Many years ago a child was born in a decent Kashmiri family. Nobody could predict what he would be like as a grown up.  This is the quaint story of that child, who has now become Mr. X. His parents taught him all values they could, but how he turned wicked. Quite in contrary to their expectations. Yes, this is the notorious Mr. X whom we all despise.
There might not be a single person in the valley   whom he has not troubled.  His reputation depicts treachery, deception, corruption and what not. But he too has friends, of course his kind, fraudulent and corrupt. Although they are his friends but he turns green with envy if any one of them makes a profit greater than him. He can go to any extreme for pulling them down and plotting against them but acts as an honest, trustworthy and sympathetic friend. 
Everything in Mr. X’s life has come from other peoples’ money, but does he care? To impress his neighbours and relations, he prays five times a day, gives alms to the poor, and acts so gently. Although his neighbours know his ingenuity, yet they behave nicely with him because he is influential and can bail them out during times of trouble.
Mr. X engulfs the road in front of his house making passage of even the smallest of vehicles difficult. As Almighty wanted it, his house caught fire. He called the fire department and was fretting whilst cursing and abusing the firemen for coming late and delaying the fire extinguishing process.
The damage caused by the fire seemed to make no big difference to him and he continued to live as before. He made huge changes to his partially burnt house leaving his neighbours wonderstruck at the sight of  upcoming mega structure.
The sewer of his house empties directly into the Dal but paradoxically he was seen as the chief guest of a conference on conservation of the Dal.  Mr X suffers from a highly contagious disease that no doctor, no medicine and not even a talisman can cure-the disease called corruption. Once the “corruption virus” attacks one’s body, it replicates and  spreads  fast and can hardly be contained . This is what happened to the once innocent and sweet child who now is Mr X .He pays thousands of rupees as his cell phone rent, but considers it his fundamental right to tamper with his power supply meter.
Mr X travels a lot and has gone places, only to learn about new methods of corruption. He calls it skill and puts it to practice in his homeland. He wants his city to be modernized and his eerie ideas include constructing humongous malls , “developing” Dal lake into an amusement park, destroying heritage buildings and setting up factories to mention a few.Mr. X supports the government as well as the leaders who provoke little kids to march in the streets raising pro freedom slogans. He criticizes the politicians for foul play in front of the “leaders” but proves to be a coward when required to be fair in expression. However occasionally he does rightly criticize people when they rush to Delhi or go abroad for treatment of a minor ailment. Mr X never knew who he was or to where he belonged and he never will, he has lost his identity. 
He had promised his parents that he would follow the right path and make them feel proud. As it turned out, nothing could disgrace their souls more than the path adopted by their son.
We all know Mr. X very well and if were to introspect ourselves, we could be harbouring some of the attributes of Mr. X’s character.
Can we shun the hypocrisy and learn our lessons the right way before it is too late?

(Feedback at hadhiq_khan@yahoo.co.in)

Lastupdate on : Mon, 31 May 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Mon, 31 May 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Tue, 1 Jun 2010 00:00:00 IST