The time I accepted the virtue of Capitalism to the detriment of uhh..placeholder title

Not your usual bildungsroman

(Exercises in Dismemberment#1)

I was born in crippling poverty to a one legged father and one armed mother. Just a normal household, you know.. No, they did not lose their limbs on any great battlefield of ideologies or religions. My father was not the union leader whose leg was hacked off to send a message to the rest of the Marx-infatuated lathe operators. That was Uncle Markhand. He was a fucking hero. With my father, it was heavy equipment dangling from the roof that crushed his leg. The plant operator put two month’s salary in his shirt pocket and one of his fellow proletariats dragged him and left him at the gate. He had to crawl his way to the hospital.

“Two month’s salary,” he would grin and say to me. Two month’s salary in your hands is like owning the Indian Government Mint in these parts. He probably thinks he got the better end of that bargain.

My mother, on the other hand, was a cripple from birth. I know this sounds weird, but she never said a word to me. I never heard her speak. Never. It was almost as if her real handicap was that she could not speak. Maybe she had nothing to say to me.

She died when I was twelve. She had come under the tracks of the train. That’s a question that comes back to bother me a lot. How does someone come under the tracks of a train unless the someone is looking to come under a train? And that’s a ruined childhood right there, guys. An unsuccessful loser of a father and an extremely successful mother(successful at what she wanted to do).

I should be part of a group of mendicant poets, you know, living in the streets. Laughing at the city while living off its magnanimity. Eking a living out of absurdity. Our lives will be our performances. And those performances will piss off fourteen year old Ayn Rand enthusiasts.

“You are an enemy of capitalism but you also own an Iphone. How do you square that, you moron?”

“No. I am an enemy of capitalism who has put the Iphone on his Amazon wishlist and will own an Iphone in a few years, you moron, you stupid motherfucker.”

I don’t do any of that idealistic stuff. I am not Uncle Markhand. Did I tell you that guy was a hero? That guy was a fucking hero. I am not a hero. And I am not my father. I am something in between. I am…I am…I am a man driven by profit motive.

Our economy always has jobs. It’s just not the jobs you can live with. I mean, would you want to be the guy who drives slaves with a whip. I could do it. I might even enjoy it. The factory where my father worked always needed able bodied men. What they needed this men for was quite simple. Sometimes there are Uncle Markhands who step out of line. And then someone, who is well-versed in the contradictions inherent in the first principles of Communism, needs to bring out the axe and get to work on that Marxist Leninist tibia fibula.

That’s the work I signed up for (They actually make us fill out an application form. It’s all online. Zero hassle.) Really great medical insurance. And weekly pay too. And to top all that, I get enough leisure time to read Das Kapital on the weekends. Who wouldn’t want this job?

Sometimes our bosses bring in these IIM graduates to take motivational classes for us. They have these beautiful ppts. They hanker at us for an hour with things like, “Look at yourself. Is this the best you can be?”

“What is stopping you from being the best version of what you can be?” etc etc.

They get paid in lakhs for this shit. If someone wanted me to stab one of these motherfuckers I would forego the advance and just do it for the fucking pleasure.

One of my mates, let’s call him Mr. White, who started out with me in the business has just make his first fifty lakhs.

“How the fuck?” I asked him.

“Been running a business.”

“What business? You been stealing from the masters.”

“Yes. But they don’t know.”

“It’s fifty lakhs. How the fuck do they not know?”

And then he showed me. He drove me to the hotel that he had bought out. It was an expensive hotel, one where the likes of our masters came to eat. The hotel was full. People were shouting complaints, furious at having to wait.

Mr. White smiled at me and took me to the kitchen. The cooks stopped and turned to look at me.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

I asked this question because one of the cook’s knife was raised in the air while on the chopping block was a human leg.

“Whose leg is that leg?” I asked.

“Can’t say. It is from a pile in the freezer.” he said.

“Is that a communist leg?”

“Yup. It’s probably from last month’s batch. You hack them and then throw them at me and ask me to care of them.”

“And this is how you are taking care of it?” I shouted.

Mr. White looked a little shamefaced.

“What can I say?”

“Are you feeding them this shit?” I asked.

“What can I say?”

“What the fuck can you say?”

One of the customers was raising his voice. I moved closer to the door to catch a glimpse of this guy. His eyes were bloodshot. He had the waiter by the throat.

“Where is my mutton? I have been waiting here for an hour. Where is it?”

I turned to Mr. White.

“They think it’s mutton.”

“What can I say, man?”

It was getting tense in the kitchen. They knew what was happening. I could see one of the men slowly sliding towards the door.

“Fuck me,” I said, “I cut the legs. So where is my fifty percent?”

The men laughed. The knife came straight down on the leg neatly cleaving it into two. Mr. White put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You get a lot more than fifty percent. Just keep the supply coming.”

I pray there are lot more Uncle Markhands in the future. Our business depends on it. Have I told you about him? That guy was a fucking hero.