Skip to main content

Crime: Death without aadhar



Fiction

Mr Varma was about to rest in peace when something arrested his death.  A police officer stood beside his deathbed demanding his aadhar card. 

“You can’t die without the aadhar,” insisted the officer.  “How dare you disobey the rules of the country when we have such an efficient government?”

“I’m sorry,” Mr Varma wheezed. 

“Not having the aadhar is a crime.  You are under arrest.”

The constables moved Mr Varma into the police vehicle which was designed like an ambulance.  The vehicle was a new addition to the police force under the Prime Minister’s Kaanoon Kaaryaanvayan Yojna.

Even before the PMKKY vehicle reached the destination Mr Varma breathed his last.  He was a good citizen, however.  The residents of his Society will vouch for that if you care to ask them.  Like all good citizens, Mr Varma wanted to obey the government.  But he had no choice here. So he just wheezed and died.

“The bugger died,” a constable reported to the officer.

“How dare he?”  The officer fumed.  “How dare he disobey such a powerful and efficient government as ours which has designed clear rules for everything?  Put him under custody.”

The constables looked at each other.  They dared not utter a word.  In the new dispensation nobody questioned the higher authorities.  You just obeyed.  That’s efficiency.  This is a country with a difference.

Mr Varma’s body was shoved into a custody cell.

The constables who were sent to bring the relatives of Mr Varma came back with the information that he had no relatives except a daughter who was now in America with her husband.  She had arranged her father’s cremation with an event manager. 

“Then bring the event manager.  Let him produce the aadhar for his client.”

“The event manager terminated the contract as soon as he got to know that the client did not have the aadhar,” reported the constable.

The officer’s eyes widened.  “Such a patriot!  Who is that man?  Bring him here.  I will recommend him for Bharat Ratna.”

The event manager touched the feet of the constable and begged, “Leave me alone, sirs.  I have a family to look after.”

The constables did not understand the connection between the event manager’s family and Bharat Ratna.  They were only trained to run, shoot, beat up and – unofficially – accept bribes.  Since the official duties of running, shooting or beating up were not applicable here, they demanded what was left.  The event manager took out his purse and the constables grabbed it.  “Okay,” they said giving the empty wallet back.

“File the FIR,” ordered the officer when the constables returned.  “Crime: death without aadhar.”

One of the constables came rushing to say that the corpse had started growing in size.  The officer frowned.  But on the insistence of the constable, Officer went to the cell.  Mr Varma was no more a mere corpse.  He was a growing corpse.  In a country with a difference.

Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniAugust 6, 2017 at 10:00 PM

    As was done in 1984, Aadhar has the power to" unperson" a person.

    ReplyDelete
  2. जितेन्द्र माथुरAugust 9, 2017 at 3:55 PM

    Very good satire Sir. Yes, this Aadhar issue is made to cross all sane limits. The system of checks and balances appears to have completely vanished rendering the government an unrestricted power to do anything according to its whims and fancies.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 10, 2017 at 8:51 PM

      Glad you came here. I know that you are busy and when you come you go through all my posts. Thank you.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more