We are like that only. We praise villainy; we prostrate before villains; we prefer villains; we poll for villains and then we put them on the covers of our magazines. Villainy Wins!! Three cheers for villains!!! Look at yourself, look into your head if you have one of your own, tell yourself the truth if you can. And tell us who’s your preferred one. Tell us it’s not a villain. Or The Villain. The one who swept the poll and the one you put on the cover. Villains are, often, who we secretly want to be but haven’t the trick or the temerity to become, isn’t it? Everybody likes a villain, the one you can’t become but would want to. Oh, what power. What privilege. What a thing of pride. To be the villain. To exude villainy, to be the centre of the aura that everyone’s apprehensive to even approach. You walk and everything around scatters away, a magnetic repulsion. What a thing to be.

And why not? Why be shy? Badi baat hai, not everybody’s cup of tea to be a badmaash, or mug of coffee. Villains are a thing; you don’t get them every day. How long has it been since Mogambo? Or any such with a hat for a face and a knife for a nose? But they are not like that anymore. They are different. They don’t have to wear hats or brandish knives. They simply say things. And sometimes they don’t say things. And that is how they come to be known for their villainy. Sometimes they also do things, who knows, they must be doing things but they do those things in a way that everybody knows they have done it but nobody can tell for sure. You know one when you get one. Villain, I mean. And when you get one, well, well, turn pussy, get into the well and pray Tommy Stout doesn’t come around to pull you out.

It’s the truth. Why not say it like it is? The fellow is a villain, and it isn’t easy being around one. More so when we have nothing to match him, and so he rules the street, or gali, or para, or pradesh, or the entirety of who we are, or whatever. Admit it. Accept things as they are. Go. And on your way in feel free to even salute and scrape. It’s a good survival strategy, endorsed by our elders. Paani mein reh ke magarmachchh se bair? Not easy to take on a magarmachchh, in the waters or outside. Magarmachchh hi magarmachchh se bair le sakta hai; we know, we have been told, story of our times, isn’t it?

But to be a magarmachchh? Want to be? Like that? Feared and loathed? Assumed awake and plotting even when they might be genuinely snoozing on the excess of a gory meal grabbed, chewed up by reeking teeth, and gulped down that reeking gullet? A creature that repels more things than merely trust? A creature that is, well, not exactly what you’d want to set out to be, right?

I mean you’d still want to be called Tiger. Or Lion. They are beasts of prey too, they grab and gulp and they too never brush their teeth. But you’d still not mind Tiger or Lion. But magarmachchh? Yes? No. That settled then, not magarmachchh. Not like this one.

But what is one to do? He’s there. Everywhere. All the time. He can’t be missed, or be given the miss. He is watching you, surveying your behaviour, assessing what you might deserve, a snap, a bite, a killer blow with a whiplash of that jagged tail, what? Have a crew that can take him, put him away? No? Then it may be simpler, consider yourself fortunate, you’ve been spared a scare. And a few scars too. But you are lucky not to have to contemplate any competition. Now don’t lose time, hurry up and secure your future. Give in. Give up. Sing the sordid song of sycophants and be done with it. All shall be well once you are on the side of the villain and the villain is on your side. There will be no more anything or anybody to be afraid of because you have become part of the horror, friend of magarmachchh.

Masterji jooz to aalwayz say
Oh lissan you there, kaun hai bey
Donkey ban, joo joosless fallow
Whooz is lathi usi ki bufallow.