“What is USA? A lot of people say it’s the land of opportunities. An old Chilean poet said it’s where liberty is a statue. I say it’s the land of the next revolution,” said Babaji, his eyes fixed on the magnificently painted sky of a sunset sea. Punditji gave a big grin as he watched his oldest friend lick his lips wet and adjust his frameless, round glasses as sounds of waves hitting the shores and children playing on the beach filled the salty air. Babaji’s unkempt, shaggy hair and overgrown beard stood out around him like a halo, shining in the golden sun, making him look like a prophet and a mad man. He was both. He prophesied mad things. “I am not joking, darling,” said Babaji, now conscious about his childhood friend’s gaze.
“Balls,” said Punditji in his husky voice, without hurry, his unblinking eyes slowly soaking up all the details of the spectacle around, like a movie camera. He touched his crotch, slightly bending his knees, and then caressed his clean-shaven, meaty cheek with his right hand, now scratched his chin, his mouth half open, his big, round, almost-barren head tilted to the left. The two friends were a study in contrast. Babaji shabby, lean and wild, and Punditji groomed, clean and round. “Bugger, you can never get these crazy ideas out of your head. Jeez, this Obama mania is so strong in India! Listen to me, buddy, Obama is not going to change anything, he is more white than white,” said Punditji who spent three years studying in the USA and is now settled in Canada.
“Darling, you are not getting me. Forget Obama. He’s just an accident. I am talking about the end of capitalism,” Babaji said, stroking his wild beard like a wise man, squinting at his friend. “Balls,” said Punditji again, feeling his crotch again, bending his knees again, feeling his cheek again, now scratching the back of his head of tightly cropped black-and-white hair. He stared hard at his right hand, now held in front of him, as if he’s reading his own palm, and grimaced almost like a smile: “You bloody, this is the typical commie mindset! What the heck do you think? That this economic recession will turn the world on its head? Forget it darling, nothing will change. I am telling you nothing will change.”
Babaji too was studying his friend’s hand closely as he listened hard. He smiled as if he knew what was coming. Then he dug out a beedi and a matchbox from different pockets of his kurta and jeans. Still smiling, he turned his face to a side and held his trembling hands like a fort as he successfully lit the beedi in his first attempt. He took a deep drag, staring straight into the sea.
Waves are now stronger and considerably louder. The sun was now a huge orange ball of a lampshade. Grownups, seated for long eating masala nuts from conical paper packs, had started getting up and egging their children playing in the waves to get back. Women pulled the lose end of their saris around them and tucked it under their skirts or made several loops of their dupattas round their necks and tied their hair tighter to deal with the strong wind. Men in dhotis were having a much tougher time. Behind them, beyond the wide golden sand beach, thousands of coconut trees lined up as a green wall that protected the majestic lighthouse. Noisy crows were trying to perch on swaying coconut trees. Tens of fishermen’s boats were coming back from the deep sea and many bigger boats had started going in for a long, dark night in sea.
“Go ahead, man, go ahead, call it the ravings of a communist, but, whatever you say, capitalism is done. Not for you and me, but for the American,” Babaji paused to take a drag. “You and me and India and China and Cuba may be still chasing the American way of life but America has had it, it’s going through the last stages of market economy.”
As he listened, Punditji laughed out a couple of times in protest and in agreement, shook his head, threw up his arms, grimaced, gestured, made grumbling noises as if he wanted to interrupt. But Babaji kept talking: “Meanwhile, you can go ahead. Get hold of your iPods and PlayStations, have fun at Orkut and shop in Wal-Mart, multiply you money in the stock market, buy luxury sedans and farmhouses with borrowed money, holiday in five-star hotels and private jets. Chase all prodigious pleasures, selfish and sensational. Why not? You deserve it all. We all deserve it.”
He paused again, wet his salty lips, made eye contact with Punditji, but wouldn’t let his friend talk, not yet: “But for how long, darling, how long? Do you think we will enjoy it, generation after generation, forever and ever, without questions, without pangs? You can’t go on, buddy. Nobody can. The Americans are exhausted, or are very close to it. I’m sure. They are a lost generation. They don’t know what to do. They are confused. They are tired of shopping and customised products and services, they want to go beyond Web 0.2 and Second Life. Poor things! ”
Babaji stopped and turned to Punditji. “Imagine! A generation no marketer can please, no inventor can excite! Imagine, darling.” He was extremely intense and was now talking very slow, almost like a poet, like a prophet.
“You bloody bleeding heart!” said Punditji. “But don’t you agree there is an end to material pleasures?” said Babaji.
“Bull, man, bull. In what world are you, bugger? Even if – and that’s a big if – even if there ever is an end to material pleasures, no man is going to reach there. No chance. Not in a lifetime. Not until we crack death and become eternal. Even then, it may take hundreds of years. Thousands perhaps. Because when you get tired of Second Life, you’ll get third life or fourth life or tens of lives, simultaneous criss-crossing. If you find your extra slim mobile phone too bulky you’ll get phones that you can stuff in your ear like cotton. Perhaps use-and-throw phones made of cotton-like material. Well, I am not saying this or that. What I am saying is, the world, or America, is never going to have its fill of...fill off...what’s the word you used?...yeah, fill off prodigious pleasures. Prodigious pleasures! Isn’t that what you said? I like it, prodigious pleasures! It’s time for our own prodigious pleasure for the day.”
Punditji laughed out loud and hugged his friend seated next to him. People were leaving the beach in droves, just like after a houseful movie show, like a procession. Children with balloons and whistles. A couple of guards were whistling aggressively to dissuade the few still playing in the waves. The show was truly over. Now it was a colourless world: grey sky, grey sea, grey sand, grey world. Different hues of grey, dark and light, took over the world as if to remind everybody who cared to see that black and white are the same. Waves were now enormous. Their sound pushed everything else, whistles, crows, cries, mobile phone rings, everything to the background, to a distance, to a rapidly increasing distance. Babaji was playing with sand, his head bent. He would pick a fistful and let it through his fingers slowly into the wind. He would look ahead at sea at every break. He looked at his friend, cleaned his hands, stretched them and started working on his hair. Punditji was sitting cross-legged, looking straight into the sea and, as he talked, at his palms.
“I am telling you, darling, nothing will change. America will remain America. And India and China too will become America. Perhaps the whole world will become America. You think an Obama, or a credit crisis, or Keynes, or depression, anything, can change America? Get all that shit out of your head and listen: Andersen or Keynes, money rules the world. The battle is over, capitalism has won. And money will rule the world,” said Punditji.
Babaji now held a hair band between his lips as he vehemently tried to turn his wild, unkempt hair into a ponytail. Punditji continued reading from his own palm. “Haven’t you yet realised darling,” he looked at Babaji, “that money is God?”
“I mean it, darling. Money is God. Jesus got it wrong, it’s not love, it’s money. Look at people, look at institutions, religions and nations, every group, every category is worshipping money. Everybody. Everybody is sold to money. Everybody is sold to that eternal substitute that can replace and represent anything and everything, like the joker in a pack of cards,” said Punditji.
The world was positively dark by now, the moon was out, on the other side, above the trees. Many stars were out too. Lighthouse had started making its presence felt. Children had gone, crows were settled and sound of the waves ruled the little world around. Only a handful of people hung around, in groups of two and three. Peanut vendors and balloon sellers were packing up to leave. It was still windy. Punditji watched big white waves landing on the shore with a thud, going up and down like the digital display of a system playing a soft number. Babaji was now through with his hair. He stretched his hands and grimaced.
Punditji continued: “Money is the one single strongest idea that man ever came up with: stronger than heaven, stronger than love, it has captured, conquered, stole the imagination of the whole world. No prophet may have yet said it, but, darling, I am telling you, and everybody knows it, money is God. Money Almighty!”
Punditji laughed out loud. Babaji smiled. They sat in silence for some time. They started cleaning their feet and put on their sandals of fine sand dust. They got up and shook off the sand from their clothes. They wiped their hands, Punditji his head too. Babaji adjusted his glasses and pulled out another beedi and lit it. They walked clumsily on fine sand. They crossed onto the narrow, well-lit pathway with stairs that lead to the road through lawns, a garden, deer park and children’s play area that was still crowded and noisy. On the road, people were bargaining hard with adamant autorikshaw drivers while roadside vendors wooed their children with balloons, whistles and other toys.
Babaji and Punditji stared at each other. Then Babaji said, “American revolution.”Punditji retorted, “Money almighty.” “Eff you,” said Babaji. “Eff you,” said Punditji. They laughed out loud and without another word, started walking to the left, towards the heart of the city a good two miles away. These days they seldom walk 2 km at a stretch, but then this is a road they have walked together hundreds of times 20 years ago.
This the small town where they grew up together, the small town they explored together, the place they left separately, to different destinations, within a span of six months some two decades ago. It’s a city now. She too has grown up, like Babaji and Punditji. Cityji! She has a couple of big shopping malls now, perhaps more. She has more movie theatres and 3-star hotels. She has more platforms in the railway station and wider roads. She even has a couple of roundabouts. More shops, more schools, more people, more vehicles, more bars...there must be more whores and robbers too.
But she hasn’t changed much. The heart of the town is still the same. Narrow, congested roads; dirty, potholed streets; noisy, crowded markets and bus stands; the boat jetty; clock tower and public library; golden sand beach and lighthouse; her lakes, her parks, her cemetery and cremation ground, her mosques, temples and churches, cotton mill and cashew factories, they all are there, as before. The bridge which they crossed umpteen times and stood on watching sunset evening after evening, dreaming and blabbering, where they smoked their first cigarette, was still there with all her beauty. Their schools, their colleges are still there, although there is a new women’s hostel in front of their first school in the place of a pond that used to overflow every monsoon. The sky was the same, the stars were the same, same sea, same sun...it smells the same, it feels the same.
They were walking in silence. And they went into a bar in silence. Every time they talked, they talked the same thing. In the bar, in the taxi, next morning on the lakeside at Punditji’s backyard, sitting on rocks with their legs in water, with tens of small fish tingling their feet their kisses, watching birds fly and boats go by, in several bars on the way to the airport, at the airport, all along they had the same exchange and only that.
“American revolution.” “Money almighty.” “Eff you.” “Eff you.”
“Money almighty.” “American revolution.” “Eff you.” “Eff you.”
Several weeks later, while at his newspaper office in the metro thousands of miles away, Babaji received a rare international message on his mobile. It said: “Money Almighty”.
