Words, words, words

But we will not desist. We will write reams on the contemporary Rape of Democracy: he lied, he is crooked, he was wrong to act like that, he didn8217;t act at all when Out There the next street has been witness to rape licensed via democratic silence. I don8217;t know about you, but I have lied, cheated, raped a dream. And if you are so concerned about democracy, you should stop the killings in Bihar. You can even go there if you are concerned about people.

But please don8217;t write about it, especially in thenewspapers. Because then you will try to make it interesting, and no rape is. Then you will suck the reader in like a hose with your first paragraph and at the end he will land with a bump, rub his sore behind and make evening gossip about his experience. I moralise: it is better to titillate people with a picture as bare as a rock than a rape scene. You can reject it.

But certain writings evoke different responses. Take, for example, a Ruskin Bond short story. When it ends I am left floating above the ground like a snowflake, with a snowflake8217;s perspective of its patch of solid ground. My view is just that much and my feeling is just that much, and I breathe in the air.

Yet, mostly the problem is just this effect. To this end, every sentence becomes a conspiracy, with its I-know-you, caught-you-there asides. Sometimes, we glory in our writing so much that our selves have to intrude. We hear the claps of the crowd; we imagine the reader purring over our words as he appreciates our sleight of hand, ourplay with language. But to what end? If we are juggling words just for the show, we will last for a week in a full house. After that they will get tired: we will have nothing new and, unhappily, our whole pursuit would trick them first and us later.

So, writing comes first and us last. Effect for an end is important. It is a flower growing on the way. You bend down, smell it and walk on, carrying it with you throughout the way. That doesn8217;t happen with the Rape of Democracy. You can8217;t grieve about it for more than ten minutes at a stretch. I don8217;t feel guilty about it. Suppose Mr Vajpayee and Co are, right at this moment, are going all out to consolidate their position. All their powerful little fingers are inside other people8217;s purses, fingering coins, handing them out to people with gleaming eyes who are loaning their worthy friendship. And the next day you wake up to find serious people, the sombre, bearded, dark-grey-suit variety, informing you that a government has been formed.

They lower theiralready gloomy tones to hint that it was not done by means fair or sound and that this unwashable smudge on the much pock-marked face of Democracy can lead, in short, to no good. It doesn8217;t, you will tell your friends later with a bad taste in your mouth and rinse it with a lot of deeply felt words.

That8217;s the remarkable thing about the Rape of Democracy, it happens Out There, and the only thing serious men do about it is toss words around it. But words don8217;t come from Out There, are not for anyone Out There. They are flowers, naughtily dancing with the wind or just looking at you open-faced. And when you don8217;t know what to do with them, then you begin to write.