The king has no clothes

A "guest" letter borrowed from the Kaieteur News

Are the ministers, advisors, and ambassadors of this naked king the same species and purpose of filth?

If I am going to write an impassioned novel, I will name it “The Day of the Champion.” In this piece I will write about a filthy man with a filthy mind, a depraved hero who has fallen into the convolutions of his primitive instincts, a man who can’t contain his love and resolve to wallow in filth. This novel will not exclude beauty and exuberance, but will also talk about the fear and insecurity of a man, a weak and frightened man who drinks the wine of power to flex his muscles in a travesty of strength. In a childhood story I was told, I will write at length about this man who rides a white horse as a king, boasting his fine clothes and jewellery, with thousands of his people waving banners, throwing garlands, and singing his praise that he is the best-dressed man ever to walk this earth. Then I will write about the little boy who was both astonished and baffled at seeing the king on a white horse, a naked king in pornographic obscenity, with the hypocrisy of thousands celebrating this king in his best regal apparel. Then the little boy cried, “King, king, you have on no clothes!”

This book I will write will have a basic theme, with a question: “How can a man be a champion of decency, nature, and beauty when he is a prisoner of the lowest qualities of the human mind, a man obsessed with the crudest repulsiveness on “Earth” of a thing called ‘filth’?” I will ask another question, “Are the ministers, advisors, and ambassadors of this naked king the same species and purpose of filth?” Where is the intellectuality of these ministers, ambassadors, and advisors? Where is the shame, the sense of justice, morality, and personal decency? Has the word “filth” metamorphosed into meanings of parliaments, cabinets, family life, international diplomacy, economic strategies, cultural expositions, offices of presidents, and social justice?

What troubles me most is the overt and covert humour of a particular ethnic section of Guyana about this plot and execution of filth. I am a Hindu and East Indian. Nowhere in our Vedas, Itihaases and Puraanas our heroes and celestial deities condone this raakshas (demonic and fecal) act of throwing filth on a writer and academic to thwart freedom of expression. But I am now wondering if this king without clothes is given permission and rights to rewrite the tomes of our resplendent Hindu past, to rewrite it with the putrid and odious ink of filth.

I will certainly write this novel, titled “The Day of the Champion.”

Churaumanie Bissundyal