THE LAST LUKKA IN THE PROCESSION





There is a video doing rounds on social media. In this video, Justice Katju, former judge of the Supreme Court of India and the former Chairman of Press Council of India – in one stroke of his brush – paints ‘everything’ in this county has collapsed… the Government and the political class have totally become corrupt… Judiciary, Media, Education system and everything else. So, he thinks, only a ‘total revolution’ in this country alone can fix this problem!

When I heard this person – who is not less than a former justice of the highest court in our country – I felt sorry for him. “Everything in our country has collapsed?” I wondered, “Everyone – every politician, every judge, every reporter and news editor, every teacher, principal and school trustee, every spiritual guru… yes, has everyone turned ‘black’?

Well, this is the ‘greatness’ of our democracy: you can say anything and even get away with it!

BMC elections are going to be held in a few days. In our area, today is the last day for the campaign. Since morning, candidates of two major parties have already come to our doorsteps asking us to vote for them… Justice Katju’s paint-brush came before my mind… “Everyone, every political party is ‘corrupt’!”

That means, in our country only Mr. Katju is ‘clean’ and ‘pious’. And, to find clean and pious people like him, we need nothing short of a ‘total revolution’!

I remembered the once formidable USSR… Marx, Stalin, Mussolini, Castro, Khomeini, Gadaffi and Hitler… They all had thought the same: ‘Total Revolution’!

I still wonder what it is!

“Sare lukke log hai,” the last man in the procession commented as he was about to pass by me, “Sab game bajaneka dhanda hai.”

“Sare lukke?”

I felt like starting a ‘bloody’ revolution right away by going for this lukka’s throat… “Tumhara dhanda kya hai?

Rs.100 to Rs.500 per day… Yes, for holding the placard!

If this is how we see our democracy, God save us!

The truth is this: I am as lukka as my leader can be… as sinful as any  human being can be! But, because I have no interest in being a Corporator of BMC and the wannabe Corporator tor has no interest in being a teacher like me… we are where we are… in the tapori bhasha of that last man holding the placard, I am a lukka, here, and the Politician is a lukka, there!

Incidentally, just this morning, someone had shared the image of a roadside poster in our city: “We get bad politicians because we go for a picnic on the election day!”

So, who are the lukkas?

GERALD D’CUNHA
Pic.: Internet

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