Existential Dilemma

There is a dilapidated building in the seediest corner of a mofussil town in Kerala, a southern Indian state. On the third and top floor is a shabby, smelly room crammed with pamphlets, underground literature, Mao’s and Lu Shun’s portraits, faded red flags, threadbare kurtas and cloth bags — paraphernalia which were supposed to ensure a red revolution in green Kerala.

The four comrades who have assembled in this never-padlocked room are in a deep dilemma.

Communism, let alone Naxalism, has become passé all over the world, and this has disheartened the Kutti Comrades of Kerala. Furthermore, most of their compatriots, sensing the fruitlessness of their existence, have either committed suicide, gone mad, turned traitors, became traders, boarded a flight or an illegal catamaran to the Arabian gold coast, or sweetly embraced religious fundamentalism. Fall of the Naxalite Movement? Can’t say.

Setbacks apart, the comrade quartet is optimistic that they will listen to the Spring Thunder very soon. Let’s take a peek into their room.

(Sounds — loquacious arguments, sucking on bidis, scratching of beards, creaking of old furniture, whirling mosquitoes, burps, yawns, farts — reverberate in the room.)



Comrade Marx Nair: Why this colonialist mess in our Malayala Nadu?
Comrade Stalin Joseph: Don’t you pretend that you aren’t aware of the socialist degeneracy thanks to the materialistic efforts by the obscurantist traitors who even today swear by Marx, Engels and the Communist Manifesto they jointly wrote. Comrade, don’t be a coward. Face the fact.

Comrade Marx Nair: But you didn’t answer my question.

Comrade Stalin Joseph: About what? The mess? Okay, let’s talk about the mess we are deeply in. It is due to the bourgeois upper class’ despicable and deplorable efforts to derail the sincere efforts of the Naxalites who ardently follow the Maoist ideas… it’s a global phenomenon.

Comrade Lenin Abdullah: Are you talking about our MCC [Maoist Communist Centre] comrades’ recent valiant attempt to derail a goods train in Bihar’s Palamau?

Comrade Stalin Joseph: Comrade, we have nothing to do with the MCC and we do not follow their line. Either you, Comrade, are not listening to me, or you’re not following the Marxist-Leninist line of thinking and acting — but that doesn’t mean we should forget out dearest Mao. Today our enemy is the global comprador bourgeoisie, who don’t even lend their weapons to us.

Comrade Mao Menon: Are you out of your revolutionary mind, Comrade? Will any bourgeois lend his weapon to any one of us?

Comrade Lenin Abdullah: That’s because revolution can never give birth to illegitimate children.

Comrade Mao Menon: Illegitimate children? You mean illegitimate comrades?
Comrade Lenin Abdullah: Comrades, you are talking nonsense. Why are you drifting away from the subject?

Comrade Stalin Joseph: Subject? What subject?

Comrade Lenin Abdullah: The need for revolution.

Comrade Stalin Joseph: Gimme a break; it’s old hat. I really do not know where we, the Naxalites of India, stand today. We have to get out of this bullshit, lest we will make orangutangs of ourselves. We have to change with the times.

Comrade Mao Menon: I agree with you, Comrade. We should now start believing in parliamentary democracy, like the Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and even some outfits of our own Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). But (sobs) what will happen to our dear Mao’s principles? Of armed struggle? Of Cultural Revolution?

Comrade Lenin Abdullah: Yes, we shouldn’t ditch Mao. In fact, we can carefully and meticulously wrap his dynamic principles and market them to the discerning upper class, who may get influenced and join us for the second Great Leap Forward. We can even reedit them and import them to China. And we should also start drinking Pepsi and Coke, and have occasional bites at the McDonald’s.

Comrade Stalin Joseph: Not so fast. Let’s start by eating biriyani at Elite Hotel. Then maybe we can wash it down with Kingfisher beer. What say?

Comrade Lenin Abdullah: I believe you have enough money?

Comrade Stalin Joseph: Money? It’s a bourgeois concept. I do not have it; I despise it.

Comrade Lenin Abdullah: Then let’s have some marijuana, kill our hunger and talk about the latest threat that is looming large over us.

Comrade Mao Menon: Threat?

Comrade Lenin Abdullah: Yes, it can spoil our untiring efforts to immortalise Mao and spread his revolutionary message right from Kasargod to Kanyakumari. And, Comrades, the threat is in the front of us in the form of
Arundhati Roy and Murali Nair.

Comrade Marx Nair: Oh! The novelist and the filmmaker? They, a threat? I thought they brought us fame and international recognition to our land of pretentious Malayalis.

Comrade Lenin Abdullah: Again, you do not think of Mao, or even Marx, when you indulge in an intellectual, proletarian discourse. Roy’s and Nair’s crime is that they mixed Kathakali, communism, rural ambience, pickles, rivers, greenery, and our own perpetual greed for National Panasonic and Sony colour television sets, and sold their works to the ever-grinning, exotic-loving firangis who brought the sleazy stuff for a fortune and resold them for higher stakes.

Comrade Stalin Joseph: I agree with you, Comrade. Both the book of Roy and the films of Nair were not only utterly mediocre and shamelessly gimmicky, but are vivid testimonies of how ignorance and lack of talent can sell in a land inhabited by cultural czars and czarinas who can’t even make out the difference between the elbow and the ass.

Comrade Lenin Abdullah: You are wrong, again. In fact we are not smart; they are smart. The developed world always had this tendency to promote third-class art and literature from third-world countries. We must protest against this, and if need arises, we should take arms to thwart any effort that could become a threat to our Malayala Nadu.

Comrade Marx Nair: But the arms are with the bourgeoisie…

Comrade Lenin Abdullah: But — long live revolution! — we need an issue to fight…

Comrade Stalin Joseph: Long live Leninist, Maoist thoughts! Let’s have black tea…

Comrade Mao Menon: But I’m hungry…

The comrades then fix their eyes on Lu Shun’s big portrait. Their eyes travel down, and read the revolutionary poet’s four-line verse printed at the bottom:

Fierce-browed, I coolly defy
A thousand pointing fingers.
Head bowed, like a willing ox,
I serve the children.

Amen.