A Great Tragedy

Greatness contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. The force of life is the same as the force of death, and it takes but one small error to convert the one into the other.

Note, for example, the curious case of Dubya and Christian values. Christian values were Dubya's unique, and only, selling point. It seemed that as long as he had Christian values, no war, no hurricane, no downturn could touch Dubya. Recently, alas, Dubya nominated as the next Supreme Court judge a ridiculously soft-hearted woman who only kills liberals but does not drink their blood. Incensed by Dubya's lack of faith, the keepers of the the self-same Chrisitan values are now calling for his head.

Note, for example, the curious case of the White Man and technology. The White Man used technology to subjugate the brown, black and yellow people of the world. Alas, instead of nerve gassing them en masse, he spared them and educated them to serve as his clerks. He counted on their lack of brains, which was fair enough. Alas, he did not account for his own lack of brains. As he made technology simple enough for himself to use it, he also made it simple enough for brown, yellow and black people to use it. And while both brown and White men can write software, only the former can breed prodigiously, as anybody in New Jersey would have noticed. Having failed to close the issue when he was on top, the White Man is now a marginalized foreigner, a hysterical second-hander, in his own country.

But the grandest tragedy of recent times occurred not in the prosaic West, but in that land of Legend, that cradle of Epic, the great nation of South India. Aye, in South India, there recently lived and died a man whose life illustrates the self-desctructiveness of greatness more poignantly than anything I have seen or read. It is his tale I recount here.

The late N. T. Rama Rao, or NTR as he was known, was a lot of things: he was film star, politician, friend of the common man, not-just-friend of the common woman, and in more ways than one, the Father of the state of Andhra Pradesh. His greatness cannot adequately be described in my humble prose, so we take up NTR's tale towards the end of his life.

NTR was slowly receding into the dusk. In his old age, he developed a fascination for vans, which he tried to convert into chariots; and middle-aged women, whom he tried to convert into Headwomen of Andhra Pradesh.

In the former, he succeeded spectacularly. Andhra Pradesh is full of people who will call anything a chariot if you promise them some cash. Some of the more inspiring Telugu poetry of recent times likens the headlights of NTR's van to the lustrous saphire eyes of an Arab thoroughbred.

The latter exercise, namely, that of making people accept NTR's mistress as their own, proved more challenging. In India, women get voted to power only if they had spiced up the public's private fantasies at some point of time in their lives. Unfortunately, NTR's middle-aged woman looked, well, middle-aged. Worse, she looked like she had looked middle-aged all her life. But NTR knew that even this could be overcome. In Andhra Pradesh, as I've said, a little bit of cash goes a long way towards ensuring suspension of disbelief.

Cash, and NTR's image, ensured that the public did indeed flock to see NTR's anointed successor. When NTR finally died, he did so thinking that he would rule through the person of his mistress for another forty years. However, fate had willed otherwise, for NTR had made an error that was to undermine his own greatness and annul his legacy. It is this fatal error that I shall now describe.

The Tragedy:
As mentioned earlier, NTR was quite active in the production business. He wanted sons to carry on his legacy, but even he could not control the gender of his offspring, and some of them turned out, unfortunately, to be girls. It was a problem, but one which Indians solve regularly and ingeniously with some rat poison in the baby's milk, or an extra affectionate hug. However, NTR's prolific rate of production made production control well-nigh impossible. Consequently, some girl children did get away, and flowered into doe-eyed beauties. NTR knew that daughters, if they were allowed to marry, would bring sons-in-law, who would compete with NTR's own sons for power. So, he fiercely guarded his daughters from lustful eyes. As poet Vemanna recounts,

Andamainadi NTR gari kooturu,
Dani choodadaniki abbaiyilu potaru,
Kopam ostundi NTR-ki valluni choosi,
Tintadu vallatho koorelu chesi.

which, in the infinitely less poetic English language translates to

The beauties that NTR did sire,
Were courted with much desire,
But suitors suffered the sire's ire,
Yea, their privates were set on fire.

It appeared that everything was under control and NTR's lineage would not be challenged by strange men that he had not fathered. But then Fate struck in the person of Nara Chandrababu Naidu, or simply Naidu. Naidu managed to marry one of NTR's daughters by the simple expedient of looking so ugly that NTR's henchmen considered him harmless. It must be said that their judgement was not far off the mark. However, they forgot that NTR's daughters saw NTR regularly, and that lowered their expectations from men as far as looks went. So it happened that NTR himself unwittingly drove one of his daughters into the waiting hands of Naidu.

The rest, as they say, is history. After NTR's death, NTR's mistress, now wife, and his son-in-law Naidu were involved in a power struggle. The wife told the people that NTR had loved her, and she was his rightful heir. All of Andhra Pradesh was awash with posters of her standing beside NTR to prove the point. It was, she believed, a surefire winner. After all, Naidu had never been in a picture with NTR.

And then Naidu pulled off a blinder. He simply had his men write "He loved this?" below the posters.

Needless to say, Naidu won the elections convincingly. He dedicated a grand tomb to NTR, cut off all neighbouring trees and released crows in the area. The tomb is now called the White House of Hyderabad.

NTR's wife has not been heard from in a while.