Like a good prospector, the old man had tapped into a rich seam, a reservoir of public anger, and much to his own surprise had become a cult figure overnight. His dream of a society free of corruption was like a happy meadow in which everybody, including the most corrupt, could graze for a while. People who would normally have nothing to do with each other (the left-wing, the right-wing, the wingless) all flocked to him. His sudden appearance, as if from nowhere, inspired and gave purpose to an impatient new generation of youngsters that had been innocent of history and politics so far. They came in jeans and T-shirts, with guitars and songs against corruption that they had composed themselves. They brought their own banners and placards with slogans like Enough Is Enough! and End Corruption Now! written on them. A team of young professionals—lawyers, accountants and computer programmers—formed a committee to manage the event. They raised money, organized the massive canopy, the props (the portrait of Mother India, a supply of national flags, Gandhi caps, banners) and a digital-age media campaign. The old man’s rustic rhetoric and earthy aphorisms trended on Twitter and swamped Facebook. TV cameras couldn’t get enough of him. Retired bureaucrats, policemen and army officers joined in. The crowd grew.
Instant stardom thrilled the old man. It made him expansive and a little aggressive. He began to feel that sticking to the subject of corruption alone cramped his style and limited his appeal. He thought the least he could do was to share with his followers something of his essence, his true self and his innate, bucolic wisdom. And so the circus began. He announced that he was leading India’s Second Freedom Struggle. He made stirring speeches in his old-man-baby-voice, which, although it sounded like a pair of balloons being rubbed together, seemed to touch the very soul of the nation. Like a magician at a children’s birthday party, he performed tricks and conjured gifts out of thin air. He had something for everyone. He electrified Hindu chauvinists (who were already excited by the Mother India map) with their controversial old war cry, Vande Mataram! Salute the Mother! When some Muslims got upset, the committee arranged a visit from a Muslim film star from Bombay who sat on the dais next to the old man for more than an hour wearing a Muslim prayer cap (something he never usually did) to underline the message of Unity in Diversity. For traditionalists the old man quoted Gandhi. He said that the caste system was India’s salvation. “Each caste must do the work it has been born to do, but all work must be respected.” When Dalits erupted in fury, a municipal sweeper’s little daughter was dressed up in a new frock and seated by his side with a bottle of water from which he sipped from time to time. For militant moralists the old man’s slogan was Thieves must have their hands cut off! Terrorists must be hanged! For Nationalists of all stripes he roared, “Doodh maangogey to kheer dengey! Kashmir maangogey to chiir dengey!” Ask for milk, we’ll give you cream! Ask for Kashmir, we’ll rip you open seam to seam!
In his interviews he smiled his gummy Farex-baby smile and described the joys of his simple, celibate life in his room that was attached to the village temple, and explained how the Gandhian practice of rati sadhana—semen retention—had helped him to keep up his strength during his fast. To demonstrate this, on the third day of his fast, he got off his bed, jogged around the stage in his white kurta and dhoti and flexed his flappy biceps. People laughed and cried and brought their children to him to be blessed.
Television viewership skyrocketed. Advertising rolled in. Nobody had seen frenzy like this, at least not since twenty years ago, when, on the Day of the Concurrent Miracle, idols of Lord Ganesh in temples all over the world were reported to have simultaneously started drinking milk.
But now it was the ninth day of the old man’s fast and, despite his stockpile of unspilled semen, he was noticeably weaker. Rumors about the rise in his creatinine levels and the deterioration of his kidneys had flown around the city that afternoon. Luminaries lined up by his bedside and had themselves photographed with him while they held his hand and (although nobody seriously believed it would come to that) urged him not to die. Industrialists who had been exposed in the scams donated money to his Movement and applauded the old man’s unwavering commitment to non-violence. (His prescriptions for hand-chopping, hanging and disemboweling were accepted as reasonable caveats.)
The relatively well off among the old man’s fans, who had been blessed with life’s material needs, but had never experienced the adrenaline rush, the taste of the righteous anger that came with participating in a mass protest, arrived in cars and on motorcycles, waving national flags and singing patriotic songs. The Trapped Rabbit’s government, once the messiah of India’s economic miracle, was paralyzed.
In faraway Gujarat, Gujarat ka Lalla recognized the appearance of the old man–baby as a sign from the gods. With a predator’s unerring instinct, he accelerated his March to Delhi. By the fifth day of the old man’s fast, Lalla was (metaphorically speaking) camped outside the city gates. His army of belligerent janissaries flooded Jantar Mantar. They overwhelmed the old man with boisterous declarations of support. Their flags were bigger, their songs louder than anyone else’s. They set up counters and distributed free food to the poor. (They were flush with funds from millionaire God Men who were supporters of Lalla.) They were under strict instructions not to wear their signature saffron headbands, not to carry saffron flags and never to mention Gujarat’s Beloved by name even in passing. It worked. Within days they had pulled off a palace coup. The young professionals who had worked so hard to make the old man famous were deposed before they, or even he, understood what had happened. The Happy Meadow fell. And nobody realized. The Trapped Rabbit was dead meat. Soon the Beloved would ride into Delhi. His people, wearing paper masks of his likeness, would carry him on their shoulders chanting his name—Lalla! Lalla! Lalla!—and place him on the throne. Wherever he looked, he would see only himself. The new Emperor of Hindustan. He was an ocean. He was infinity. He was humanity itself. But that was still a year away.
For now, in Jantar Mantar, his supporters shouted themselves hoarse about government corruption. (Murdabad! Murdabad! Down! Down! Down! Down!) At night they rushed home to watch themselves on TV. Until they returned in the morning the old man and his “core group” of a few supporters looked a little desolate under the billowing white canopy that was large enough to accommodate a crowd of thousands.
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Right next to the anti-corruption canopy, in a clearly demarcated space under the spreading branches of an old Tamarind tree, another well-known Gandhian activist had committed herself to a fast to the death on behalf of thousands of farmers and indigenous tribespeople whose land had been appropriated by the government to be given to a petrochemicals corporation for a captive coal mine and thermal power plant in Bengal. It was the nineteenth indefinite hunger strike of her career. Even though she was a good-looking woman with a spectacular plait of long hair, she was far less popular with the TV cameras than the old man. The reason for this wasn’t mysterious. The petrochemicals corporation owned most of the television channels and advertised hugely on the others. So angry commentators made guest appearances in TV studios denouncing her and insinuating that she was being funded by a “foreign power.” A good number of the commentators as well as journalists were on the corporation’s payroll too and did their best by their employers. But on the pavement, the people around her loved her. Grizzled farmers fanned mosquitoes from her face. Sturdy peasant women massaged her feet and gazed at her adoringly. Apprentice activists, some of them young students from Europe and America, dressed in loose hippy outfits, composed her convoluted press releases on their laptop computers. Several intellectuals and concerned citizens squatted on the pavement explaining farmers’ rights to farmers who had been fighting for their rights for years. PhD students from foreign universities working on social movements (an extremely sought-after subject) conducted long interviews with the farmers, grateful that their fieldwork had come to the city instead of their having to trek all the way out to the countryside where there were no toilets and filtered water was hard to find.