One of my first cousins dropped by the other day.  I had a bit of a falling out with him and was seeing him after quite some time.  Now he’s one of those people who nurse political ambition, and all for the wrong reason.  Like so many delusional young men in this country, who after making a mess of their life, think that politics is the easiest way to make a quick buck and acquire power?  I accept that political ambition has nothing to do with creating a meritocratic society, but even so, cupidity and nepotism are the order of the day; it’s a closed shop really.  I thought he understood all that but with a vague sort of clarity which was neither here nor there.

  So, here he was, like a man possessed by a misguided zeal hoping to secure a nomination from one of the parties for the upcoming state assembly elections.  His last attempt to do so had ended up in a miserable failure, and as it turned out, same thing happened this time also.  He was very unfocused and incoherent in articulating his political views.  He mumbled something about giving opportunity to the youth, and when my brother probed him about having any kind of blueprint in mind about the young people in the country, he brushed aside the question as something utterly insignificant.  He carried a sheaf of papers—a kind of resume—on which written in bad English were the sum and substance of his achievements as a political activist.  He talked to some big shot on the phone seeking an audience with him, but clearly the big shot was not interested.  The wheedling tone, the exaggeratingly obsequious manner in which he was speaking on the phone was quite embarrassing.  Maybe, the big shot would have granted him an audience, I don’t know.  Living purely by instinct, shunning completely the life of the mind, wearing your reverse snobbery as a badge of honor, you lose the language of both your conviction and also of your rage.  Looking at him, it was possible to see that a kind of unwieldy ambition was pressing down upon him and making him somehow diminished as a person.  I tried to imagine some common ground with him, but I couldn’t.  The chasm between us was also an abyss and I just wouldn’t reach out to him.  And then he left.  And that was that.  I kept thinking that even though he was sitting couple of feet away from me, I could have hardly felt more distant from him.