This is politics, a disgusting thing we need but only to loathe at, and yet, can’t do without it, for we don’t know how else to row the boat. One can clean the dirt off a thing but can’t clean the dirt itself up. All the while, we rack our brains and bend our mind and efforts into converting the dirt into detergent. We’ve always buried head in sand to the stark fact that dirt can only get dirtier and not the other way round.

Anyway, it is about politics and the power it gives to the people in the trade that they can’t resist, much in the same way as swarm of flies can’t resist a stray banana rotting in the gutter. Journalist as I was, once upon a time, politicians loathed me to the same degree as a hustler hated a lady boy. Some reader may find this analogy crude and offensive or even grossly objectionable, to them I apologize for putting it down here, and yet, I want to go with it.

One evening, way back in time, I was striding across the street with this luscious hooker into a hotel room and, as it happens, I had bumped into the lady boy, a real smasher she looked under the flood of solar street lights, swaying her lips sensuously. I remember how this hooker walking buoyantly alongside me had grimaced in abhorrence at the sight of the lady boy and wrinkled nose and twisted her face spitting noisily onto the road. I don’t deny the possibility of this being a stray case or may be the hooker had a thing about this particular lady boy. Or, may be, a visceral dislike, they can’t help with. Anyway, they had too much bad blood between them, and so is between the politician and the journalist. And yet, there is the difference. Hookers and lady boy are sincere so much so that they don’t shy away from displaying their disgust right away. The same is not true with politicians and journalists. They fight it down or hide it behind the façade of the most disingenuous smile. Either of them know that the other is rotten to the core, and yet, they behave as if they were garden of jasmine flowers giving off sweet smell. They talk suavely, revealing row of teeth, behaving as nice as pie, and grinning as if they have been the happiest creatures on the planet earth. No sooner the other part than they vent their spleen.

Anyway, one of them was me, in those days. It so happened that the then King of the country I live in threw off the neighbor-sponsored multi-party political dispensation and took power in his own hands. The helmsman of a key political party that still favored monarchy as a titular head of state called me up and one of my deceased friend for political consultation, or rather, to read the popular mood as though we were harbinger of it. This man, who the people of the country looked to as someone who could navigate the country through tricky waters, was a hard-to-get thing while the going was good. But, the time was not on his side now. The rat was out of hole.

It is in the very nature of power that it is far less loyal than a prostitute. With a prostitute, she honors her bond to one-night-stand, come morning she is gone. With power, there’s no way to know when it turns its back on them and they get knocked off the pedestal like an unwanted rusted nail. So was his plight.

We kicked off discussion. He rolled out his plan. The parties were to tie their tails together and start a revolution against the monarchy. A non-stop smoker as he was, the room was filled with clouds of smoke, and even to utter distaste for his obnoxious behavior, I was not to bring a trace of discomfort on my face, for I was a journalist.

When he finished with his plan, he canvassed my opinion on the issue. I threw a query at him, what do you stand to achieve from this revolution? Was it meant to put an end to monarchy and thus turn the country into a republic? He brooded about it pensively, didn’t utter a word, nor did he stop taking pull at his cigarette.

I argued the point that monarchy in the country had been the ancient institution, 239 years old. If the storm of the revolution went as far as knocking the old tree (monarchy) down, it will leave a huge hole behind. Do you have the strength or can you muster the collective strength to fill up the hole by yourself? And what if you can’t? Somebody else will fill it up. And this somebody may be an unpalatable outsider, and yet, you can’t slam the door on their face. I told him that the Indians and the Chinese will come with their own picks and shovels to bury the hole. And he’d have no choice but to dance to their rhythm.

To this, he bit back with a retort, “The revolution won’t go that far. It was only meant to back off the King”.

He was wrong. He is gone. The hole is still unburied. The Indians and Chinese with their picks and shovels rivalling each other to bury it.