Kaikeiyi's Conundrum
Saturday, January 17, 2015
The story of how I discovered India’s shadow government will no doubt be fictionalized in film with scenes of the actor poring over old newspapers at the library, going to dimly-lit, seedy bars to speak to people who prefer to remain anonymous and finally piecing together the clues to uncover the shadowy organization. In truth, however, I discovered it quite by accident. It happened one day when I walked in through the wrong door and found myself in a room that was certainly not the lavatory.
The clickety-clack of a hundred typewriters stopped suddenly and a hundred faces looked up at me. Only the whirring of the Emergency-era ceiling fans could be heard. It was a tense situation.
A woman appeared at a distance and walked towards me. "Who are you?” she asked.
"I am a reporter," I replied.
"What are you doing here? Parliament is in session."
That was a good question. Beat reporters usually camped out at Parliament or at North Block or even South Block. This building was far outside my jurisdiction.
"I'm following up on a lead," I answered. It was a half-truth. A tip-off led me here. "The canteen at ______ Bhavan serves excellent vada pav," the source said, adding that it was subsidized by the Government of India.
She surveyed me for a moment with an expression of mild curiosity on her face. I wondered if I was going to get evicted. I looked around the room. The peons began to look menacing to me, possibly armed.
To my surprise, she asked me to follow her. As I walked behind her, I noticed a familiar face as I passed the sixth row of typewriters. I stopped and knelt down to tie my shoelaces.
"Who is she?” I whispered.
The steno, a distant cousin on my mother’s side, stopped typing. "Madam? She is called Kaikeiyi."
My jaw dropped. It was true. Kaikeiyi did exist after all.
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Kaikeiyi. I had heard this name before. A rookie reporter is rarely privy to confidential information but it was perhaps a favourable alignment of celestial bodies that guided an email into my inbox instead of the Chief Editor's. I opened it. It contained documents titled the Kaikeiyi Files.
I set the email on the right course to the Chief Editor. He would never know if I had read it or not. Would he buy my silence, I wondered. Was I going to get a company car? Or perhaps even a promotion?
I was disappointed when the reply contained only a curt 'Thank you'. He evidently did not deem me important enough to be a threat. He was probably right too. My lack of enthusiasm in opening work emails was quite legendary.
I was initially shocked by the contents of the Kaikeiyi Files, but as I read further, it began to sound more and more like a conspiracy theory to me. The alleged existence of a woman who influenced government policy since Independence? A cover-up of Pokhran-III? Documented cases of UFO encounters by IAF pilots? It sounded like the plot of a Hindi potboiler.
Until now, that is. I finally had some concrete evidence that Kaikeiyi existed. There was one problem though. Kaikeiyi looked young, perhaps in her late 20s. How could she be the same person who appeared at different times in a conspiracy theory spanning almost 70 years?
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Was Kaikeiyi a title rather than a name? The thought occurred to me one day as I watched a James Bond marathon. And why would a mother name her daughter after the mythological Kaikeiyi anyway? It had to be a title, like M, the head of the MI6.
Kaikeiyi, it turns out, wasn't a title but a code name. "Code name: Kaikeiyi," she said, in reply to my question.
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I had quit my job and begun working for the shadow government. I could never remember what it was officially called. It was listed as a sub-department in the Ministry of Commerce. Or was it a sub-divisional office in the Ministry of Transport? Whatever it is was, it stayed hidden deep within the bloated bureaucracy.
It was also exceedingly hard to find us. Our office was located in a nondescript building close to Raisina Hill. It looked like a sarkari office from the outside. I was disappointed to find that it looked like a sarkari office on the inside too.
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In my years of working for the shadow government, I duly recorded most of Kaikeiyi's successful campaigns. This is a story about her failure though. Or was it yet another success? Sadly, the world may never know.
I called it her Final Problem. Kaikeiyi was India's problem solver. A country like ours situated between two hostile neighbours, divided between proselytizing religions, and filled with a middle class that looks for the first opportunity to emigrate, has a lot of problems. It is a wonder that India manages to stay united instead of Balkanising into bickering pieces. The populace probably attributed this to a government that administrated the country against all odds. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Have you ever wondered how a barely-functioning Parliament which usually witnessed scenes with uprooted chairs flying across the hall managed to get work done? It didn't. The politicians seen yelling atop the benches and ducking down to avoid airborne furniture were merely actors putting on a show. The real work of statecraft was done by the shadow government.
So, what was Kaikeiyi's Final Problem? It began a few months ago, when the oddest results began appearing in the local elections. It seemed sporadic at first, a few underdog Independents winning seats. The council seats they won would have no effect on the larger political scene. And then it started happening in the Assembly elections. Independents were being elected as Chief Ministers. These Independents had no single agenda, no common manifesto. Their demands were as diverse as the cultures in this country. A candidate supporting green initiatives won in the Western region. A feminist won in one of the tiny Eastern states. The only common factor was the way in which the incumbents and the bigger opposition parties were thoroughly defeated. The Independents took absolute majorities.
Kaikeiyi tried in vain to find a pattern. It seemed to make no sense. These states were electing leaders who had no cultural connection with the people who voted for them. The results were a collection of random probabilities.
Kaikeiyi studied political movements and forms of government from the beginning of time. She mapped out the growth of ancient democracies in Greece and Rome. Built hypothetical models of a current-era Greek or Roman democracy that would have lasted a thousand years. She introduced obscure political movements and ideologies that barely existed for a few years into these models. Nothing seemed to explain the current situation. It was absurdist turn of events. Was this the end of democracy? Were we seeing the birth of a new form of government?
As more states headed to elections, the trend continued. Independents continued winning.
"This isn't a wave, it's a tsunami," she said, exasperated.
"What are you going to do?", I asked.
"I am going to wait as it heads to the shore. It's either going to wipe us all out or dissipate before it reaches us. There's nothing else we can do."
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posted by foogarky @ 11:23 PM,
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foogarky
foogarky is the pseudonym of the fictional construct who battles for supremacy with other constructed personas in the mind of a crazed individual. He describes himself as a man living in a non descript house in Rio De Janiero, Brazil with two dogs and a parakeet.
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The Loony Lampoonist serves to parody, spoof and satirize everything that needs to be parodied, spoofed and satirized. Due to the fictional nature of this electronic journal, any anecdotes appearing here ever so often that seem to be personal in nature, would suffer from the effects of conflicting personalities, the creation of fictional events and the inclusion of non existent characters who did not make it to the big league in the author's literary works. Thus, the Loony Lampoonist is also a purgatory for characters and ideas that have missed the limelight.
