Please use this thread for news on discussion on this Gentleman murder. What he did? what he was fighting for? Who are those '<i>honorable men/women</i>' who dropped the ball? et al.,
Recieved in an e-mail:
<b>Letter to a Murdered Mate - Satyendra Dubey</b>
We need your ghost, Dubeyji, we need him for the faithâand the fright
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story....t_id=36601
by: RAJ KAMAL JHA
DEAR DUBEYJI (if I may, thatâs what one of your batchmates said you
were called at IIT Kanpur):
This is the first letter Iâm writing to a murder victim. Either in fact
or in fiction. Iâm doing this for two, three reasons. No, make it four.
Four sounds rightâitâs been four days since we first heard the whistle
you blew. Four is the number of years both of us spent at IIT. Four
sides make the Golden Quadrilateral.
1. I write because I donât know what else to do. I canât reconstruct
your body from your ashes, send it to TV studios, let anchors squeeze
your shoulder in prime-time empathy. My colleagues at The Indian Express
were the first to tell usâand the worldâabout the whistle you blew one
full year before you were killed. That you wrote to the Prime Minister
about your nightmares in his dream project. Nightmares of old-fashioned
corruption on a futuristic highway.
Your whistle blew hard, right in the first paragraph: Sir, donât
mention my name. And you were courageous enough to whisper it right in the
end because you didnât want to be seen as running scaredâyou did the
brave, honourable thing.
They didnât.
They underlined your sentences and then they didnât give a damn. Did
you believe they would? The flunkeys who scribbled on your letter are
paid to stay permanently bent at the waist, on all fours, their lips
puckered from perpetually kissing the ground beneath their Bossesâ feet.
Such people never know what to do with someone like you, someone who
stands up straight.
When we called, guess what one puckered-lip flunkey told us: ââI donât
remember the letter, send me a copy.ââ We almost said, ââGo to hell,
you...ââ Iâll tell you tonight what that word wasâour readers donât need
to know. It will be our little secret.
The last four nights, in the Express newsroom, youâve been on our
computer screens, on our front pages. We have got calls and letters from
Tokyo to Cupertino and as I write this, someone is signing the 10,848th
signature on a petition to the Prime Ministerâs Office (do the
puckered-lip flunkeys know how to read?).
They should send a copy to Sonia Gandhi and her tongueless tribe as
well. So that when they wipe their tri-state election tears away, they can
call up their only friend Laloo Prasad Yadav and tell him: ââFor once,
think it was Satyendra Yadav who died, now can you get moving?ââ
We got calls on your picture, too.
A few lines about the picture. We got it from a family friend of yours,
in New Delhi, his number from your IIT batchmate whoâs a cop, one of
the first to see your body. Itâs a studio picture, you lookâhow do I say
this since as an editor, Iâm paid to be sceptical, to believe that
pictures have to be deceptiveâbut I will say it anyway: You Look Innocent.
But I have a complaint, Dubeyji, mind mat kijiyega.
This is from one IITian to another: I wish youâd got one of your
wingmates whoâs got stock options to get you a pair of Armani glasses, a Hugo
Boss shirt. And instead of sitting so straight, so stiff, I wish youâd
kind of draped yourself over a woman with breasts, a midriff to murder
for. The Times of India would have given you a nice front-page mention.
Jokes aside, that picture of you got to us. And the second picture,
too, of your father in that cold Champaran house, his eyes vacant, a
pullover over his vest. Just like my father. I had to write to you.
2. This is a terribly selfish reason: I need to write to you. Because
it lightens the weight on my little appendage called conscience. Let me
explain. You and people like you are, in a way, responsibleâI know this
sounds harsh, so forgive me, Iâm six years your elderâyou are
responsible for the discomfort I feel once in a while.
You see, I did just the opposite. I, too, got into IIT, Kharagpur 1984,
you must have been in Class VI then, an 11-year-old kid. I milked the
taxpayer, I got a B Tech, Mechanical, not so much different from your
Civil. (Remember fluid dynamics, strength of materials, numerical theory,
those atrocious drawing classes?). Once, twice I, too, wanted to give.
To teach village children! In fact, one day, I took the bus for an
interview for a job in a West Bengal village, got it, returned to find a
telegram and a scholarship from Los Angeles. Went straight to the US
Embassy.
Building a road in the heart of darkness? Iâd rather read Conrad.
So I milked that US degree to get jobs, first in the US, then back home
and now I sit in a cubicle in south Delhi where the only threat to my
life, besides the cigarettes I smoke, is the prospect of a plane falling
down as it descends to land because we seem to be right below an air
corridor.
Since I graduated, I have written two novels, not even thick enough to
be used as pillows, Iâve bought a house in Gurgaon, havenât moved in
yet, my wifeâs working on it. By the way, the day she read about you, you
know the first thing she said? ââHe joined IIT the year I graduated
from IIT, heâs such a bachcha.ââ Dubeyji, you were a kid, you donât get
killed at 31.
Call me an arrogant sonofabitch, IITians donât get murdered at 31 for
doing their job.
This weekend, we will sit in the balcony of our new house and admire
the view: right in front is the Golden Quadrilateral. From the distance
where we are, we canât make out those working thereâmaybe thereâs one
just like you.
3. I write to you because I never knew you in life but in death, you
seem perfect. Sorry, Iâm an editor, Iâm banned from using such phrases.
So Iâll rewrite: almost perfect.
Iâm not exaggerating. You were doing what we dream of in dreams we
never talk about. You could have got yourself into a US university, IIT
Kanpur gets you that. Even if you didnât have a hot CGPA, youâd have
smashed the GRE analytical and math, verbals youâd have brushed up. Youâd
have got three profs to give you great recos, you could have been one of
us, IITians who wear our IIT on our sleeves and make sure our hands
donât get dirty. We flinch, just a little bit, whenever someone says what
did you give back to the country?
Then we spin, we philosophise, we say what the hell, we built Brand
IIT, we built Infosys. We say, donât be an old-fashioned jerk, whatâs
brain drain in a globalised world? Look, look, we say, we work for
McKinsey, we work for Deloitte Touche, we make CNBC drool, we work at Goldman
Sachs, if Dr Manmohan Singh was the engine of reforms, we went and got
MBAs at Wharton and IIM and became its bloody chassis, wheels, steering,
drivers. What the hell do you mean what did you do for your country? Do
you seriously want us to go to Bihar and build a road to prove that we
care?
Well, Dubeyji, you did that.
And even if you hated your job some days, even if you felt trapped
every day every night, even if you sometimes winged it, even if your
complaint to the Prime Minister was an idealistâs complaint, not a realistâs
one, you are almost perfect.
Since you chose, and here I will use a clicheâ because itâs so perfect:
you chose the path less travelled.
4. And thatâs why I am writing to you to tell youâand I will never tell
this to your mother or father, I can never tell this to your mother or
fatherâyour death canât be forgotten.
Because we need your ghost. We need your ghost to knock on Mr B C
Khanduriâs door at night, scare him when he sleeps the sleep of a job well
done. Because we need the highway. My wife and I, in Gurgaon.
And my brother-in-law who works as a doctor in a village not far from
where you were killed. It takes him 14 hours to travel 250 km from
Patna. You were working to make his life easier, to help him move his
patients faster. To make more frequent trips to meet his daughter whoâs
growing up almost as fast as the highway.
A good friend and my IIT batchmate from Kharagpur, Partha Chakroborty,
is associate professor in your department at Kanpur. He just about
missed you, came down from Delaware to join Kanpur the year you were
leaving. I asked him this morning: what does Dubeyjiâs story mean to you?
I quote his email:
ââOn the positive side, it tells me there is hope. That there are brave
souls willing to take immense risks to stand up against corruption. It
also tells me that the education system may still be playing a role in
instilling some of virtues which make a society strong and liveable.ââ
He told me to express his sorrow to your father, our reporter spent a
day at your home. Your father was crying, he didnât speak, he couldnât
speak. He didnât have to. Because you are doing the talking, Dubeyji.
Because they may not build a memorial to you on the
Aurangabad-Barachatti highway, no Bollywood director may ever buy the rights to your
story, we may never see a Hindi version of Meryl Streepâs Silkwood, they may
not enact the Dubey Disclosure Law to protect whistleblowers like you,
they may never send those puckered-lip flunkeys home.
But the next timeâand there will be a next timeâthere is a Satyendra
Dubey, from IIT or wherever, who walks into a lonely place to blow the
whistle, he will look right and left. He will look over his shoulder, it
will be cold, the wind will blow hard, he will then look up. And he
will see you shining there.
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