Gumbhai The Tapper

or obvious reasons, I won’t reveal who I work for. But I’m the one who placed the 16 ‘chewing gum’ bugs in Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s office. Now I must confess here that my association with gums goes back a long way. At school in Lucknow I even earned the moniker Gumbhai because I was always chewing away. In fact, this ‘C’ obsession even forced the principal to summon my parents. (He caned me twice but I weathered the storm by singing my own version of the Sex Pistols hit Anarchy in the UK).

Anyway, my father, taken aback by princi’s dire words, took me to Varanasi to seek the advice of the holy man, Baba Bubble Gum. We caught up with him at the Dasaswamedh Ghat and my dad went into a diatribe about my compulsive exercising of my jaws. Baba Bubble took a deep breath and pronounced, “The more he chews, the more he grows.” Then, after a pause, he added, “Bubble, bubble chew and don’t grumble; fire will burn and bugs will bubble.” It was a clear take-off on the witches scene from Macbeth. Even my father, ever a sucker for Shakespeare, was impressed. “He’s quoting the Bard. Wah baba, wah! So, tell me should I let this lad gum or not gum?” Luckily for me, the holy man advised that my habit must be supported, even encouraged and as a responsible parent my father should ensure a steady supply of Wrigley’s.

In later years, all that chewing stood me in good stead. In spy circles, I came to be known as a “good bug-ger”. I could slink into offices and stick the ‘chewing bugs’ at strategic places. And every time my services were called for, I was paid handsomely and given a month’s holiday in the Swiss Alps. But what you want to know is how I bugged Pranabda’s office. Well, I disguised myself as a mop with a long handle and sneaked past security. “Chew your gum and simply fix these micro-mikes. Should you feel the need for a change of taste, you can shift to adhesives,” one of my handlers had told me. I had the 16 bugs in place even as I hummed Rafi’s classic punchline, Koi gum nahin.

And pray, what did the tapping yield? It revealed that Pranabda knows that the Fourth of July is America’s Independence Day; he also loves his roshogollas and aloo posto. As for his advisor, Omita Paul, we now know that she occasionally clears her throat. Curiously, though the India media has ignored all these vital inputs, the same were conveyed by the CIA operative in the US embassy in Delhi to Washington via a special cable marked top secret (Cable XX/June 2010/rosh-posto/). The contents were given by the US authorities to Julian Assange. However, he refused to have anything to do with it since he prefers pastries to Bengali sweets.

So, am I lying low now? Well, as an honourable gum-chewing man I can’t let my jaw drop or droop. In my business, neither can I resist zeroing in on sticking points. Perhaps one of these days I may even become the brand ambassador of Wrigley’s.

(As imagined by Ajith Pillai)