The President

Hi, I am Roderick Idrich, the President of the great State of Gibrak. It’s a teeny-weeny island at the side of Africa, one like a pimple on a teen’s face. Poof, they are gone when you turn seventeen. But, no, we stayed. You might not have heard of us but we are right here, hanging around. We are one of the oldest republic of Africa; independent before we knew it. I think because nobody ever noticed.

Anyways, let us talk about myself, Roderick Idrich. Don’t go by my spelling, my first and last name sound similar. They have the same rick at the end. So, as I was telling you I chose politics at a very young age. Even before you get the right to vote. And that’s 18 in Gibrak. Let me tell you something about our constitution. It’s a direct rip-off from the British. I am not too sure but it seems when our good old European friends were busy trading slaves off Madagascar; some of them from our independent Gibrak too; we took the liberty (as told before we were independent before we knew it) to steal something out of their pocket.

So, anyways we digressed a bit. As I was saying, politics chose me when I was 16. My father, the then President, died of a heart attack which forced my mother to take in the reins of the country until I, the legitimate heir was ready for the throne. So, I went to the college and became a student President there and from then onwards, I have been the President of something or the other. At 27, I was the President of seven different associations but now at 35, I am just the President of Gibrak.

I was never good at public speaking. I mean who can be. With that 10 inches of black thingy pointing at your mouth for an hour; Boy; if you are comfortable with that; then sorry, no matter how much we swore about our unprejudiced society, you can never be a President; at least never in Gibrak. But then everyone has a duty and I, for one, had a duty to carry on my father’s legacy. I enjoyed it in the beginning. All those old grey haired people with bent backs coming slowly towards me, taking both my hands in theirs and saying ‘in you, rests the future of Gibrak’. My father’s closest comrades coming to me and saying ‘You have got your father’s eyes; I hope you have got his strength’. It was all good. But soon I was not young anymore. Now, I could see through them. Because in their minds they knew that they can never be a President and until I am the President, they get some power over the state of affairs in Gibrak. Oh, poor Gibrak but we will talk about that later. Let me tell you about being a President. It’s not at all a difficult job. That too of Gibrak. Oh no sir, it’s too easy. You just have to tell the good hard-working people that they have a job to do and that’s all. Till they do that, you are fine.

So, as I said, I stopped enjoying myself soon. I mean I discovered people who were more hard-working than me, more worthy of being a President. Fuck Gibrak, they could handle the whole of Africa for God’s sake. Like our good old friends, the white guys did for more than a century or two. And then soon, the mid-life crisis happened. I know you may say it happened too soon but then I started at 16; that was too soon. I discovered that I was the 107^th President of the state of Gibrak which measures a quarter of the city of New York. Had I been in USA, I wouldn’t have been a fucking Mayor. And that too 107^th. There must be a lot lesser people who went to space or reached Everest. I, the President of Gibrak, who had been in papers for the last 20 years, was nothing but lint in navel. I was a citizen of the country which was so small that it was not even noticed by our good old white folks to rule upon nor has it been mentioned in the Security Council discussion in the last 20 years. Thanks to my father’s death, a line was mentioned in the official booklet but never spoken then also. We were nowhere in the Top 10 manufacturers of anything. I’m not too sure about Top 50 but then they don’t publish that list. We are not a tourist destination for many; thanks to our rocky beaches though we receive a steady supply of criminals who want to hide their faces from the world. We have 7 schools, 5 hospitals, 11 churches and 1 Post-office. One evening you might decide to do a cross-country trip on foot and whoosh, you won’t be late for dinner. No Sir, Gibrak doesn’t disappoint you by its size. And you know what the funny part is, the name of Gibrak’s capital city is, guess what, it’s Gibrak.

Sometimes, when I was alone in my office with no urgent work to attend, I wondered does Gibrak need a President at all. And, it was then when I stopped taking people around me seriously. After all, my father hadn’t left a lot to tend to.

So, one night, I went on to the roof of my office dead-drunk, pulled down the flag of Gibrak, wrapped the copy of Constitution in it, poured some gasoline, burned and stomped and yelled at the top of my voice, “I will write my own future”.

My father was 105^th President of the teeny-weeny state of Gibrak. I am the only President in the world who burned his own country’s constitution and just yesterday, I heard the YouTube views of the incident have just reached 100 million.