Another usual weekend outing followed by the ‘weekly until midnight’ shopping at the Lulu Hypermarket and we were yet to be done. I decided on patialas of French brandy to soak me up as wifey turned on ‘Phas Gaye Obama’ on the DVD. Kids finally got hold of the home computer and Kevin lunged on to his newfound penchant of watching cookery videos on Youtube.
As time passed, Tara, who was still in her right senses realized that this was definitely the movie ‘not worth watching’ and so lazily left for the kitchen to do the only other job that she disliked lesser – dishwashing. I sat there, slouched on the sofa holding on to the last sip of Napoleon, who had already finished pounding my cerebellum and took over control of my motor movements.
Although, the movie started with some rustic comics, PGO had no other qualifications to be worthy of being called a bollywood flick. No fights, no drama, no sex, no item numbers, no songs, no scary villains and to make it worse, it had a lady Gabbar, who was more sexy than scary. Just realized that I had begun to hate Obama and all that was American. I just wanted to get up and run, but I found myself stuck on to the place, as if my bum was glued onto the sofa. I was under attack from the bullying coalition. I guess, by this time the Frenchman had captured my medulla. I could barely lift a finger. Couldn’t do more than give a scornful look at the little ounce of his left in my glass and swear “You will be finished soon”. I closed my eyes, shut off air supply to my eardrums and left for my nether world.
I found myself in a dilapidated building, which seemed to have been just raided. I sat there on a broken cushy sofa staring agape at the ruins of what seemed to be an office space, when my sight met up with a huge portrait of what looked like ‘Scar’ in an army suit. I got up, went close to the portrait and observed closely. Under the portrait was a sticker which read ‘Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the King of Kings, President, Libya.’
“What the eff!” I said to myself and asked. “Where the hell am I?”
“You are in Tripoli, Libya, and this was the Administrative Building and that rubble there, on your left was his residence” came the response which was very strongly adulterated with a gujju accent.
I hastily turned around to see where the voice came from, and there he stood, in his blue suit with the red tie. This guy had a photocopy like resemblance to the younger George Bush. I had just opened my mouth to enquire if he was the same. I guess he visualized what I was thinking and got instantly aggravated. And in typical gujju’s style he picked up a stone from the ground and hurled it towards me screaming “I might look like a moron, but I am not one” and kept staring angrily at me.
He finally gave into my innocent looks, smiled and said, “My good name is Mr. Gyan Buch. I am in the service of giving a bit of myself to anyone who wants it. Either gyan or buch, whatever you deserve or, are found in need of.......by the way, Gyan means Knowledge and Buch is the Gujarati word for Cork/Stopple”
I stood there agape like a dimwit, unable to decide how to react.
He continued “It seems you are in desperate need of one of my services and so here I am. By the way, what is your good name?”
I stretched out my hand and said “Hi, this is Jacob Nelson”
We shook hands and he continued “What is your bad name?”
“Bad name, err.... what is that?”
“Don’t you know what a bad name is? It is like what your parents or close peoples call you.... mine is Gyanagunasampanna”
I was amused totally. What a loser, I thought and responded “Oh! Is that your pet name? Don’t you think that your pet name is a wee bit longer than the official one”
His response was fast and crisp “The asshole who inscribed my name on the ration card was lazy to write the whole thing. It is not funny. Anyways, what’s yours?”
After a little hesitation I said “S... S....Sweety.”
He instantly blurted out a “What? Seety.... like the whistle?”, and lent a sumptuous package of annoying laughter as he rolled on the floor holding his tummy. When he was finished with it, he got up, patted the dust off his clothing and with a straight face said “Well, that was Nitrous, very Nitrous.” He then walked up next to me, put a hand on my shoulder and said “Well now, let’s get on with the business.”
I asked “And what is that?”
“I have been informed that you are against the coalition”
“Which coalition?” I inquired.
“Don’t act dumb” he said and continued “I know that you were with Saddam when we were on that Iraq thingy, and now we have been informed that you are with Gaddafi. Tell me, aren’t you harbouring a negative opinion about the coalition strikes on Libya”
“Opps!!” I thought and came back apologetically and pleading “Well, I don’t have anything against UAE or Qatar. I, in fact love these places. I work for a company which is British, so don’t really have anything against the Brits. It’s just that I was watching a movie with Obama’s name on it, and despite the reviews and hype, like his government, even this movie didn’t deliver. And then, to compound the misery, my brain has been invaded by a brand of French Brandy called Napoleon. It is just these two little events that has turned me Anti-American and Anti-French. It has nothing to do with Gaddafi. I don’t even know who this guy is.”
“Ahh!! now I know”, he said and continued with gung-ho “You need some gyan on Gaddafi, and that’s why I am here. But for that we got to go someplace else.” And he snapped his fingers.
Instantly, we were transported to this breezy beach which smelt like dried fish. The place seemed familiar and I was struck by this strange feeling of déjà vu and I asked him. “Where are we, and what are we doing here at this time of the night?”
“It’s all for your gyan. Just lie down like this, with your back on the sand and your arms crossed to support your head. Just relax; we are here to watch a movie, a documentary to be precise. Stay serious, no chuckling, no giggling or questions in between” and he lied down as he instructed me to do and continued “I know, some eighteen years back you had been to this very beach along with a bunch of cronies at this very same time of the night and were driven away by cops. I know you guys ran like mad dogs till you reached the main road”
I lied down next to him complaining “I definitely don’t have the same stamina and energy now and if history repeated itself, the cops would outrun me. I don’t think we should take the risk, I have a family waiting at home.” He was not bothered.
I just lied down at the spot gazing quizzically at the sky, expecting something to happen. Nothing did and I asked him “Where’s the gyan?” and instantly, a white screen popped up in the sky and the movie started. This is how it went:
The screen displayed a man, in his late thirties coming back from work, tired. He enters his house; gives a light peck on his wife’s cheek; gives a high five to his 9-10yearish old daughter who is busy watching Justin Beiber videos on Youtube; goes straight to his bedroom; freshens up; changes into his pyjamas; goes straight to the bar; pours in a drink; slouches on to the sofa and switches on to the region’s premium news channel, Al Jazeera English.
Instantly his daughter runs out of her room whining, “Daddy please, I want to watch Disney now. It is time for Suite Life. Daddy please, please.”
Daddy however remains indifferent to her tantrum, gives her a scary glance and goes back to concentrating on the man on the TV.
The girl, who by now has realized that this tantrum thingy wouldn’t work, tries to break ice by starting a fresh conversation. She asks her dad “Who is this man who looks like a lizard? ... eek”
“He is Gaddafi, President of Libya..... he calls himself the King of Kings”
“So, is he a King?” asks the girl.
“Nope. He is a Colonel”
“And what is that?” asks the girl, to which her dad responds “Don’t bother me. Ask mom” and shouts out to his wife, who is busy cooking in the kitchen “Just tell her what is the meaning of Colonel, will you” and turns back to his daughter and says “Go to mom, she’ll tell you the meaning of Colonel. Your mom’s grandpa was in the US Army, she knows everything about the ranks”
As the little girl ran from the living room towards the kitchen, her mom stopped her midway, asking her to refer her dictionary and then went down and sat on a vacant sofa near to daddy.
The girl now rushed to her room, got her dictionary sat down next to her dad and read aloud:
“K-E-R-N-E-L, Kernel. The softer, usually edible part contained in the shell of a nut or the stone of a fruit”
Both parents freeze wide eyed with their mouths open on listening to this startling new revelation.
The movie ended and the screen flew off with the next gust of breeze.
Sincerely speaking, I had no clue of what had just happened. In my mind, I was trying to figure out the purpose of the movie, what gyan it contained. I felt cheated and was now falling deeper into the well when he interjected. “So, did you see, Libya is like a nut and Ghaddafi is the Kernel. We are going to take the Kernel out of the nut and squeeze out the oil. If you didn’t know, each kernel has around 55% oil in it”
“So this is what you are doing” I said “You guys are raiding Libya for the oil”
“Yes” he replied.
“And what about Iraq? Why did you guys invade Iraq? That too for oil?”
“No! In Iraq we were looking for weapons of mass destruction”
“And did you find any?” I asked back.
“See Jacob, the ORB Survey reports, that in the four year period from 2003 to 2007 over 1 million people have been massacred in Iraq. Incidentally, the population of whole of your hometown, Kannur is just over 1 million. Can you imagine that your whole hometown can be wiped out off any living being without using a weapon of mass destruction? America did find the weapon of Mass Destruction in Iraq. And it is now for the world to see, that the weapon is America itself. Beware!”
This gyan had left my heart pounding and moist in the eye. I stared back at him angrily and rolled my fingers into a fist. I was just going to punch him when he said “Hey, the cops have come. Manage yourself ....... will be back whenever you need more gyan. Bye” and vanished. I punched into the sand and lied down still as I didn’t have the energy for another police chase.
I lied there awaiting sharp pokes by a police baton on my soft spot, but on the contrary, it was a pair of soft hands the shook my shoulders and called out “Pappa get up. Your movie is over; go and sleep in the bedroom.”
