Borrowed Dreams

Stories on Politics

The Sun rays were peeping through the curtains inside her room. The refectory table was laden with motley hodgepodge of her hard-earned rustic silver coins and numerous accolades. The antique bed was upholstered to comfort her slender worn-out body. Ame Roffe was fabled as the first aristocratic woman in wales to outpace the cohort of male diplomats. Now since she had become the minister of state province of Wales, a smattering of her peers got the opportunity to serve as her surrogate ministers.

The ambition to join politics awoke twenty years ago after giving birth to a baby girl. During that time, her political father, then working as Assistant Medical Officer for Wales would tell her patriotic anecdotes which created a major influence on Ame. Little did she know that her ineffable inclination towards the government would imperceptibly create a bottomless crevasse in her hitherto sound life.

Ame was vehement to follow her father’s footsteps. But the foundation of her marriage was stirred when her husband – a rural countryman, strictly defied her novel idea of politics which he thought was nothing but a corrupted, bloodsucking huddle.

The couple divorced the following year after which what Ame would do was to look after her new born baby and ruefully scroll over her beautiful memories. She did not have anything to start with except an MBA degree and few years of working as a Business Development Consultant. Accompanied by her father, she would explore the uncharted events as a naive dilettante midst the stodgy party parlance.

In a couple of years, she stood as the Conservative Party candidate for the Westminster Parliament in general election which meant an endless litany of speeches and rallys, and spreading out flyers to fetch the identity of public hero. It even posed more unforeseen challenge for her exhausted mind when her father used his influence to get her elected as additional member in the national assembly for South Wales West.

When Ame stood in the election, the learned bureaucrats with the dint of sheer doggedness and clever tactics crumpled her into a defeated non-entity. May be she did not have the right qualification to fit into this strange hectic profession. May be she took an unseeingly speculative decision allured by the perks of political career dictated by her father. May be it was better to stay home as a non-working woman and lead a mundane life with her husband. Bearing the weight of these thoughts, she stormed inside her father’s office and struck up the courage to confide her anxiety.

On this, the shrewd old man told her something he never revealed before…

“Your grandfather was a farmer for wheat crops and your grandmother was a shop-keeper. In the first two decades of the 20th century, Wales’ staple industries endured a prolonged slump leading to widespread unemployment and poverty accompanied with rising production demands for food and weapons in the Second World War. As a result, the Welsh army illegally seized my father’s farm area which was his only legacy while my mother was killed in a massacre along with fifteen thousand other women and servicemen while protesting for the land. I was only ten years old and since then, I grew up witnessing the cruel face of war and poverty in this country.

My wretched father did not have money to send me to school yet he would bring me second hand threadbare books which were my only support and guidance. But despite inappropriate education, I was certain to help make this country free from anarchy and foreign rule. Back then, I too was weak and hopeless like you, meekly doubting my capabilities, fighting threat and fear from opponent parties, and criticizing myself for the risks I was taking. But there was one belief that kept me adhered to my path … if you are determined to do something, you can move mountains even if your body is not made of steel.”

Ame stood silent against the fresh flow of energy flowing through her veins. She always had similar patriotic element like her father who was a strong epitome of courage she decided to strongly follow.

Thereafter, Ame hurtled her way in the difficult backgammon like a spartan. Laying her one year old daughter in the hands of an old babysitter, she would shunt from one office to another, work into late night hours like an automaton, keep herself abreast of the most minuscule of every event which could win her a forefront in the most popular Conservative Party.

Those gaudy events left her dreary, the threatening calls from hoodlums would give her frenzy, the news reporters would probe into her past life to concoct stories that girdled across the news channels. Yet she maintained the facade of an invincible warrior.

Her career skyrocketed when she was re-elected and served as the party’s spokesman on economic development and transport for fifteen years. She held the education and lifelong learning portfolio and also chaired the Assembly’s Finance Committee. As a member of the assembly’s economic development, she resolved a range of issues of the Welsh Government from transport infrastructure, European regional aid, public spending, to the Welsh economy.

During these twenty rigorous years of her life, she remained preoccupied in the serious business of becoming something she envisioned long ago. Her father died proud to leave his legacy in the form of another political family member. Ame had tasted power, respect, an enviable standard of living that a nominal housewife could only dream of.

But years into the surreal world that comprised of clever antics, uncertain moves, massive responsibilities and monotonous scribbling of letters, she began to taste solitude once again which was now poking her from all directions. After her father’s death, there was no one she could depend upon, or share her worries with or even feel protective. In the polluted atmosphere of politics, it was getting difficult for her to breathe without anyone she could actually count upon.

Love as they say, is the primal feeling inside every human which was fading from her life. No matter how hard she tried hard to rivet her attention towards her work, her cavernous eyes sought affection and care. Now when her father was not there to scoop her out of the pool of recurring anguish, she constantly needed a source of motivation, someone who would be waiting for her at home. He could be anyone like a gaily vintner she spotted in the late night party or the economic adviser hired by her office who could turn her ecstatic, make her feel important, marry her and fill the void of her life.

Now since she had been running continuously without looking back, it was too late for her to love, to have a family, to crib over smallest nuances in routine or haggle over the prices of vegetable or to genially banter at the dinner table with her husband.

Her simple married life of the past was haunting her which was a direct conflict with her present sophisticated ministerial life.

When her car whipped past by the minaret, she wanted to express her candor to God by venting out repressed tears, but she had no courage to drive back and show her crinkled face in front of the many ravenous cameras chasing her everywhere which would click her from all the angles. She started to feel suffocated as if someone was strangling her neck from inside. Was her depression rising to her throat? The driver offered to take her to hospital but she declined the idea thinking it a transient state of mind. By the time she reached home, her condition had worsened. She vomited streams of blood in the basin, now turning skeptical about the new office chef. It took her some time to understand that the food offered to her in the lunch could be planted by the enemy.

Another day’s sun was ablaze. It had been twenty hours since Ame had been lying inert in the bed. The musky smell that emanated from her body was turning into intolerable stench of decaying flesh. When her daughter returned from a week-long school trip, she was tormented by the rotting smell which led her to the mother’s room.

A haunting panorama of her mom soaked in a colossal pool of blood swung in front of her eyes.

How would she know that the last thing her mother decided was to forsake the political career and go back in her past life. She wanted to warn her daughter of the controversial huddle that politics was which emptied her life completely. But now, looking at her corpse, her daughter vowed to avenge her assassination by tapping into the mysterious world of politics.