Bloodless Murder

    

                                                                Bloodless murder

After the killing of Duncan, Macbeth says:

          ‘Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? ‘

An unhinged Lady Macbeth cries out:

           ‘Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. ‘

These are famous lines uttered by a conscience stricken couple after the dastardly murder of King Duncan on the basis of aggrieved perception about the Law of Primogeniture that denied the crown to Macbeth despite his loyalty to his King. Shakespeare sees wisdom in the emptied out world of Macbeth, though this is negative wisdom.  In Macbeth, human will takes the place of God’s normative order that sets standards for truth and ethics. Shakespeare never set out to pronounce moral judgements.  Harold Bloom wrote: “Rather than discoursing on good and evil, Shakespeare is always more interested in why we cannot sustain our own freedom”.  The disorder Macbeth created in the world is symbolic of the disorder within his guilt-stricken soul that finally leads to restoration of order and harmony. But Shakespeare’s plays were never about bloodless murder. Even in Othello, Iago’s lies ended in a bloody murder that restored Desdemona’s reputation intact.

How is ‘murder’ played out in our contemporary political theatre?  Arvind Kejrewall with his skewed perception that every politician is corrupt, is conscience stricken to murder them all- but unlike Shakespeare, Kejrewall’s theatre is a theatre of bloodless murder. The stories are well crafted and masks veracity by creative lies, innuendoes and insinuations. Arvind attempts the kitchen sink school of drama made famous in the English post-war theater by John Osborne that gave voice to the working class and was a slap in the face of the gentility, characteristic of those times. Here our angry middle aged hero tries to give voice to the middleclass that had all along been in the forefront to offer and accept bribes in order to become a part of the genteel society. His script is simple- open the play with a ferocious attack on the tribe called politicians, extend it in Act II to cover all the politicians’ men and women, children and grandchildren, puppies and kittens, followed by Act III full of spinning and grandstanding with the clever use of quarter truths and three-fourths lies, climaxing with pronouncing all those he hates as guilty leaving the onus on them to prove their innocence. He cleverly brings the curtains down before the final Act that seeks restoration of order out of the mindless negativity (Dr.ManmohanSingh’s phrase) that had been unleashed on the political stage.

Arvind started as a back end boy when Anna Hazare came on stage donning the mantle of Gandhi. He was a part of the “I am Anna’ chorus till he began to believe that he was Anna. He recognized the need to be upfront and not remain a backroom boy and all he needed was a Gandhi cap to put on and take centrestage. He lost no time in showing to the audience that he is a politician with a difference because he had never been schooled in parliamentary democracy that believes in debate specially on scams. He opened a scumgate using the sensation-hungry media to expose politicians, their kith and kin without a shred of evidence. The media provided him the brush to paint everyone connected or remotely connected with politics as scum of India. Arvind is a consummate artist who knows that ‘a lie gets halfway around the world before truth has a chance to get its pants on’ to use Churchill’s truthful and factual remark.

Arvind has protested against hike in power and water tariffs. He has re-connected power in a poor labourer’s house who had totted up huge electricity bills for the fault of having three air-conditioners, washing machine etc. He is mindful of water scarcity and therefore unlike Macbeth he does not need all great Neptune’s ocean to wash the blood in his hands- as his murder is bloodless, only killing the reputation of all those he despises. He is indeed a Gandhian who does not need all the perfumes of Arabia to sweeten his hand that is bloodless. His is indeed a bloodless savagery-that gives us hope that he cannot paint the city red forever.