Children! Put your hands together for the most powerful man in the world, President Barack Obama!”
Hundreds of tiny unwashed hands clapped as loud as they could, unwittingly displacing the army of flies that hovered around them.
It must have been one of the windiest January mornings in the village because I saw a young boy; around seven years of age cover his ear with the brown malnourished pigtail of the girl standing in front of him in the line.
I, of course, did not need to resort to such adverse measures. My freshly washed and pressed black suit and silk tie immediately set me apart from anyone residing in the vicinity of over 100 kilometres.
“Good morning, children. Do you know which country I belong to” I began, my deep confident voice soaring beyond the tiny piece of land which housed the dilapidated make-shift school.
“Amreeka!” said a sweet voice from the crowd waving both hands in a desperate attempt to be noticed.
“Yes!” I said, matching the little boy’s enthusiasm.
“And what language do we speak in America?” I asked, expecting one of the older kids to answer me this time.
“Englis!” screamed the same voice again.
“Correct, again!” I said, bringing a big smile to his face. “Since, you are so smart, why don’t you tell everyone how an American like me is able to speak in Hindi just like you” I said, doing a wicked imitation of the village’s local dialect.
Loud laughs drowned the boy’s response. In my experience, this question never failed to enthuse the crowd. The image of a foreigner speaking the dialect of the village was a sure-shot winner when it came to audience retention. Personally speaking, I found nothing even remotely funny or interesting in the thought. But If I were to tell the crowd assembled to hear me, that some foreigners did speak Hindi, I would be booed off, most likely by the scruff of my neck by the headmaster. Everybody is possessive of their version of truth.
At this point, I should probably tell you about me. I am not the actual Barack Obama, as you may have guessed. My name is Ramcharan Singh, age 35, son of a wood cutter in Uttar Pradesh in India. I was living the proverbial life of poverty and hunger till Barack Obama got elected as the 44th President of USA. I would have never even known about it had it not been for a cousin in Mumbai who wrote to me saying that the new American President bore an uncanny resemblance to me. A relative of mine had once made a lot of money as a duplicate of Dharmendra, the actor, so, I decided to do the same. I got my hair curled the way it looks on Obama and invested my savings in a good suit.
I was a last-minute replacement for the village jester as the Chief Guest of the Republic Day function in the school and was determined to fill his shoes.
“Excuse me young man. Can you repeat your answer” I demanded of the boy.
He nonchalantly stuck a finger in his ear. “I said, you are able to speak Hindi like us because you are not from Amreeka”.
My carefully cultivated poise took a beating. The last thing I needed was a puny boy blowing my cover.
“Why do you say that?” I said, making sure I sounded exactly like the great man I was impersonating.
“Because you are black. I have seen it on TV. Amreeka is a land of white people”.
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Talk about naive responses!
That last line would have knocked the wind out of his sails.
Peace. Have a nice day.
This one comes as a sharp smack on the cheek, archana! I hope it comes out as a winner in every ‘race’!