Surprise! Surprise! Guess who called late last night? Julian Assange! The Wikileaks man had apparently heard of my huge collection of CDs...
I thanked Sanjubaba for his insight. But then I thought of what Assange had told me. Indeed, I have not quite shared what is there in my vast collection of phone taps. (Incidentally, Jayapradaji, when I discussed it with her, thought I was referring to bathroom fittings and couldn’t figure out how CDs came into the picture). Anyway, that apart, what I have in my kitty are 80,000 real conversations and 20,000 fabricated ones. The last lot is thanks to a team of imaginative young women who call themselves the Splice Girls. They cut and paste different conversations to produce dhamakedar end-products. In fact, the girls are behind the Bhushan CD which is creating tidal storms in the Lokpal nation’s chai cup. Interestingly, the Splice Girls have created one conversation where Manmohan Singh seeks Soniaji’s permission to eat breakfast before lunch and supper late at night. She on her part says the nac will have to deliberate on an issue of such national importance!
While several netas have been fixed on my CDs, there are several everyday conversations that will interest sociologists. Like a Noida housewife hollering at her grocer for delivering tea instead of Surf. “My maid’s been washing for the last hour and has stained all the clothes,” she says. My all-time favourite, though, is a schoolboy imitating me and threatening a fellow student. “This is Amar Singh speaking. If you don’t back off from Sahil, then I will tap all your phones and your father’s phones and release the transcripts through the school magazine.” Well, I always knew I had arrived. But that last-mentioned conversation convinced me: I am of the stuff tapping legends are made of....
(As imagined by Ajith Pillai)