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The Bailout Plan (standard:fantasy, 5935 words) | |||
Author: Rattan Mann | Added: Mar 12 2010 | Views/Reads: 3300/3570 | Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes) |
A story inspired by the global economic meltdown | |||
Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story honorary Chief of his tribe. A pregnant Hispanic called him The Angel of Wall Street and begged him to bless her with a son. A childless Pakistani gentleman called him Maula Mann and begged him for a child. Everybody was staring at Miss Money as if they had never seen a beautiful woman before. Enamoured by a beauty of the Wall Street, they forgot all the beauty-queens of their own street. The Main Street had never been so full of life. His very presence there gave everybody a new self-confidence, and the beautiful and lovely Miss Money stole their hearts. With the Angel of Wall Street and Miss Money on their side, the good folks of Main Street knew no limits to their dreams and aspirations. Everybody started singing and dancing with them. A young reporter who was on his way to the first day of his first job with his first new camera stopped to interview Prof.Dr. Mann – his first interview with a celebrity. After a long and barren winter of discontent, new buds was quivering in every soul on the Main Street. And just when everything was going so perfect, every heart so filled with hope and joy, Prof. Dr. Mann spoiled it all. He reached for his bag, pulled out a sealed bottle, broke the seal open, and let out a skunk in the crowd as if he was letting out a genie who would make the world an instant paradise. In the ensuing stampede to get away from the skunk, many people got hurt. The old black lady got a heart attack, the pregnant Hispanic lost her baby, the poor old Apache Indian, who had no medical insurance, broke his leg, and the young reporter broke his camera and lost his job. Joe, the Plumber, landed in an Intensive Care Unit, and the childless Pakistani was trampled to death. Miss Money disappeared from the Main Street and nobody knew where she had gone. All she left behind was her empty purse. In the blinking of an eye the Main Street became a War Street and Angel Mann became Devil Mann. Not a soul on Main Street remained untouched by Prof.Dr. Mann's irresponsible prank And ever since then, everybody on Main Street avoided their good and friendly neighbour, Prof. Dr. Mann. So when they saw him singing again, they naturally ran away to avoid getting hurt again. And they refused to come to his aid when they saw him crying and slapping himself like a mad man. After all, he was indeed a Mad Mann and a Party Spoiler and Ravisher of the beautiful and delicate Miss Money. Prof. Dr. Rattan Mann had a totally different interpretation of things. He claimed to suffer from selective amnesia and so he conveniently forgot this whole episode, and blamed the Main Street for becoming a den of thankless people who did not appreciate greatness and genius. There and then he decided to sell his mansion on Main Street and move somewhere else where his immortal contributions to wealth and prosperity would be appreciated more. But first he had to get hold of this bloody Bailout Plan to tear a bunch of highly rattled senators off his throat. The Bailout Plan was his Holy Grail and he had to get hold of it somehow if he wanted to remain alive. Once more the Perfect Logic came to his rescue: If it was not the Main Street, it had to be the Wall Street which would bail him out so that he could then bailout the rest of the universe. The path to the Holy Grail lay through the Wall Street. Once more he started running pell-mell towards the Wall Street as if the Main Street was on fire. On his way he stopped at a Mall , bought the best clothes money could buy, and then loaded with tons of money, walked towards the Wall Street with the dignity and decorum of an emperor. As he sauntered up and down the Wall Street, he was sure that this time there were only pleasant surprises in his store. After all, he was a former Czar of the Wall Street, and many people there owed not only their livelihood but their very existence and filthy richness to him. Surely they were not as thankless and spiteful as the bad guys of the Main Street, and would not run away from him in his hour of need. Very soon a crowd of the smartest and richest men on earth would gather round him, embrace him, talk of the good old days when Miss Money was everything and the Main Street Damsels nothing, read his mind, feel his new troubles, see the pain dripping from the smiles, open their hearts and handbags, and there and then present him with what he needed the most – a golden copy of “The Perfect Bailout Plan” which he could then throw at the face of every senator on Capitol Hill. And thus would the Saviour of the Universe be saved himself. Unfortunately, things again did not turn out the way he had dreamed. His best friends hurried by him without as much as casting a glance at him. People who owed their very life to him turned their faces away when he tried an eye-contact. It was a chilling experience which made his spinal cord as cold as the melting Himalayan Glaciers. Then he saw his former secretary, the beautiful and lovely Miss Usha Singh, coming towards him. He rushed towards her, dead sure that she would hug him the way she did in the good old days when Charm and Grace competed freely with Beauty. Unfortunately, instead of hugging him, she turned her back on him, and stood motionless as if she had been mesmerized by the Statue of Liberty walking on the waters. She refused any eye-contact with him. As he was about to spit on her, she whispered through clenched teeth, “ For heaven's sake, what are you doing here, Prof.Dr. Mann, sauntering up and down the Wall Street like a Gigolo In Red. You know very well that soliciting is strictly forbidden here. The NYPD bulls love to hate anything red, specially red gigolos , and they are on their way to arrest you. Get lost and change into something more decent as soon as you can unless you want tomorrow's headlines to be ‘The Former Czar Of Wall Street Under Arrest For Soliciting'. ” And then she hurried away without looking at him before her friends could notice that she was pally with a gigolo. His former secretary's words shook Prof.Dr. Mann to the core. He started shivering. He looked at himself to understand her. Indeed, he was attired in all red - red coat, pant, shirt, tie, and shoes – while all his friends were attired in blue or white. He indeed looked like a chichifo trying to attract attention not by the content of his mind or character, but by the color of his clothes. And now that lovely Usha had mentioned it, he did hear a faint siren in the distance. The NYPD bulls had indeed sniffed red and were on their way to maul him down with the ferocity of pitbull terriers. Prof.Dr. Mann panicked. He didn't know what to do. The siren was coming nearer and nearer and surrounding him completely. To break the circle he started running. He took out his coat and tie as he ran and threw it into a dustbin. That didn't help much. His shirt and pant and shoes were as red as the NYPD bulls loved to hate. But getting rid of his shirt and pants would get him into sure trouble. He started running faster and faster as he looked desperately for a place to hide.. The siren was just round the corner, and soon the NYPD bulls would do to him what the Capitol Hill senators had wanted all along – lynch him in broad daylight. But then an angel came to his rescue. He saw the public urinal he had used so many times before and he knew instantly that he was saved – he was assured of enough breathing time and space to think of his next move. He could even spatter his clothes with blue ink to make them look more decent. He rushed into the urinal and locked himself up. Before locking the door, he peeped through the key-hole, and saw a NYPD sniffing-dog fishing out his red coat and tie from the dustbin as evidence of potential crime. A few moist condoms were sticking to his coat and tie. To put the dogs off his trail, he filled the urinal with heavy fumes of the most expensive deodorant on earth, and then collapsed on the pot to take stock of his fast deteriorating fortunes. Never before had a former Czar of Wall Street fallen so low – shown the boot by both Main Street and Wall Street, chased by NYPD bloodhounds like a runaway slave, with US Senators waiting at the other end to scalp him as soon as he was within reach - all because he did not possess the Holy Grail – The Perfect Bailout Plan - to save the world from immediate meltdown. Suddenly an idea struck him like lightening. The game was indeed over. But instead of going down like a villain he could go down like a martyr by committing suicide and leaving behind a suicide note which would cause a Tsunami on Capitol Hill. The Suicide Note should turn the table on the Senators and make him look like a victim of monstrous injustice by Capitol Hill. But what could a villain say to look like a victim and become a martyr? He started looking for clues everywhere. All his life was spent in partying with prime ministers, presidents, and kings. He never heard them saying even one thing in their whole tenure which would turn them from villains to martyrs in the eyes of the Main Street. Once a villain, always a villain – that was the motto of the Main Street. Where will he find a magic wand which would turn the slogan upside-down and that too in such a short time? Finding no solace in the dry and insipid present, barren of all great thought, his mind strayed into the greener pastures of the past. And he began to see light at the end of the tunnel. He remembered how emperor Nero stole victory from his enemies by committing sucide and predicting the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in his Suicide Note long before Gibbon talked about it. Then he remembered that the Turks had barely entered Constantinople when Pope Nicholas stood before the mighty Sultan Mehmed and predicted the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire and gladly bartered martyrdom for foresight. Marx predicted the demise of communism even as Lenin and Stalin were intoxicated with its Magic Powers. That is called thinking and foresight – not the cheap and silly publicity stunts of all those spineless leaders and politicians of the present who were unfortunately also his personal friends. Even without a Bailout Plan Prof.Dr. Mann could acquire a permanent place in History along with Marx and Pope Nicholas just by predicting something great - the inevitable law of Newton that anything that rises must fall. His Suicide Note was ready – he had turned the tables on the senators. He had decided to predict the decline and fall of the Western Civilization in his Suicide Note hundreds of years before anybody else would have an inkling of it and go down in history as that Mann who knew the future – a Mann wronged by the Senators for being ahead of his times. He took out paper and pencil and wrote: The Suicide Note of Czar Mann Upon second thought he didn't like the title. “Suicide” was always an exciting term for the media. Some media moguls had even paid huge amounts to people who agreed to commit suicide on TV. But it was no good compared to other immortal titles like “The Bible” or “Das Kapital”. So after much deliberation, he changed the title to: The Prophecies of a Wronged Mann The Chinese and Indian civilizations survived for thousands of years. Even the Roman Empire lasted for a thousand years. But the British Empire couldn't make the 200 year mark, and the American Empire is tottering on its feet before its 100th birthday. Why? Why twice. And Why for a third time. After his initial euphoria, Prof.Dr. Mann fell into a pit of depression again. He fell on his nose just as he was planning to conquer the future once and for all and put the senators on the run. He couldn't answer why, and unless he answered why, History won't look at him twice and the senators would be back in their citadels.. All the answers he could think of were contrived, partial, and lopsided. Parts never make up the whole. Life is whole and death is whole and so the Suicide Note had to be whole. And if he didn't answer ‘Why', nothing but ‘Why', and the whole ‘Why', the Inquisitors of Capitol Hill would lynch him the way the Inquisitors of Madrid could never have imagined. And once more Prof.Dr. Mann started sauntering up and down the winding alleys of Time, waiting for a new Usha Singh to come to his rescue.but Cruel Thoughts, like NYPD bulls, chased him away. After losing the Main Street and the Wall Street, he now lost the Time Street. It was his third major defeat in one day. Suddenly he heard heavy footsteps in the urinal, and then a heavy knock at his door. The Time Machine threw him back on his stinking shit-pot and vanished in thin air. The janitor was knocking harder and harder on his door and screaming that it was time to close the urinal. If he didn't come out soon he would break the door and eject him out with his pants down because he was tired and in a great hurry to go home and sleep after a tiring day. Prof.Dr. Mann realized that he had been sitting in the urinal for hours, fighting zillions of demons who had declared war on his brain. He collected himself, looked around to see if his nerves were still intact, and whined, “Please give me a minute, lovely janitor. I returned from Hong Kong today and I am suffering from diarrhoea. I am wiping my bottom and will be out in a minute.” By the time Prof.Dr. Mann was on the road again, it was indeed night. The Wall Street was deserted, the NYPD bulls had left for greener pastures – like the lush-green corn fields called The Mafia – leaving a poor, dried potato called Prof.Dr. Mann to his own fate. Nobody noticed that he was still in red. He felt safe again. He looked around to take his bearings. He stood at a crucial cross-road. His life was moving towards the Final Act. Like all other Acts, it was going to be an act which should solve all problems of his life. The Last Act was simplicity itself: He would walk to Capitol Hill, hand over the Suicide Note to the janitor along with a hundred dollar note so that next morning it falls into the hands of the media instead of lying unnoticed on the table of the senate committee. Then on his way back, he would stop at a mall to buy the best hanging-rope money could buy. Then at home he would slowly pour the most expensive whiskey in New York in the most expensive glass on Capitol Hill, enjoy every Last Sip of it, then put the noose round his neck, and, with the zillion demons of his mind as witnesses, salute the crumbling western civilization before pulling the rope in style. The Time Machine would then throw him on the other side of Eternity. So he started walking towards Capitol Hill. It was going to be a long and dangerous journey, up and down countless hills and valleys guarding the Capitol Hill like sentinels. But he was prepared for everything. After he had decided to commit suicide he was no longer afraid of anything. His feet were on the ground, but his mind was in the sky with the Time Machine. He was thinking of his Last Drink minus the Last Supper on earth before escaping to the other side of Eternity. As he ascended the winding road, lost in his Last Thought, a rolling fog descended down the Capitol Hill and engulfed him. He lost his bearings. But that did not bother him too much. He knew the way by heart because he had gone there so many times to testify before the endless Senate Committees about so many things he did not care to remember. The only thing he remembered now was that he would be there within an hour. But after walking for hours he seemed no nearer to The Hill than when he started. Something was wrong. He saw no buildings, no cars, no tired senators going home after burning the midnight oil. That is not how he remembered the way was supposed to be. He lost a feeling of where he was . His instincts seemed to have deserted him. He wanted to turn back but he had forgotten from where he was coming. He felt as if he had been dancing round and round The Hill for ever in a Witch Dance without touching The Hill. Had the senate got inside him too and made him utterly ineffectual and directionless. If so, his only option was to keep on tangoing with the senators for good or for bad. Suddenly he heard faint sobs in the distance. That instantly gave him a sense of direction and a new motto – to abolish all tears from the face of the earth. He remembered Miss Money had now been missing since a while. He had found her! She was in trouble. She had fallen into the hands of thugs. Now his Last Act would be to save Miss Money and deliver her into the safe hands of Senator Kennedy before committing suicide.. He moved towards the sobs, full of apprehension about her condition . His mind conjured up horrific images of the most beautiful and lovely Lady on earth being hacked to pieces by Jack, the Wall Street Ripper, and stuffed into secret lockers overseas. “Hang on gracious lady, hang on for a second. I am coming to rescue you from the clutches of your ravishers hell-bent on dumping you into a black hole after ravishing you to their heart's content!” he shouted as he ran like Don Quixote to save the most precious damsel in USA from the clutches of her ravishers. But as he reached the scene of the most heinous crime on Capitol Hill, brandishing his mental sword with the dexterity of an Agatha Christie, all he found was a poor little immigrant sitting on the sideway and sobbing quietly. Even as she wept she exuded a courage and dignity many politicians would have envied. Prof.Dr. Mann's thoughts and feelings took an instant somersault – a 180 degree U-turn. The weeping girl threw him into a Lost World. The Time Machine dropped him somewhere he had not been before. It had thrown him into the Land Of The Dead. He forgot all about himself and his Crumbling Reserve Bank , and felt that the Time Machine had united him with his dead daughter and showered him with feelings of tenderness and love he had not experienced since ages. He picked up the little girl in his arms and said tenderly, “ Oh deary, what are you doing here, sitting alone and crying in the night. The Hill is safe, but not so safe as you think. Where is mom.” The little girl didn't even look at him. She kept her face on his shoulders and kept on crying. Before he became the head of the Reserve Bank Prof.Dr. Mann had a daughter. She died that very day he was anointed the Czar of Wall Street.. But before leaving him for ever, she had taught him how to metamorphose a Cry Baby into a Laughing Princess. He tried the charm he had borrowed from his daughter on the soul of a little stranger in a distant land. And that did have an instant effect. The little girl still refused to look at him, still refused to laugh but now she was narrating her pain through her sobs. “First dad lost his job, then mom lost her medical insurance, and now Raja too has run away from home. When dad drove to the hospital to bring mom home because the doctors won't treat her without an insurance, Raja couldn't take it anymore and ran away. He is my best friend and I can't live without him. Nobody understands me except him and nobody understands him except me. We speak a language which only we two can understand. I can't live without him. Either I will find him, or I will die in the woods. I won't return home without him.” Prof.Dr. Mann's borrowed magic had worked. The little girl had bared all her soul in one go – except the part that contained her name. For an instant he felt like giving her his daughter's name.. “Oh little darling, don't cry anymore. Look, you found me. And now we both will find Raja. I promise. Now tell me your name before I start calling you Maria.” Exactly as Prof.Dr. Mann had predicted – his second major prediction for the day – the girl stopped crying. For the first time she looked into her angel's eyes and asked, “ My Guardian Angel, would you really help me find Raja. I know where he is hiding. He always hides there when he runs away from home. But I am afraid to go there alone. It is a real spooky place. Nobody except Raja and me have ever been there. Would you come with me, please, please. Then I won't be afraid. But never tell anyone about our secret place.” The next moment they were on their way to find Raja. By now the girl had forgotten that she had ever cried. And finally and belatedly she introduced herself. “ I am Princess Rashmi. That is what Raja calls me. He was a Prince, and I was a Princess in our previous lives. So I call him Raja and he calls me Princess Rashmi. Raja knows everything. If you ask him about your past, he will tell you. If you ask him about your future, he will tell you that too. You can ask him anything, and you will get it. If you don't understand his language, I will interpret it for you. I will tell you what he is saying” Prof.Dr. Mann was not superstitious. The Head of the Global Reserve Bank was not supposed to be. But there was so much he still did not understand that often he wanted to believe in things that never met the eye. Of course, he kept these feeling well hidden from even his best friends, for if the senators got an inkling of it, he would be lynched in Medieval style for being a superstitious Medieval Mann, unfit for Modern Times and Global Banks. Today, for instance, it struck him as very odd that a runaway Czar manages to outwit the bloodhounds on his heels, then meets a runaway princess, and starts on a royal hunt for a Lost Prince who knows everything and can give him anything he wanted. And he knew what he wanted – and wanted really badly. “Little Princess Rashmi, could your Prince Charming give me a golden copy of ‘The Bailout Gospel According to Mann' which was lost a thousand years ago? The search for this lost treasure is our Holy Grail.” Rashmi didn't know what a Bailout Gospel was. She couldn't even pronounce the words correctly. But she jumped up and screamed, “ Raja can give you whatever you want. Just ask him and you will get it. I promise. I am sure he knows where it is buried. He will take us to the spot. But first we have to find him.” So with Little Rashmi on his shoulders, Prof.Dr. Mann started the search for Raja., the Wise Prince Who Knew about the Holy Grail and the Bailout Gospel. But the more he walked, the less he seemed to be going anywhere. Rashmi had only the vaguest idea of Raja's Hiding Place. She kept on talking of a huge rock which was Raja's favourite. Where it was and what it was called, she didn't know. But there was something in what the girl said. As they continued walking, the roads and foot-paths started disappearing. And then even the trees and scrubs disappeared. And finally, after a seemingly endless walk, they were entering a lunar landscape with nothing but golden sand and barren rocks all around. The trouble was that there was no single huge rock but zillions of them and Rashmi was having trouble in picking up Raja's Rock. She looked as lost as Raja but she kept on talking of a huge rock with a little tree near it, the only tree on her moon. She knew about it because it was she who had planted it. That made things easier for Prof.Dr. Mann. There were huge rocks everywhere, but not a tree in sight. So it was easier to look for Rashmi's Tree rather than Raja's Rock. Prof.Dr. Mann had grown very tired. Rashmi was not heavy, but after carrying her for hours, his shoulders were aching. So he put her down and they both rested on a sandy rock for a good half hour before starting the new search for The Tree. He was the first to spot it in the distance, and point it out to Rashmi. The Little Princess got very excited. She had found here prince. She knew he was lying under the rock, very sad and quiet, waiting for her. As Prof.Dr. Mann started walking faster, Princess Rashmi stopped him. “Wait here. Don't follow me. Raja doesn't talk to anybody except me. If you come, he would run away again. I told you he can answer any question, and fulfil any wish. But only one at a time. You ask him one question, the question that is troubling you the most. I will carry your question to him and come back with the answer. That is how Raja works and nobody can do anything about it.” Prof.Dr. Mann was taken aback by the harsh conditions that were imposed on him. His mind was deeply troubled because he was living in a troubled time. Everything was crumbling around him. Everybody had deserted him. There was trouble everywhere and of every sort. No king, no president had any answers. The Golden Book “The Bailout Gospel according to Mann” was the only hope in these hopeless times. At last there was someone who knew where it was buried. But then why did he insist that nobody could see him, ask him questions, and discuss the answers. He had so many questions to ask, so many answers to hear, so much hope to glean, that it was plain injustice to be allowed only one question, and that too through a conduit. Raja was acting like one of those kings or presidents he knew too well. And knowing them, he kept his mouth shut, smiled, and accepted what he was offered. The only thing he wanted was a copy of “The Bailout Gospel”. That would save his neck all right. But was it really that Holy Grail he had made it to be? He began to doubt it. It was only a short-time solution of a recurrent, cyclic problem, like seasonal droughts and floods. The Golden Book was nothing but a temporary reprieve. If he could ask only one question, that question had to be something more timeless, something that would bring him immortality, not reprieve. He would write Raja's answer in his Suicide Note, and the rest would be history. So he thought and thought and after what looked like eternity, he finally said to Rashmi, “ Ask him ‘Quo Vadis, Capitol Hill?' ”. Princess Rashmi disappeared down the lane of time to unburden before Raja the heavy weight Prof Dr. Mann had thrown on her delicate shoulders. How would she be able to bring back a heavier answer? Prof. Dr. Mann heard whispers behind the rock....and more whispers...and more ...till the whole lunar landscape became a huge whisper in a language he could not understand. Then those whispers turned into sobs, those same familiar sobs of the same familiar girl sitting under a tree on Capitol Hill and sobbing before the eyes of every senator, president, and king none of whom bothered to understand. Prof.Dr. Mann could not stand still anymore. He broke his tryst with the Princess and went to the Rock. Rashmi was sitting alone and weeping. There was no Raja around. Rashmi was so happy that he had come in spite of her orders that she rushed and put her arms around his legs. “ I don't know what Quo Vadis means. Never heard these words. So I cannot answer your question.” Prof. Dr. Mann looked around and saw that Rashmi's Rock was no ordinary rock. It was a grave. He went round it in search for an inscription, and found it in a small obscure corner. Here lies Raja, Little Rashmi's little puppy forever. Journeyed through this earth for short six months. Prof.Dr. Mann got his answer. He picked up the little girl who could create so much out of nothing, create the moon out of a puppy's grave, and started walking home. She had lost a puppy, but he had found a lost daughter which no Wall or Street would separate from him anymore. He took his Suicide Note from his pocket and threw it at the face of all those who created nothing even out of everything. Without hitting anybody, the Suicide Note fell on Rashmi's Moon, and a lunar wind blew it to Raja's grave where, with Raja, it became something for ever and ever. Prof.Dr. Mann still did not know where Capitol Hill was going, but he knew where he was headed. Rashmi was still crying and saying again and again, “ I miss Raja very much. I really miss him very much. Why did he have to go without me? We always went together. He used to talk to me, tell me beautiful stories, fly with me to the moon, and share secrets I have never shared with anyone else. He always knew what I was going to say before I uttered a word. He knew everything. And then one day mom told me he was gone, run over by a car, and he won't be coming back. Why? Tell me why?” For the first time in his life, Prof.Dr. Rattan Mann, the head of Global Reserve Bank, the Czar of Wall Street, triple Nobel Prize winner in economics, physics, and literature, did not know what to say or how to react. The End Copyright @ Rattan Mann, Åsbråtstien 15, 1251 Oslo, Norway, rattan.mann@gmail.com Tweet
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