DOM THE DERVISH

(Yarns From Delhi)

My name is ‘Dom’. ‘Dom Dom’, son of Dom.

I don’t usually shake hands. Being the king of the underworld, the emperor of the twilight zone, shaking hands is below my dignity. I usually say, ‘I am Dom, Dom Dom’, and then immediately grab the guy by his balls, like Daniel Craig. That is my way of showing that I care. The more I love the guy, the harder I squeeze.

Since time immemorial, my ancestors were very important people in Delhi, real VIPs. When a guy died in Delhi, my ancestors were mandatorily called to take him to the launch pad at Nigambodh Ghat and give him a rocket assisted take off into the yonder, by usually lighting a fire up his chuff. My ancestors usually winged half way there with the guy, going like PSLV, just to make sure that he didn’t change his mind, and come right back like GSLV.    

Being Dom Dom, son of Dom, is not an easy task. My early ancestors had white cloaks which helped them to fly like Icarus. They shaved their heads, and their bodies, to make it more aerodynamic, to help re-entry from space, like the heat shield on a Tomahawk missile. They usually picked ash from Nigambodh Ghat and covered their faces and body with it, like US Navy Seals, so that their political affiliation would not be revealed and people will be frightened witless and shitless. That was all before my Grand Dad Dom’s time. With advent of socialism, Gandhigiri and Nehrupendancy, their wings got clipped. My Gran and Dad had to borrow white bed sheets from the Dhobi at MH in Delhi Cantt and the stupid starched bed sheets could not overcome the thrust weight ratio to get airborne. Ever since, the Doms became grounded, remote controlled mostly from No 1 Safdar Jung Road.  After it was turned into a museum for Indira Gandhi, the remote control was taken to 10 Janpath by the lovely Italian lady in a saree.  When my dad Dom passed the buck to me, because I am a 21^st C maverick Dom, I took the batteries out and threw the darn remote control away. I now live in Yamuna Pushta and not at Nigambodh Ghat. I am now the people’s Dom, like Casper the friendly neighbourhood ghost. Can’t find white bed sheets, starched or otherwise, even in the ruddy MH or R&R, they are managed by lesser Doms. So I wear starched or un-starched khaddar kurta and pyjama. I still shave my head, it helps me make entry into political circles without aerodynamic friction like Amar Singham of ‘he who lost his tape’ fame. I still cover my face with ash from Nigambodh Ghat, out of spite, to make everyone guess my political affiliations, much like that commie creep Ram Sita Achuri, who can’t make up his mind whether to be a socialist or capitalist. He is a Dom and Dervish too, but an also ran type ‘has been’. I am young and virile and hence hope to be a ‘would be’. How I became ‘Dom the Dervish’ is another story.

 During my impressionable years, while roaming in Nigambodh Ghat, I met with and was schooled by a very enterprising Malayalee couple, Devi and Dilip Cherian, who taught me the voodoo cults of the Malayalees, the image makeover trick, for making a Ravan look and sound like a benevolent Ram, simply by changing his name to ‘Ra One’. Then I got invited by another socialite couple Meera and Muzafar Ali to listen to Sufi music at the tomb of Nizamuddin Aulia at midnight and learn to twirl like a Dervish. I have now perfected both the arts. I can twirl like a Devrish and disappear, do a makeover, and reappear anywhere I choose to, with and without a Liza Ray and Fate Ali Khan music score in the back ground. You would think that the Dervish twirling in front of you is a freak wind, like the predecessor to the summer ‘Loo’. But let me assure you that it is me, twirling like a wind, disappearing and reappearing, after an image makeover, just like Michael Jackson’s music video ‘Black Is White’. That nigger copied all my Dom tricks, even to bleach his skin white with ash from Nigambodh Ghat.

 A few days ago, I twirled and disappeared at Yamuna Pushta and reappeared at Jantar Mantar as Barakha Dutta.  I saw a forlorn looking Anna Hazare sitting on the sun dial.  

‘I am Dom, Dom Dom’, I said. Before he could shake hands, I grabbed his balls. They were substantially large,  did not fit into my hands.

‘Kya Chal Raha Hai Anna ?’, I asked in Barakha’s supercilious tone.

‘Vat lag gaya re’ he giggled, sounding like Adarsh Warsi.

Before he could answer, Crane Bedi handed Anna a glass of milk. ‘Drink it my baby’, she said. “It will do you lots of good, besides you have to be strong and healthy before starting your fast unto death’. With Crane around to mother him 24 hrs a day, poor Anna can’t even get wet dreams on his own. That is Khandelwal’s department, the dreams I mean, with and without Rakhi Sawant like Lok-pen Pal trying to hump Baba Black Sheep Ramdev.

 Anna is a good man. With my microscopic 20-20-200 vision I saw that he was absolutely dry cleaned, there was nothing dirty about him which Kapil Symbol or that vain Congress spokesperson Manish Twit Titwari can default.

I realised that there was nothing much I could spin doctor yarns about Anna Hazare, except Crain Bedi’s new found love for Anna. So I spun myself and disappeared from Jantar Mantar.

I reappeared at Race Course Road. There was security guys all around and hence I had to spin and disappear several times and reappear in grey safari suit to avoid the gun totting goons. I popped into the first of the four houses and despite looking everywhere in that house couldn’t find Mana Mohana of the ‘no phadka’ fame. Mana Mohana does not believe in wearing anything that doesn’t have utility. When he lost his hair he stopped wearing a phadka, and after he came to live on Race Course road, he stopped wearing underwear because they took his manhood.  I spun myself, disappeared and reappeared in all the four houses down the road which were blocked off and barricaded at both ends of the road. Amazing buggers in AM / PM round the clock security, they have made identical houses, with identical everything, flowers in the lawn, furniture, painting on the walls, even the same looking Hariyanvi Jat clones in safari suits, in all the four houses. With my X Ray vision, milimetric wave radar and ESP, I discerned that poor Mana Mohana hardly has a choice about which bed he gets to sleep in, or whether the formidable Mz G Kaur whom he sleeps with is the same battle axe that he married. No wonder Manamohana Singh is so disorientated. I found him in the wine cellar hiding from the grey suited Gestapo who keeps a 24 hr watch on him just to see that he does nothing untold to improve the state of affairs of the country. He was sitting there looking forlorn, sipping ‘Bloody Orange Juice’, like ‘Bloody Mary’.

 ‘Hi I am Dom, Dom Dom’, I introduced myself and grabbed his you know what.

‘No no, you will not find it there, try a little lower, below my knees’, advised the wise old man, ‘I haven’t seen it myself for long, you will have to ask Gurshan Ji where she kept it’, he shook his head sadly.  ‘Probably Bahul Ji  has taken it away, to play ping pong’, he said in afterthought, like a sad squirrel who lost his nuts.

 There was no point goading him any further looking for stories to twirl like Barakha Dutta. So I did a ‘Lal Salam’ like a Maoist, said good bye, spun at high rpm like a gyroscope to defy gravity and disappeared. Guys, you got to watch Michael Jackson video to visualise how I do it.

 This time I popped up in Vijay Chowk like a traffic cop. A lady with her head covered was going in a horse drawn carriage with the Cavalry chasing after her. It looked like a scene from a John Wane western. I ran after her, up the Raisiana hill slope.

‘Oh I know who you are’, she told me before I could introduce myself. She was driving the carriage like a maniac as if the Delhi police was chasing after her. I think she had around 7000 Cr worth Cooperative Bank scam hidden in the carriage, poor Maharashtra farmer’s money.

I did not have to grab the crotch of this one, I was fore warned that it was not there.  Once, a General from Army HQ had complained to me.  He said India has seen many calamities. ‘We have had flood and famines, earth quakes and the Tsunami, poverty and decease.  But they were not the worst of the calamities’, he had said sadly. ‘We now have to salute a Supreme Commander with no balls’, he lamented. I lost interest in the lady who was high jacking the constitution in her horse drawn buggy.  I spun again, anti clockwise for a change. The centripetal force was making me heady.

 I surfaced in 10 Janpath, dressed as venerable KP Singh, the  chairman of DLF . The lovely Italian lady was away for a nip and tuck, and Botox shots god knows where. But ‘Bahul G’ was indeed playing ping pong with Mana Mohana’s balls.

 ‘Hi, I am Dom, Dom Dom’, I said and grabbed. For a tiny second I thought there was nothing there. Then I found two small pea nuts, and out of sheer affection gave it a squeeze. Bahul G did not squeal. I felt deflated. Here was the future of India, right in my hands, a tiny set of non squeaky ones, oblivious to the pain of the political process and constipation of the masses. Future of democracy seemed grim. I began to feel sorry for India.

‘Bahul G, can you recite the multiplication tables ?’, I asked him with much apprehension and concern. As ‘Am Admi’ Dom Dervish, masquerading as Chairman DLF, I was most concerned whether he knew how to add it all up.

‘Uncle, uncle.......uncle, I know A for Amethi, B for Bofors, C for Congress, ......all the way to S for Swiss bank account’, he said with childish glee.

‘Can you count, can you do multiplication table’, I repeated. There was something wrong, his wiring seemed a trifle too long, the bulbs in his head were taking too long to come on.

‘Uncle, uncle.......uncle Dom Dom, one into one is two, two into one is one, two plus two is 256 MPs in my pocket to become the PM’, ...........he rattled off counting with his fingers. Using my millimetric wave radar and 20-20-200 vision I looked closely and realised that the special school for disabled autistic children had not done a good job, he was still quite a dumb moron. Singhvi and Sardesai yodel loudly on prime time TV so that you don’t notice it.

Before I could make friends with Bahul G, Sriyanka G walked in with Fobert Vada Ra, another ‘Ra One’ series clone from the stables of Devi Cherian. Before I could introduce myself, Fobert dived and grabbed my balls. He gave it one hell of a squeeze.

‘Ayyyo, ayyoooooo’, I squealed, ‘I am a Dom, the carrier of shit, I have nothing to give you’,  I begged him.

‘Give me 25% of DLF Reality Venture, OK’, Fobert ordered KP Singh, since I was dressed like the Chairman of DLF . ‘I don’t let anyone go, not without something, OK ?’, he barked.

Despite the pain I forced my mouth shut, I don’t like black mail.

‘Say OK,.... OK ?’, he said squeezing my balls again.

‘OK, OK, OK’, I said, hoping he would not squeeze it so much. I wondered how much it would hurt the am admi when the real KP Singh in DLF, and Fobert,  began to colonise India, like Fobert Focking Clive.

‘What did you do to my poor baby ?’, Sriyanka asked me with great maternal concern dragging Bahul G to her ample bosom. She was ‘like that only, loving it’, she was more concerned to mother Bahul G, and his ambitions of becoming the PM, than the lovely Italian lady in the saree who had gone to US to get Botox shots and to transfer the Hawala money from Swiss accounts to a mountain hideout in Sicily.

‘What a tragedy, and what a waste’, I mumbled under my breath. ‘Here is 24 carat gold’, I  said looking at Sriyanka G.  She could probably make the best PM that India ever had, win the glad rags Mrs India contest, plead for India’s seat in UN security council, get Pakistan to bugger China, have the Marxists doing a jig singing, ‘Ma tujhe salam’, in AR Rahaman’s voice, .........all at the same time. She is Indira Gandhi born again, with larger balls, cast iron stuff.  If only Bahul G could be brain mapped by the forensic lab in Baroda to say, ‘I don’t want to be PM, I want to be Mayawati’s husband’.  

 Despite my Dervish black magic, even with Devi Cherian doing make over, Nira Radia doing double time with and without Tata Bata and ‘Batata’, there was really nothing that anyone could do with Bahul G. I realised that he is a gone case. Srinyanka G was going to get herself written off, as long as Bahul G was around. The Italian lady in the saree was simply going to hijack India like Nadir Shah, just like the other lady who was driving away the constitution in her horse drawn buggy . There was no point in my hanging around Janpath, not any more.

I said, “Balle Balle Balle”, and twirled.  

I spun faster and faster like a gyroscope. I disappeared from Janpath, and this time surfaced at the entrance to the parliament house, just as the MPs were walking in for their Monsoon session. I was this time dressed like Shobha Dey.

‘Hi, I am Dom, Dom Dom’, I told Dharmendra in a sexy Shobha Dey voice. Before I could grab, he opened his zip and gave it to me in my hand. He does that to all women, even lesser looking ones like Shobha Dey.

My God, it was so big. Believe it or not, it was only half there, the rest was in Hemaji’s purse.

‘Sir Ji, ....... Dharam Pa Ji’, I said with reverence. ‘Now that you are an MP, what are you going to do for the people of India, the poor guys who are turning to Maoism ?’.

‘Teri Pen Di’, he stammered. ‘Hemaji and I are planning a re-make of ‘Mother India’. We will dress up Katrina Kaif in a saree without a blouse, like Zeenat in SSS, and make her carry a plough. Have Salman and Amir without shirts sowing wild oats behind her. Get Sharuk to wear ‘Chaddi’ and be the Zamindar like Pran.  I think it will be so patriotic that the Maoists will turn into Anna-oists, what do you think ?’ he asked.

The ‘king of good times’ walked in before I could find something to say.

‘What is that ?’, he asked, making it sound like Priety Zinta’s ‘How zzzzat ?’ during IPL.

‘Now that you are an MP, what are you going to do for the people of India, the poor guys who are turning to Maoism ?’, I asked the same question to the ‘king of good times’.

‘Kingfisher Beer’, he said.

‘Kingfisher Beer ?’, I retorted with sad incredulity.

‘Yeh, I am going to set up a beer parlour in Dantewada and offer a jug of lager, free of cost mind you. I am going to give it to anyone who comes over ground and joins the mainstream, give them a taste of good times’, he said without guile.

‘Seriously Badshah Ji’, I asked with mounting apprehension, ‘why did you become a member of parliament ?’.

‘Just look around you, silly fellow’, he said waving his hand, flashing polished diamonds on each finger. ‘Why do you think all these guys became MPs ?’.

‘You tell me’, I asked very humbly.

‘Because it gives us freedom from persecution, freedom to do what we want, to plunder the nation, none can get after us for being emperors of good times ’.

‘Ah’........I was speechless.

Even a Dervish can be made speechless in parliament, that is a place to speak with a forked tongue. I felt so deflated that I did not have to spin or twirl to disappear, I was shrunk to insignificance.

 I walked all the way to the Gymkhana Club. I asked for a jug of chilled larger, like the one that the king of good times was going to offer to the people of Dantewada to stop the scourge of Maoism. I walked across to a gang of Generals, Admirals and Air Mshls, sitting in a corner whispering. I made myself invisible, it was the right thing to do if the military was planning a coup d’etat.

‘I have the Army behind me’, said a four star general.

‘I can not only have the Navy back me on this, but also couple of politicals and the babudom’, said the man in whites, with scrambled eggs on his epaulets.

The guy in blue said nothing, he just said ‘ummm ummmm hmmmm’, like the asymmetric droning of AN-32 propellers.

I moved in closer, to tune into them with the zest of NTRO, the technical eves dropping outfit of R&AW.

‘What troops do we need to deploy ?’, queried the Olive Green chap, the one with a handle bar moustache.

‘I think one at the bar to distribute free ‘liquor coupons’, one at the main door to distribute free ‘caddies’ and one in the parking lot to distribute free ‘parking’ tickets’, said the politically savvy  man in white, who had been monitoring Tamil Nadu elections as a hobby.

‘Mummm hmmmm ummmm’, said the man in blue, for a change sounding like the asymmetric droning of Dornier propellers. He is the kind of guy who got to the top simply by making droning noises like propellers and claimed that he was a very operational man.

‘We must have full inter services cooperation on this’, said olive green moustache.

‘We must have joint-man-ship’, said white scrambled eggs, in a phoney British accent. The man in blue started to drone continuously, rather disconcerting noise, jamming my eves dropping sensors.

‘Do you think VK Singh will agree ?’, asked the Navy.

‘Sure’ said the army, ‘Even he knows that after winning the club election, it is better to be the ‘Club Secretary’ of ‘Gymkhana Club’ than be a silly Army Chief. I think he will immediately stop redressing his grievance about his age and stop insisting that he be kept army chief for life. He will shift lock stock and barrel to the Gymkhana Club’.

‘Yes, that is the only way to preserve the sanctity of illustrious traditions of the armed forces of India’, said the air force, in between his horrible droning. ‘It is a win win solution, let us do it, get on war footing’.

 I was pissed. So I went to piss. Afterwards the lager of king of good times didn’t taste like good times.    So I did not even bother to twirl or spin. I simply caught the metro  and went back to Yamuna Pushta. It was more fun being a Dom Dom in Yamuna Pushta where the people’s aspirations were simply ‘Roti Kapda and Ladki’.  

‘Bhag, Bose DK’, I sang endlessly, repeating the song from ‘Delhi Belly’. It had more feeling than the British national anthem, ‘God Save The Kings Of Good Times’.  

CYCLIC