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| Image from cleanpng.com |
The
latest raid by India’s ED [Enforcement Directorate] on NewsClick and the
arrest of its founder remind me strangely of Joseph Heller’s character named
Orr in the novel Catch-22.
Orr and Yossarian are both in the US
Air Force. Now Yossarian is in the hospital undergoing treatment. The war is
going on and hence Yossarian, like most other soldiers, would love the
treatment to go on endlessly. Yossarian’s pain in his liver refuses to become
jaundice. “If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn’t become
jaundice and went away they could discharge him.”
Orr is Yossarian’s roommate. When Orr
was a kid he used to walk around all day with crab apples in his cheeks, he
says. Yossarian wants to know why. Orr says it’s because crab apples are better
than horse chestnuts. Yossarian repeats his question. Why would anyone walk
around all day with anything in his cheeks?
“I didn’t,” Orr says, “walk around
with anything in my cheeks. I walked around with crab apples in my
cheeks. When I couldn’t get crab apples I walked around with horse chestnuts.
In my cheeks.”
Yossarian thinks Orr is crazy. But
then everybody in the regiment knows that Yossarian is crazy because he has an
unreasonable belief that everybody around him was crazy.
Just then Orr says that he walked
around with crab apples in his cheeks because he wanted apple cheeks.
“Why did you want apple cheeks?” Yossarian
demands.
“I didn’t want apple cheeks,” Orr
says. “I wanted big cheeks. I didn’t care the color so much, but I wanted them
big. I worked at it just like one of those crazy guys you read about who go
around squeezing rubber balls all day long just to strengthen their hands. In fact,
I was one of those crazy guys. I used to walk around all day with rubber balls
in my hands, too.”
“Because rubber balls are better than
crab apples?” Yossarian asks.
No, to protect his reputation, Orr
says. “With rubber balls in my hands I could deny there were crab apples in my
cheeks. Every time someone asked me why I was walking around with crab apples
in my cheeks, I’d just open my hands and show them it was rubber balls I was
walking around with…”
Yossarian gives up He doesn’t even
answer when Orr asks him, “Do you want to know why I wanted big cheeks?”
Why did this episode rush to my mind
as I was reading about Modi’s latest assault on journalists who questioned him?
Modi has put a few hundred journalists behind bars. Many more have been thrown
out of jobs. ED and CBI are Modi’s crab apples and rubber balls. But why is he
doing this? Like Yossarian, I’m losing interest. I don’t know who is crazy.
Modi, me, the journalists? All of us?
Hari Om
ReplyDelete😀 I enjoyed Catch 22 - and this conclusion honours it well! But of course, it begs the question, is the whole point of such enigmatic actions on the part of Modi's minions precisely to have us all shrugging our shoulders and simply letting things pass as "it's just that ***** is crazy"...??? YAM xx
No, Yam, these actions cannot be written off as craziness. On the contrary, they have a clear purpose: to make India a Hindu Bharat with Modi as its Emperor. Hindus will be Pandavas, the rest Kauravas. The dharmayuddh is on already.
DeleteI'm using posts like this as a kind of balm for my troubled soul.
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DeleteYou have some charming pigeons!
DeleteSad but true and scary commentary on the state of affairs.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.
Delete