SCAMS AND MORE

INDIA - SCAMS AND MORE

CAST

CHIEF MINISTER                      A fat elderly man, with shifty eyes

ADVISOR:                            A grey wheeler-dealer

PERSONAL ASSISTANT:                 Youngish, nondescript

DIRECTOR GENERAL OF POLICE[DGP]:    Tall, and strong, with a belly

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                     Well groomed middle-aged corporate leader

DISCIPLE:                      In saffron robes, shaven head

Two constables in uniform.

Place

A large office-room of the Chief Minister in the Secretariat of a State capital in India

Time

The Present

THE SETTING:                                 A large Chief Minister’s office-room in the Secretariat of a State capital in India.

AS LIGHTS COME ON:                    THE CHIEF MINISTER is seated behind the desk. His ADVISOR is seated across the table from him. His PERSONAL ASSISTANT is hovering around. RAJKUMAR REDDY enters followed by the DIRECTOR GENERAL OF POLICE.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [exasperated]: What am I to do? My ministers are corrupt, my bureaucrats are corrupt, even gurus are corrupt! Now you with your billion dollar scam, you have ruined us all!

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      [casually settling in a chair and lighting a cigarette]: My scam? It’s your scam! I’ve helped you make more money at one shot than you would have in the next five years.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            You must think of something – a way to get us out of this mess  – we will all end up in jail, I know  –you will be locked up for ten years!

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      [calmly] I am already under lock-up. Ask the DGP.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [very angry]: What! You have been arrested? Who gave the order? [turning to the DGP] You can’t arrest him! Good God! Have you forgotten you  have built palaces with his money? If he talks to media, I am sunk, and you are destroyed!

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      [murmuring] Dear Chief Minister, I have made a full confession – before the media – the TV wallahs lapped it up.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            Good God! What’s come over you?[wildly] It must be that Pracharananda Swami! Man, don’t you know, he is a fraud of the worst kind! Ask the DGP here – the girls, the Scotch – Oh, God! We will say you have had a nervous breakdown!

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      Calm down. My company shares have fallen to four rupees after the confession.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [looking sick and speaking hoarsely] Four rupees a share! Down from four thousand! You must be ill –Four rupees! Oh, God, I had ninety thousand! I am ruined!

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      [briskly] No, you are not, you are the richest Chief Minister in India! Look out of that window – half the land from here to Singapore is now owned by you!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            What’s he babbling?

DGP:                                                   [smiling] I also now own rice fields around twenty-five villages in the delta area. Our fortunes are made!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            You are both mad! You are all mad!

ADVISOR:                                         [smoothly] I think, Sir, there is something subtle here.

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      [slowly as if speaking to a child] All our shares were sold at four thousand rupees each – well before my confession. We then purchased all the best lands through our agents – all done secretly, and with police help. In the years to come, all businessmen, governments, municipalities, will have to purchase land from us to build ports, airports, hotels, cinemas, shopping malls, you name it, we own the land for it!

ADVISOR:                                         [shrewdly] But on the flip side, we have lost control of the company - it was such a good milch cow, you know?

DGP:                                                   [laughs] Not at all! Rajkumarji is a mastermind! We have purchased all our shares back and more at four rupees!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [still scared] And no one will come to know and drag us down into the mire?

DGP:                                                   [smiling broadly]: Sir, did you not make me DGP? Am I not here?

CHIEF MINISTER:                            But we are all missing a key point – if Rajkumar is under arrest, the opposition will be baying for his blood – the judges these days are real troublemakers.

ADVISOR:                                         Time will pass – people will lose interest, you know there will be other scandals, sex, hopefully some Pakistani terrorist will commit an atrocity.

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      And in the meantime, am I to rot in jail?

CHIEF MINISTER:                            Come on, that is no worse than what I have to endure everyday. You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs!

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      [decisively] I don’t want to be an egg for your omelette!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [turning to the DGP] You convince him. Rajkumar, some small inconvenience, for, say, two three years, and then, we will be out of government, and free, and we will blame it all on them, and then get in again ten years from now…

DGP:                                                   Rajkumarji has thought of a better idea.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            Plan? What Plan?

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      I disappear totally!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            No, no! That will not do! We will be made to look like fools, or worse, everyone will know we are all in the plot!

RAJKUMAR:                                     I am to be killed by a communist!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            What! Killed? Talk sense, man! [turning to the DGP] And you tell me he is not mad?

DGP:                                                   Sir, he is not mad! You are too impatient. It will destroy the Left in our state!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            It will destroy the Left? How will what destroy the Left?

DGP:                                                   Sir, if a well-known left-winger – with or without prior connivance of his party – has committed a murder, suborned judicial process, gone against democratic principles – the Left will lose all popular support!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            Yes, all that is very true – but someone among them has to commit murder – how are you going to stage that?

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      It will appear I was killed by a communist leader for perpetrating the billion dollar scam – of course, I am not going to be killed in reality!

ADVISOR:                                         [nodding wisely]: I see, clever, quite clever. Then, when the noise dies down, you emerge – say, after several years?

DGP:                                                   No, Advisorji, not with all these TV journalists looking to push up ratings – the truth will out, then where will we be? No, we need a body, a real murder, that’s the only thing that will do the trick!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [appalled] Murder? What murder?

DGP:                                                   [nodding]: I will show you.[to the PERSONAL ASSISTANT] Tell the constables outside to bring in that fellow.

[PERSONAL ASSISTANT goes out, and immediately returns with two constables and THE DISCIPLE]

DGP:                                                   Chief Ministerji, meet Swami Pracharanada’s favourite disciple. This Swamiji has renounced the world and announced that he will depart for the Himalayas!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [formally] I am honoured to meet you, Swamiji. I have the greatest respect for your Guruji.

[DISCIPLE namakars aloofly]

DGP:                                                   You have renounced the world, because it holds nothing more for you, Swamiji?

DISCIPLE:                                          [calmly] The world is Maya. It is only a vale of tears, and the wise leave it in full knowledge of its meaninglessness.

DGP:                                                   But you may have regrets later? You may then return to us, to this world?

DISCIPLE:                                          [with a thin smile]: Sir, you are still caught up in this Maya – For me, the cycle is complete, I shall not return.

DGP:                                                   Swamiji, can I request you to bless us before you leave us? 

DISCIPLE:                                          Compassion for all living things continues to exist even when we renounce the world. OM!

[ DISCIPLE closes his eyes, others stand with hands folded in namaskar. DGP covers him from the audience. A shot is heard]

CHIEF MINISTER:                            My God! You have killed him!

DGP:                                                   [speaks to the constables, putting his revolver back into its holster] Take it out and dress it in Mr. Rajkumar Reddy’s favourite Armani suit. Go!

[The constables carry out the body]

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      No! Not in my Armani suit! I am very fond of that suit!

DGP:                                                   All the more reason. It will convince everybody it’s you.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [horrified] You have killed him, killed him!

DGP:                                                   [casually] Yes, I blew away his face. We needed a body. I have done him a favour, actually.

ADVISOR:                                         [with a shrewd smile] But, now, you can’t say a communist killed Rajkumarji, can you?

DGP:                                                   Oh, yes I can. That political science lecturer, that Doctor Rajan from the LSE, we have already lifted the fellow coming out of a pub, and he will be killed in an encounter with our constables guarding Mr. Rajkumar Reddy.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [sinking into his chair] My God!

ADVISOR:                                         Come on, now, Sir, you are among friends, and we know it’s not your first time. The key thing is to keep Rajkumar out of public sight. No better hiding place than this office.

DGP:                                                   [nodding]: That’s right, that’s why we brought him here.

CHIEF MINISTER :                           [throwing up his hands helplessly]: Go ahead, make yourself at home. You seem to forget, Rajkumar, that you can never show your face again, as long as you live!

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      [laughs] Not as Rajkumar! But as Sheik Rahim, I can!

CHIEF MINISTER:                            Sheik? What Sheik?

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      Sheik Rahim – I like that name, it means the Merciful. A government plane will fly me out tonight to Dubai. I have offices there, money in banks, everything I need to start a new life. I shall convert to Islam, marry a couple of buxom Arab girls –

ADVISOR:                                         [really shocked]: Marry Arab girls? What will Snehalata say?

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      [coolly] Why should she object? She has never objected to my other women before.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            You are planning to come back here?

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      Of course! I must protect my interests – and also my widow! Remember our shares have sunk to a record low of rupees four each? Well, most of them have been bought by Sheik Rahim, in fact, I believe he is the majority shareholder now, and once your government has bailed out the company, and paid off investors, banks, and employees hurt by the scam - perpetrated by Rajkumar Reddy, of regrettable memory - the Sheik may want to assume control – it will be his legal right.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [worried] Someone will spot the impersonation.

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      No one will. A small nose job, a full beard, burnoose, dark glasses and impeccable introductions from Dubai – it’s all arranged!

DGP:                                                   [to CHIEF MINISTER] I think we should go and face the press. Breaking News has already told the world about his assassination and the shooting down of his killer. It is time you spoke to your people.

CHIEF MINISTER:                            [abstractedly]:Yes, yes, let’s go.

DGP:                                                   [turns to RAJKUMAR REDDY as they go out] You will be quite comfortable here for the next few hours. The CM’s Personal Assistant will take care of you.

[RAJKUMAR REDDY waves to them as they leave, and then puts his feet on the table]

PERSONAL ASSISTANT:                Would you like a drink, Sir? I have Johnny Walker, Glenfidditch…

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      Glenfidditch. And get me a plate of mutton shikumpur.

PERSONAL ASSISTANT:                [preparing to go out]: Would you care for some music, Sir? We have Bose speakers!

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      Bhajans?

PERSONAL ASSISTANT:                [surprised]: Of course, Sir! Subbalakshmi’s Meera Bhajans?

RAJKUMAR:                                     [Leaning back]: Do you have that favourite bhajan of Mahatma Gandhi’s, that Ishwar Allah one?

PERSONAL ASSISTANT:                Of course, Sir. We even have a recording of Gandhiji’s own voice!

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      Splendid! Play me that one.

[The PERSONAL ASSISTANT puts on the music, and we hear Mahatma Gandhi’s voice singing ‘Ishwar Allah tere nam sabako sanmati de Bhagavan’]

RAJKUMAR REDDY:                      Thank you. I am really a Gandhian, you know.

[PERSONAL ASSISTANT goes out, bhajan plays on, and LIGHTS DIM OUT]

End of Play