Date: Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 11:41 AM
Subject: Sneak preview into another novel under construction: "Dawn of Emceeai" 2
To: caregiver7careseeker@gmail.com
Author: Rush-man Shall-die
Do let me have your feedback.
In my bid toward exposing the problems with the current Indian Health care system ( which I am a part of) as far as the existing corruption in health care education and health services delivery are concerned I thought just talking about the petty (although hefty in terms of money) corruption that exists in local bodies like MCI ( Medical Council of India) may be too commonplace and boring.
This is the reason I thought I would let it ride piggy back on the shoulders of a larger story of Indian Politics waiting to be told ( It was as if I was walking through a forest and suddenly this story which was suspended like betal from a tree was imploring me to relate it).
This is very unlike my previous novel on the science, philosophy and fantasy of medicine in the sense that this one is mostly to do with a fantasy of political science ( and very little medicine and even little about the unsung grassroots people who I personally care to read more about, although I may incorporate them if this project does take off from a spring board).
All information in this account is true and any relation that you may find with anything even remotely fictional is a fragment of your imagination.
( not my original but I am proud to say that I got it from a blog by someone who was a student and now a good friend of mine)
The narrative is set in a hypothetical country called Emceeai which exists somewhere in Oceania, primarily settled by US immigrants who went Westward through Alaska after global warming made it possible for them to just wade across the continents ( I shall leave the interesting details for the final book/film).
In the opening scene the camera/audience/reader follows a person called Dayton Kasai who is holidaying in a cruise ship over the river Rhine in Basel where he has just flown in from Copenhagen.
He is with a blond lady called Carla who promises to arrange for him to meet a mysterious gentleman called Gurdjief Bondi (whose photograph bears a striking resemblance to an erstwhile prime minister from his country Emceeai).
Carla is unable to keep her promise but Dayton after a lot of wait decides to complete the job for which he had come all the way from Emceeai to Copenhagen and then Basel. He checks into a swiss bank, accesses his account, takes a look at all the gold in his vault and comes back.
Scene 2 shows a flash back into Dayton's past as the country's news headlines read: President of the National Health Council NHC pressed for charges of corruption...caught red handed in a sting operation in Bambandra medical college accepting bribes for conferring recognition by the NHC (that is so very mandatory in Emceeai for medical colleges to keep functioning).
Scene 3 shows a meeting between Dayton and Petunia Bondi who is the leader of the ruling party (and the inheritor of the Bondi family's political legacy after her husband Gurdjief was killed in a terrorist attack) in the democracy of Emceeai where she shouts at him initially with all fury and then cowers down when he surprises her with a sneer and a threat (which is unheard by the audience)
Scene 4 Dayton's unmitigated growth inspite of having been publicly stripped of his powers continue and his henchmen ( one of who is Dev Andhar Mishra with a dark past which is related in flashback) keep raiding different colleges in the guise of inspection and return with tons of booty that Dayton goes to deposit in his locker in Basel, Switzerland.
Scene 5 Enter the hero, Rushman Shalldie,( a very dark complexioned man, otherwise resembling a cross between Salman Rushdie and Sharukh Khan),
who is hired by a consortium of all the wronged colleges to probe deeper into Dayton's past (and the secret of his unique power that allows him to get away with blatant disregard for the law of the land).
Scene 5 Enter the hero, Rushman Shalldie,( a very dark complexioned man, otherwise resembling a cross between Salman Rushdie and Sharukh Khan),
who is hired by a consortium of all the wronged colleges to probe deeper into Dayton's past (and the secret of his unique power that allows him to get away with blatant disregard for the law of the land).
Scene 6 Rushman seduces Carla in the usual predictable James Bond style (which gets translated into an interesting mish mash of Bollywood meets Hollywood as its being filmed by Indians, who unlike Shekhar Kapoor possess a more patriotic cultural competence) and gets her to reveal the swiss bank codes of Dayton and after downloading his account details, is surprised that Dayton has more money than can be accounted for (by all the money he may have earned through his National health council inspections etc).
Rushman starts following Dayton the next time he is in Basel and overhears Dayton repeating his request to Carla ( to let him meet Gurdjief).
He is amazed to find that Gurdjief resembles one of the most venerated politicians of Emceeai who was actually believed killed in a terrorist encounter around 10 years back. He starts following Petunia Bondi and soon enough finds her disappear for a few days on a trip to Italy along with her son and ends up following them all the way to Basel. Rushman still maintains good contact with Carla (pun unintended) and is witness to a family reunion which he gathers is an annual secret affair unseen to this day even by the likes of Dayton (Gurdjief's daughter Cranka and her husband Norbert are actually inconspicous in their absence).
In between we have the usual Bollywood sidekicks like Tinderoook Can dancing around the trees with Carla (of all people!) but then it again goes to reveal that Tinderook (the reigning king of the Emceeai film industry) is actually hands in glove with the entire Bondi family in this secret ( and although Gurdjief doesn't meet Dayton he does chill out often with Tinderook and his family who are also always glad to be around when Petunia Bondi makes her annual trips and Carla is actually part of Tinderooks extended family).
Scene 7 The dawn of Emceeai: A million people of this nation march away from the camera shouting slogans against NCH, demanding their right to health education and health care and a speedy institution of another medical body renamed medical council of India MCI ( the abbreviation bears a striking resemblance with the name of their country) purported to arise from the ashes of NCH. The camera then zooms into Dayton's sneering face which is snug in the comfort of all the excess money in his bank account ( garnered from a much publicised Fobors gun deal that Gurdjief had unwittingly got into and was at the moment living off the interest of it that Dayton transferred regularly every month).
Why did Gurdjief chose the life he lived in Basel? This is the book's/movie's closely guarded secret ( and I can assure you this is what will save me from spending the rest of my life in an Indian prison if it is ever published/filmed).
Also I hope to be saved by this quote from Novelist Haruki:
The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticises the novelist as immoral for telling lies. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?
My answer would be this: that by telling skillful lies — which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true — the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.
