try to contact Jayalalitha through their party office and also through the government channel; but I couldn’t get an appointment. Finally, here at the burial ground, I could be with Jayalalitha. 

Obviously, Jayalalitha was not resting in peace. Only the body is dead; the spirit is very much active. Jayalalitha had a list of tasks that she planned to complete before her natural death. Her spirit will be alive and be active till those tasks are accomplished.

Once those tasks are completed then Jayalalitha will rest in peace. In the burial place, her party members were shaving their head. A few were trying to light candles and others were trying to place lowers; but the police didn’t allow them. Some of the party district leaders were raising their voice and arguing with the police. There was one person warned all those party leaders against raising their voice. That person was looking like a conscience-person from K. Balachander movie. That conscience-person was a simple person without any fear for any authority. Also, that person had no ambition for fame or for any positions or for any material things. That person was carrying a bag full of his clothes and a water bottle. That person came to Chennai on the day Jayalalitha was admitted in the Apollo hospital. Since then, that person had been living on the street and observing all events. I approached that conscience-person and asked about Jayalalitha’s death.

That person said that they had secured the second floor of the Apollo hospital but they left it open for all other events happening in connection with Jayalalitha’s death. That person opened his notebook and showed me the events that had taken place. That person captured events, right from August 15, 2016 till December 6, 2016. That person explained the sequence of events with details, such as date and time of the event, theater where it took place and the actors involved in that event. This book is based on the content from that conscience-person’s notebook. 

That person gave me his notebook and said, “There is a proverb: It takes a village to raise a child. Likewise, it took a village to kill Jayalalitha. Everybody did play a role in Jayalalitha’s death. We too have a role to play in Jayalalitha’s death. I did my role of capturing the events in this notebook. Now, your role is to publish this as a book. In fact, every citizen of India has a responsibility to act on Jayalalitha’s death.”


Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)