The Melody Of Naren Uncle

Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar was a vile man. 

He called Mumbai his beloved, 

long before Bombay became Mumbai.

Then, in 1993, he cut her up, head to toe, 

like a butcher draws through the flesh of a slaughter goat,

and history had the decency to call him what he became.

A terrorist. An enemy of the state, and the country.

The grammar was honest.

Years later, a wise elderly well-meaning man came along, 

and turned the idea of romancing geographies into a thriving business. 

He was fondly called Naren uncle.

He didn't stop at a city. His first love was a state. His motherland.

He doused his first love in petrol, left the gas on, and a matchstick lit itself up, like it were a firefly.

He called it cleansing.

Fire has a strange way of sounding romantic

when politicians are the ones writing the wedding vows.

By 2014, his appetite had outgrown his legislation.

"The nation," he whispered, "is my one true love."

Petrol became patriotism.

Hatred was declared a civic duty.

The matchstick learned parliamentary procedure.

Citizens of the country were so hypnotised by the performance,

so busy waving flags at the theatre,

they never noticed 

they weren't being hugged, but held captive.

That's the thing about propaganda.

Unlike bullets, it enters asking politely.

It removes your spine before it removes your freedom.

Then convinces you standing upright is foreign conspiracy.

Dawood wanted a country to fear him.

Naren uncle wanted the country to mistake fear for love.

One murdered a country in a city.

The other turned a country into a slaughterhouse and then changed the meaning of the word "country".

Vocabulary is honest.

Until someone powerful gets hold of the dictionary.

Then suddenly, antonyms become synonyms.

Cruelty becomes compassion.

Silence becomes peace.

Obedience becomes patriotism.

And the mirror reflection of a monster is introduced as a messiah.

And Naren uncle has always been known to be a tongue-twister.

Because the most dangerous tongue-twister is not the one that makes you struggle to pronounce the words.

It is the one that convinces millions to pronounce the same lie as truth.