Deepak Raj
Putting behind my pains and pleasures, highs and lows, hopes and dejections, I had eventually joined the majority and, for a change, was content with myself and the world at large. While on the way to that hazy zone where the ultimate fate of those in my position is decided, I felt a strange lightness. There were no bonds to restrain me and no ties to pull me down. I floated unencumbered in the space, eying disinterestedly the dross of human life that lay below me in all its ugliness. O, that fleeting sense of absolute freedom!
But all of a sudden, I felt a forceful tug. A kite flying in the sky might have the same feeling as the boy flying it pulls down the string. Or some such thing. You, dear reader, would excuse me if I seem to be conjuring a wrong simile. To cut the story short, I felt a compulsion to focus my vision to a certain spot. Down there, they were planning to have my likeness cast in bronze and install the statue at a busy crossing leading to the house where I had spent the last years of my bothersome life.
I have a loathing for such gimmicks. To a living man his supporters and detractors alike call a thousand names, humiliate him on every genuine or conceived mistake, berate him for what he does and what he fails to do; and when the same man leaves his mortal coil, they make a statue of him to perpetual the insults and the slurs they used to hurl on him when he was with them. The ungainly structure stands as an eye-sore to the passers-by, obstructing the traffic in barain. Birds find its head the ideal place to leave their droppings. Politicos, depending upon their allegiance, find it a footstool to climb up the ladder of their careers, garlanding it on a date when its living model left the world; or disfiguring it to rouse the public sentiment against his followers. The more influential the man has been, the greater are the insults meted out to his statue. It is toppled, it is beheaded, its spectacles are broken, it is daubed with paint and if it is too strong to withstand minor affronts, huge cranes are brought to bring it tumbling down in the glare of camera lights.
It is not that the issue of erecting statues was not discussed during my corporeal existence. We had interesting debates over the subject. They said a statue is made to remind the succeeding generations of the great principles of the departed leader. I said all right. The leader had had his life, his fights, his failures and his achievements. His way of life was his own and so were the rules that he followed. He is gone now. Should the world still be following the rut? Human society is always in flux. Situations change moment by moment. No two problems are alike and neither can be the solutions to them. The inventiveness of man should suffice to meet any challenge. Yes, we do take a leaf from the past, but for that sincere faith is warranted, not the ostentation of a statue.
It seems the people I have left behind are deaf to argument and blind to reason. They are intent upon making a statue of mine. I cry out to them that if they do want to perpetuate my memory, they may erect a scare-crow in my name and place it in a field. It will be of use at least to scare away birds and save a standing crop.
I yell out to them with all my force, but my voice remains within me as there is nothing to carry it down to them.
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