One of those early Sunday mornings, the moon (yes our good ol’ moon) just having returned from night patrol, having heard thousands of all too familiar whispers from the lip-locked lovers in the deserted park benches basking in the moonlight, having been marvelled at and written about by hundreds of poets, having seen a bunch of eager scientists planning to touch it yet again, looks at itself in the mirror, beams a haughty smile, yawns and goes to sleep.
And a million miles below is a genius itching to be revered, a capitalist eager for the next million, a neighbourhood auntie desperate to show off, kid next door curious to boast to his friends. And a time warp theory is disentangled, de-jargoned, printed, wrapped in glossy paperbacks and shipped for public. A galactic icon is created for the graphic designers to get busy with t-shirt prints, mobile wallpapers and animated cursors. A new badge for society moms to show off their awareness for a brilliant future of their pampered Horlicks kids.
Mountains blasted flat, rivers bridged, jungles mowed down and cash registers start to ring. Diesel guzzling tin monsters ferrying overfed urban mobs to the newly accessible paradise. People squatting in the lush meadows of the serene valley. The paradise starts to show up on web pages studded with marqueeing promotional offers, atrocious fuchsia headings and blinking GIFs. Soon it’s on everyone's tourism list. Everyone's!
Somewhere a Nawab is jolted out of slumber by his been-there-done-that, entrepreneurial son. Elephants are festooned with fake gold ornaments, guards are told to brush their moustaches, dark cadaverous women are procured from the neighbourhood slums and made to fit into backless cholis and the ancient sleeping haveli is thrown open to the bundy and bermuda clad firangis hungry for a make-believe ethnic fix for their painfully easy lives.
A masterpiece is dissected by an army of critics. A repertoire of ready made tags wait in their armoury. Cubism, minimalism, post modernism, deconstruction, golden ratio. Formulae applied to beauty, numbers assigned to mystery, measurements defined for perfection. The fish-eyed pictures of the masterpiece make it to the glossy centrespread of the coffee table books in the villas of corporate rats.
The factories continue to roar. The machines continue to peel the aura off brilliant dreams and chop them into mediocre pieces of actuality, neatly packed in millions of showy boxes. A few can't stand mediocrity. Most can't stand brilliance.
Someday, on a full moon day, when it’s carelessly loitering in the night sky, the moon shall be harpooned, tethered and pulled down to the earth. It will be carried to a factory; smoked, grounded and polished into shiny little gemstones. That familiar smirk would be wiped off from the night sky, forever. The heavens would have surrendered to the gluttony of man. Someday the moon shall belong to everyone.…just every damn one...
