With the acquittal of the Talwars, new findings in the murder of the murdered Delhi schoolboy, and the astounding reply given by the airlines after their employees mercilessly bashed up a passenger, I’ve firmly come to believe we have a master fiction writer in our country who writes tales stranger than fiction!
“That’s his house!” said a local to me, “And that room right on top is where he writes his stories!”I climbed up the steps of the fiction writer’s fancy home and waited in his living room. I didn’t have long to wait, as the storyteller greeted me with folded hands, “Welcome!” he said, “I’m just doing a piece onNov 8th being Anti-Black Money Day: Bit of a difficult piece though!”
“Who hires you?” I asked curtly.
“Mostly government, quite often the police!” he said, “But they are bad pay masters so I don’t put too much masala into their stories, and within five years or so, the plots crack up!”
“Like the Talwar case?” I asked, and the fiction writer nodded. “Silly plot!” he said, “Took me five minutes to write, but strangely held for a while. Even got them into jail. The inspectormanaged to tell it well in front of the cameras, till this high court judge realized it was mere fiction!”
“But your plots get the wrong people in jail,” I said crossly.
“I’m paid to write stories,” said the writer, “it’s you guys who believe every word I write!”
“That Delhi schoolboy murder was not a nice thing!” I said, “Blaming that poor bus driver!”
“The police came running to me,” laughed the fiction writer, “asked me to cook up a story that would get them off the hook, sort of take the heat off them, and I did just that!”
“And now for this airline you write a rejoinder about the beating up of a passenger?” I asked, “You’ve mentioned that the sacked whistleblower, the person shooting the video was actually egging the employees on to bash the poor man! How can you expect people to believe that?”
“They will!” cried the storywriter chuckling, “I find the public swallow whatever I write. You people have become such fans of my fiction that I don’t have to think too hard about making convincing police, private or government plots anymore; anything is believable! Half the innocent people in jail are there, because of my stories!”
“While the real culprits roam free!” I whispered.
“Like I said, it’s my bread and butter to write!”
“And ours to believe!” I said bitterly as I walked down the steps and out of the house. Outside, I saw Whatsapp groups and online readers nodding as they believedfictitious stories and fake news, made up by such storywriters for the gullible people of our nation, who have not yet learned to separate fact from fiction..!”
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