The great man had died. He was suffering from emphysema and other lung complications for the last few months and today at around 5 pm, he bid goodbye to the big bad world.
But the state government was satisfied with him. There were many great people who had bid snappy farewells, catching the hapless state government on the wrong foot because when the poor government tries to make amends by showering them posthumously with awards or felicitating some clueless relative, it is ridiculed by the unsympathetic citizens. He, on the contrary, had given the poor representatives of the people ample time for paying their last respects and they had expressed their gratitude by giving him more awards than what he had deserved. Nevertheless, there he lay cold as stone and many heads were surrounding his lifeless body, sniffing and tickling him while trying to outmanoeuvre each other with louder howls, larger teardrops, heavier and smellier garlands and other tried and tested tricks. Some of the genuine sufferers sat there with pale faces amidst some others who pretended to do so while photographers noisily clicked away. All the major television channels were there, interviewing everyone from the maid who was rueing an imminent pink slip to the ward boy who had come to clean some bed sheets but decided to linger longer, seeing the gravity of the situation. Outside the hospital ward, a crowd had collected and a frog-faced policeman was trying his best to orchestrate them with an ugly baton.
The cub reporter from ‘The Daily Bore’ was moving briskly amidst the mayhem – this was his first individual assignment and he knew he had to make a scoop. After all, the great man was no ordinary great man. He had written some twenty six novels (actually eleven before he started outsourcing the work to talented, needy strugglers), around a hundred short stories, five history books when his school buddy was made the education minister, eleven and a half film scripts, over two hundred billets-doux and countless I.O.U slips and had cut the ribbon or given insipid speeches at many literary adventures. Then the cub reporter saw the humbug from ‘The Whines of India’ interviewing the people with great fanfare. A lens-man, who accompanied him, was catching the people in various unflattering postures. The rival, not-so-successful novelist said, with tears on his plump face, “What can I say – I feel just the same as you feel so you know my feelings”. The publisher, who on better occasions, would have snubbed the great man as “an irritating fellow who interfered too much with my work”, said with well rehearsed poetic punctuations, “he was an ocean, a versatile genius who detailed me with the type of paper, the font-face, the font-size and even... even the small details like the picture to be used on the cover” and so on. The politician behaved a if he had just lost a poetry competition –“he was a fountain, a river in our lives, the bejewelled crown of the nation”, he bubbled effervescently while another somebody recited many dirges and elegies after saying, “What can I say ... I have no words”.
The cub watched all this with bemused irritation and decided to have none of it. He would, he resolved, attack the situation from a different angle – he would try to find out the great man’s last words. Did not Gandhi say “Hey Ram” when being shot or Martin Luther King say “Free at last, free at last, thanks to God Almighty I am free at last”? Did not Rajiv Gandhi say “Don’t worry. Relax” to his security men before being killed or Noel Coward say “Good night, darlings. I will see you tomorrow”? All these became historic quotations and he would do the world a great turn by finding out this great man’s last words rather than by interviewing these petty, selfish individuals.
Systematically, he approached the doctor, who was rushing down the aisle (really there was no need to do so now but a doctor must always look busy), for he was the one to see the great man die but the doctor disappointed him. “You see...” he said and a long pause ensued. The cub obeyed and looked diligently up the aisle and then down the aisle while the doctor struggled for words. When the cub decided that the doctor had nothing much to show really, the doctor broke the silence and continued, “... he had been in a state of drowsiness for the last three days and the last person he spoke to, as far as I can recall, was his wife”. The cub started sniffing for the wife. Soon he found out that the wife, in turn, was sniffing at home so he caught hold of the son, who was trying to clear up the hospital bills. The son showed him a mighty fist and gave him such an excellent demonstration of his vocabulary (who said genius is not inherited?) that he tucked his imaginary tail between his legs and fled. But he did not flee far for he stopped, panting, outside the hospital ward and waited patiently so that he could follow the cortege to the crematorium in the hope of catching the wife there.
Many people came and few of them went. Breathing became difficult and his eyes grew bleary but was determined – he would, by hook or by crook, have the great man’s last words.
At 1 am, the body was shifted from the hospital directly to the crematorium and he followed. At the crematorium, he caught sight of the wife who had come directly from home, and when he reached her, after some deft moves amidst a jungle of people, he was shoved aside by a burly, pig-faced, pot-bellied man. When he told him of his predicament, the man gruffly told him to come at 8.am sharp. The cub sighed. It may have been for the better, he told himself. The wife, sitting with watery eyes in the corner, was perhaps, not in the right mind to speak. He would come in the morning as decreed, he decided.
At 8 am sharp, he arrived. He had had barely time for a few hours’ sleep, a bath a small cup of tea before he had rushed out of his house. After all, it was his first assignment and the scoop was not yet ready. The burly man of yesterday shoved him into a sofa. He looked right and then he looked left and saw, to his utter dismay, numerous other reporters of various shapes, shades and sizes waiting beside him, all of who were perhaps asked to come at “8 am sharp”. He closed his eyes and doggedly decided to wait.
A sharp tap on his back woke him up and he saw the red, pig-face of the burly man looming over him. He glanced at his watch – gosh: it was eleven-o-clock and his turn had arrived now. “Better keep off the senti and controversial stuff,” the pig-face warned him and he nodded. “And don’t ask more than three or four questions”, the pig-face proclaimed.
The great man’s wife was sitting on a large armchair. Her face spoke volumes of the months of strain that she had gone through and before he could overreact to the frail smile on the intricately crafted, pale yet beautiful face, pig-face slammed him down into a chair and growled, “Remember, only three or four questions. She has been harassed enough by your breed”.
“Indeed I would only ask her one question and please reply. I would like to know his last words.”
“His last words?” the wife stuttered, “Oh, let me think – well, they may not interest you”. She went on slowly and haltingly, and her voice wandered, “no, certainly, they would not interest you”.
The cub, noting the absent-mindedness in the wife, recalled that sometimes the last words, though apparently trivial to mere mortals, may speak volumes. Did not Oscar Wilde tell his nurse not to put out the light because he did not want to go home in the dark? His face grew brighter and he said, “Still ... and please quote him verbatim, I want to know the exact words”.
Pig-face interjected, “This is getting too far- I had asked you to not go far. No personal or controversial stuff I had warned”.
The wife raised her palm at pig-face and said quietly but resolutely, “That’s all right – I will try to repeat in the exact sequence, but I may not be able to tell it verbatim. I would try my best.”
“Please do so”.
“Well,” the wife went on, “it went something like this – you know, we have a window at the leftmost corner of our living room whose grill has rusted- so he told me, ‘ I hope you are closing the left-corner-window every night’, you know he used to call it the left-corner-window, ‘ there are too many cats around’...”
The cub stared at her. After some time, he gave up trying to extract the profundity of the statement. He decided to think later. Right now, his mind could not keep pace with his fiercely rumbling stomach. After mumbling some words, he dashed off to the nearest restaurant.
But then who can blame the great man? Did not he too have a wish to live a couple more years?
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