The guide taking us on a tour of Istanbul was extremely articulate and expressive, suddenly he whispered, “There will be times,” he said, “when I will have to refer to our great leader, and I might not talk about him in a very complimentary fashion, so rather than being arrested, I will refer to him as the ‘tall man’!”

In a country that had the latest technology, the fastest trains, the most modern roads, and airports, I felt saddened that what they were losing was freedom of speech. “You are a lucky people,” he said, turning to me after we had visited the Blue mosque, “You are a vibrant democracy!”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to tell him that we had also reached a stage where we had to call our leaders, ‘tall man’, ‘fat man’, or have the ED, IT or other government agencies at our doorstep.

I didn’t say anything about our tall men traveling through the world wined and dined by presidents and heads of states, while back home fires raged in a state called Manipur about which the tall man kept his silence even as people implored him to speak. That even as he spoke at length on the progress the country had made, that as rapidly as the trains ran faster, many in the country found their voices muffled!

In the tour guide's eyes I saw pain. He was obviously not a man meant to be just a guide, but knew if he used his exceptional talking talents in any other field it was either the hangman’s noose or the insides of a jail.

I didn’t say anything as I wondered if soon our own journalists would be guides telling people about unity statues while in heavily couched whispers they spoke about their ‘tall men’ or tall man? I shuddered, in the hot air of Turkey, and prayed that we would not fall into the trap of faster trains and broader roads as our hard-fought freedoms were taken away.

“How does your ‘tall man’ get away with this?” I asked.

“By using religion!” he said simply as I stood in the insides of the Hagia Sophia, which was once a cathedral and now a mosque, “Before,” he said, “just below the dome, were the paintings of saints and Mother Mary, now those faces have been painted over and our own religious texts been put in their place! And the uneducated people love this,” he said, “And vote for the tall man!”

As his penetrative voice continued, my own mind went to principals being beaten, churches destroyed, and school children forced to dress in the government way, “Was he talking about Turkey or my country?” I wondered, and felt the ‘tall men’ of my country grin.

I shuddered in the hot Turkish air..!

bobsbanter@gmail.com