Death Talkies: Wheel of Time [Apr/04 P66] (Page 49)

The man had acquired a ratty suit, a hat and a cane. He walked the roads in a tattered shoes and barked orders to men and women. The rundown place harboring homeless and prostitutes humored the king of the town. An old man talking about order and discipline in the most neglected part of the society - it was like running an old joke on a repeat mode.

People laughed at him behind his back when he went to municipality council to appeal for periodic park cleaning. When asked about his identity, he said, "I am the king. And being the king, it wouldn't matter what my name is. All that matters is that I am the king of that place and I expect you to do your duty." Once said, he turned and walked away with a royal trot, the one that befits great kings and emperors. Had he waited for a moment, he could have seen flabbergasted expressions of people with who he had shared a conversation.

And to everyone's surprise, the park did get cleaned.

No one ever knew if it was the influence of the self-proclaimed king that got the job done or was it on municipality's to-do list. While many ignored the fact that the King had something to do with it, they couldn't ignore the influence the man was having on people on the streets.

Local deli added "Kings special" on their menu with the picture of king splashed on paper towel. People laughed at the fake king, wiped their hands and mouths after consuming food and threw the paper towel away. They talked about him when they took bus home and did laundry. Women talked about meeting and shaking hands with king when they played bridge or exchanged utensils with their neighbors. They weren't the people who worked in offices that had bright lights and amazing health insurance. They were those who made little impact on a fully functional society when present and made the society dysfunctional when absent.

The king was always in office - an old abandoned building which once housed an insurance company. Like the neighborhood the company had seen better days. The economy hadn't been kind on the neighborhood which had brought down a fully functional system on its knees.

The old King opened his office every morning at 9 AM and closed at 4 PM. Like clockwork he came in, fully dressed and sat behind a desk which had lost its sheen over the years. For the first nineteen days, no one came. He had stopped by every store in the neighborhood and explained about his tasks and responsibilities in detail. People listened to him and brushed him off as a senile old man.

Didn't the old man know? It was too late to change the world.

On the nineteenth day of opening, a young girl not more than sixteen came in. He recognized her as the girl from street. On her first day in the King's office, she merely complained about cops busting her business when she was getting into it or how the other girls sidelined her and stole her customers. The old king patiently listened. She came every day for next seven days and talked about her work, her friends, her "boss" and her clients. Some days she talked about her family miles away from the town where she had a cat named "Alice". Amidst the nostalgic storytelling, she told an anecdote involving her single mother and went silent for several moments.

"Go home", the old king had said to her. The pathetic look that she had given the king hadn't dissolved his decisive advice. "Go home kid", he said again. She nodded.

That evening he took her to locksmith who ran a small shop at the end of neighborhood.

"You have been chosen to sponsor her bus ticket", the old king ordered the locksmith. It was one thing to advice people for free and a whole lot different thing to ask for freebies. The man in question was surprised at the demand from the senile man.

"Why should I? And even if I give money to this girl, what's the guarantee that she will go home? It may be a ruse to raise drug money", the locksmith professed. The old king sighed.

"She will go home sir. She wants to go home to her mom so she will." The king replied. "And I, The King, vouch for her honesty. You can drive this girl down to bus stop, pay for the ticket and see to it the conductor punches it. That way you will surely know the girl's intentions", the king added. The king stared down the locksmith.

"What's in it for me?" The man asked finally.

"You get an opportunity to change the world", the king walked away leaving the girl and the locksmith behind.

The king was in "office" for fourteen months. In that span of time, he tried helping everyone who came seeking for his advice; most of the time he only listened to the people's problem. Even if he was a king, there was only so much fixing he could do. He listened to the woman whose husband drank every night. He ordered rowdy boys to bring that man home - against the man's wishes. He gave those boys candy for their help.

He sat in office and documented every "case" he handled and wrote about every encounter he had had in the neighborhood. The changes in the neighborhood were too small to make a dent on the whole. But a random passerby who was new to the place would surely see that it wasn't like any other downtrodden neighborhood on the brink of collapse. There was a sense of belonging among the people.

It was as if the entire society was trying in its own way to co-exist. The relationships amongst the patrons were symbiotic which balanced the society like the way Atlas carried the burden of the world.

One hot summer late afternoon found king dead in his "office". The locals buried him with his epitaph reading as "King".

And below that - The king is dead. Long live the king.

May be he did live amongst those cracks on the road, fallen rooftops, spilled beer, washed out curtains, faded walls and in minds of jaded people.