The Price to Pay for Being Honest

The Price to Pay for Being Honest

by G J V Prasad

To tell you the truth I must be the most honest and morally upright person in the world. I have never sinned in thought or deed. I have always been wronged; I have never wronged anyone. The world is full of hypocrites, sinners, vagabonds, careerists, business people and politicians – in short, full of the most corrupt, self centered selfish individuals. The world needs me and my elder brother to set it right. We have to be above the law, above democracy, above any kind of accountability in order to do our job of taking care of the world. Like many other incarnations before us, we have been born to set the once-glorious India on the righteous path. We will eliminate evil and establish good. We are transparent in our aims and methods.

First, we will use any kind of blackmail possible to establish the supremacy of our avatar-hood – we are the true representatives of the people. We will by all means possible to denigrate and desecrate institutions for they are corrupt – a product of greed, which can only facilitate fraud. All politicians are bribe takers and all others are bribe givers.

We avatars think only of aam aadmi – the mango man. We enjoy the succulent flesh of the juicy mango, suck it dry in order to have the seeds planted for more trees. We ensure that corrupt people don’t eat these mangoes. If we don’t pay for the mangoes, we do so transparently. We tell the seller that greed is terrible, we educate the seller about the sins of money making when the country is starving. If we eat these mangoes for free, it s only because we can then distribute the seeds. The seeds are counted and labeled – you can see the entries we make meticulously in our registers. We never keep any seeds for ourselves; all of them are distributed to be planted in villages. The money saved is spent in our trips to remote areas to educate the people about the sins they are committing and about the greed of the elected leaders.

They say that we bill our hosts for unlimited thali meals when we have only puri bhaji on tours to spread our message about honesty and morality. This money is offered to us by our hosts with the fullness of their hearts. They do so to make us feel that they have fed us properly. This is the punya they want. The money we thus save feeds others in the family. We don’t touch the money – check the books. We are honest, above board, transparent. The money is used to board others who can not tour like us. What can be more public-spirited and moral than this? We know that people will deliberately miread all this and try to tarnish our impeccable reputation and divide us from our team and our followers. But truth will always win.

Didn’t a very famous man say that if we do it, it is called love, but if the politicians do it, it is called sex? It is a question of attitude and motive. Our motives are pure. We want to educate the masses about the truth, about honesty, about moral living and about good governance. We want to spread awareness about our business and political class; we want to vote out certain governments. We are not political, we are a moral force. People will sling mud at us, but it will never stick, since we bathe in our own holy water. We are always holier than thou unless you join us and we bless you and sprinkle our water on you. We do everything in plain view and while you may call it cheating, we keep records that can be checked anytime – even the inflated bills. It is not for nothing that I am called Probity didi.

Source: An article by Shri G J V Prasad published in Indian Express dated 24^th Oct 2011