JB'S VENGAL

Guest post by Sraboney Ghose

There once lived a bhadrolok named JB…You may have heard of him…

One day at a public rally many years ago, he said that if people followed him they would become diamonds amongst pebbles…The great state of Vengal would reach heights hitherto unknown…Instead of courting favour from the moneyed and powerful, he would protect the poor and the powerless…All resources and capital would be owned by ordinary workers, everybody would be equal…

By romanticizing poverty and the underdog, he managed to get a grip on the emotional core of the Vengali…

Thus the journey began…Droves of people followed JB, some voluntarily and others forcefully…They wandered for years while Vengal went from a thriving state to a wasteland…Party members could do anything they wanted to make a buck - after all, they were just making a living…From time to time, the great leader took breaks in America and England to get away from the power cuts, heat, filth, and sweaty workers…He sampled some of the best single malts on these breaks and always returned looking younger and fresher…

30 years on, as JB lay on his death bed in his mansion, an old man came to meet him…He said, “Babu, I heard you speak at the great rally and your words touched my heart…I followed you for all these years but my life is worse than it was then…My children are uneducated and jobless and the little parcel of land I had was taken away by the government and given to an industrialist…I believed in you, but now I’m a broken man…You haven’t delivered what you had promised.”

“But I have, my dear man, I promised you equality and I have given you exactly that…I have driven away the capitalists, ambitious and educated…We are a land of mediocre and unambitious have-nots now…And the best thing is, we all live in a wasteland.”

Saying this, he slowly shut his eyes and passed away to the nether world…