Sankarshan Thakur on Power, Nationalism and the Search for the Golden Bird

Badshahat Badshahat Badshahat Ameen!

The thing about power is… Well, should I let it out? In as open a space as a newspaper? Which goes into hundreds of thousands of homes each morning and may be read by five times more that number? Should I let it out in as public a place as a newspaper? Which has become as daily as brushing your teeth and, before that or after that other daily thing. You know what I am referring to. But don’t make mention of it. Please don’t stink up this place, we are already in the sixth year of those things. This place stinks, and it’s your fault. My compliments. Why? Go guess. I am the one who stinks, and you are the ones who brought me here and helped the stink spread. So relentlessly and unapologetically that the stink has become the norm. We stink and therefore we are. We need the stink in order that we can be all the things that are necessary things. The right things. The done things. The nationalist things. All of them that stink. 

We need more nationalism, and therefore the stink of it must spread, so that more and more become acquainted with what nationalism is and what it smells like. It stinks. Smell it. And pass it on. That is your duty. That is what I am here to tell you. And I can and will because I have the power. And that power you gave me because you thought it fit. Or you had no option. 

But here’s the thing about power. Let me let it out. No harm. You will never get it. I am the Appointed One, your lot is to remain Disappointed. No perils lie in revealing secrets to those that can do nothing with such revelation, can draw no advantage from it, at least not such advantage that can even remotely disadvantage me. You are too weak and too reduced. I am too powerful and too enhanced.

Illustration by Sankarshan Thakur in 'Salt and Pepper: Dispatches from a Fractured Republic'. Photo: Seagull Books

That is power. That is where it is drawn from. From the weakness of others. The weaker you are rendered, the more powerful I become. In order for me to have become what I am, there were requirements you needed to fulfil. I am not here to empower you. You are here to empower me. And for that you need to be powerless. So that I am more powerful.

You needed to hope. And I made you hope. You needed to subscribe. And I made you subscribe. You needed to supplicate. And I made you supplicate. You needed to allege. And I made you allege. You needed to protest. And I made you protest. You needed to be whipped. And I had you whipped. You needed to plead. And I made you plead. You needed to pray. And I made you pray.

To me. For everything. Because you are now powerless. And I am the powerful one. I will go on being so. And I shall go on doing to you what is required to ensure you remain what you are. The powerless ones to my powerful self.

I will snatch away your jobs. So you come to me seeking them. I will leave you hungry. So you come to me crying to be fed. I will decree you may not have this. So you will come to me crawling to have it back. I will decree you may not have that. So you will come to me and grovel to have that back. I will drive you out of home. So you come to me seeking shelter. I will leave you diseased. So you come to me seeking remedy. I will order you wiped off the map. So you come to me begging to be brought back where you were and have been all this time. I am what I am by dint of ensuring that you are less and less of what you are. The more the deficits imposed on you, the more profits I accumulate on my powers. That is the thing about power, it gains from inflicting losses.

Also read: Sankarshan Thakur, Editor of The Telegraph, Passes Away

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Once upon a golden bird

Things of wonder are things of wonder. They make us wonder, or why else would we call them things of wonder? For instance, that soney-ki-chidiya thing? What soney ki chidiya? Where is it? Where was it, is probably a more correct question.

But an even more correct way to frame that question is probably this: When was it? When was this soney ki chidiya? Time please. Or Date. Or month. Or year. Or decade. Or century. Or millennium. Or whatever it is that was before everything was. 

Was the soney ki chidiya there at that time before time began? Has anyone seen it? Or did it lay a golden egg and that was that? Golden bird. Golden egg. Story over. No more eggs of gold. No more bird of gold. Very likely that’s what happened. But never mind. We are promised reliably that we are getting that bird back again: soney ki chidiya, the bird that sleeps, the sleeping bird. The bird will sleep and we shall go nightmaring upon its slumber. And we shall be terrified at the thought of the soney ki chidiya waking up, because terrible things will happen then. So jaa, soney ki chidiya, so jaa, nahi to Gabbar aa jaayega. So sleeps the soney ki chidiya. Have you seen it? Can you sense it? Sleeping? Or dead? Sleeping forever? That soney ki chidiya?

Some things are often so far away from the limits of our gaze that we cannot see them. Or so up close we will not see them, or often cannot, or do not. Are dodos alive somewhere that we cannot see them? Or are they finally dead and become myth? Like the soney ki chidiya?

Illustration by Sankarshan Thakur in 'Salt and Pepper: Dispatches from a Fractured Republic'. Photo: Seagull Books

Never mind. There are more ordinary and quotidian things we cannot see. Like warts on our noses. Or this thing called food. Look around. This nation is roaring around you. All this vastness that remains beyond and despite our overburdened numbers. All those open fields. All these fields eddied and voluptuous with gold. Look at them. These are what we made of hard earth. We tilled it. And we tilled it till the earth broke and yielded space for us. For us to seed. To sow into the womb of earth that something that has turned to this: gold.

And this gold is, you know what? Ethanol. These are fields of ethanol. They will not be for us who laboured to coax a livelihood, a morsel on our unwashed plates of leaves, twice a day, or even once. They will be the stuff to feed the factories of profit, food for diesel and food for churning iron and steel. Food for the mills that will make of the gold we sowed protective liquids for protected hands: sanitizers. This is what we sowed that has now turned into these swinging fields—ethanol. And we thought it was, you know, food.

Or these looming cities, look at them. Just look at them. The sheer sparkling grandeur of them. The masonry, the marbling, the astounding square-footage of reflective glass, the bespoke greenery that maroons the air-conditioning, all this coolth in the midst of this killer heat. That we are waking. Without shadow. Without shelter. Without food. Without wish that we could inhabit. Without hope. Where are we going? Where are we walking to, with our heels charred on the melting asphalt, our bodies wilting, our souls, well, well, do we even have souls? Are we meant to? Who are we? Where are we going? But we know. We are the cursed ghosts of promises made to us. We are walking towards where lies the soney ki chidiya. It is what we willingly chose, this is what we wished for ourselves, this is the future we bequeathed ourselves with the only, and singular, right we still have—our vote. 

Excerpted with permission from 'Salt and Pepper: Dispatches from a Fractured Republic', published by Seagull Books in September 2025.

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