Ann was not back at the Harvard, She was with a new date She
met at Cambridge, they were both doing the rounds around Lisbon.
Dan wasn’t in Bolivia, Henry Hoffman, his Editor-In-Chief, had
called and asked him to proceed to Buenos Aires instead.
Dan and Ann weren’t together, they had split, disgusted with
the event at The Royal Albert Hall, London, but they both knew their
whereabouts.
For Dan the story was that the European economy was tanking
and a few American and African neighbours were responsible.
But that wasn’t the reason the Generals had their guns out.
Suddenly the political map of 2 of the planet’s most ancient Continents, except
South Africa, had turned themselves suburban, they were either trapped under a Military
rule or were caught in a civil war or were experiencing chaos and Anarchy.
And Reuters sensed that somehow the events were leading to a
World Wide crisis. And they knew Danny was the best to collect the ground level
perspective.
As to Ann She was with a Student of Philosophy from the
Berlin University, who had come to visit Cambridge on an exchange note, during
the conference, found him interesting and then they were off.
For some Sex, Philosophy and fun.
For Dan it was a sensitive Political assignment.
Buenos Aires was going for another election, it was rumoured
that the Ex President Nestor Kirchner’s widow Christina Kirchner was going for
the full monty. She had to.
It was all or nothing, for her party The Fronte Paro la
Victoria and the tri party confrontation between The Front of The Popular
Movement led by Adolfe Rodriguez Saa and The Front For Loyalty belonging to the
fast sinking boat of Carlos Menem, a twice President of Argentina, whose
popularity was plunging, both in his country and outside, taking away the frontline
access that he had to the likes of Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Indira
Gandhi, Mubarak and even Zhao Zhiyang the Chinese Premiere during his hay days,
he, Menem, was rumoured even for a Nobel.
Until the day it came to light that he was a part of a
corruption scandal into Millions of Dollars and that he was also sympathetic to
Iran and Iraq due to the Oil connection.
When Dan landed Argentina was caught in a state of frenzy.
He and his friend, Photographer, Brian Messe, were in for a huge amount of
action. Daniel always enjoyed watching, observing Nations across different
parts of the planet transform themselves from being a weak and insipid
Political Economy to a vibrant, thriving buzz. Their cycle often involved vast
Political and Civilian struggles to engage and change into a responsible Democratic
society and coming to terms with aspects of Capitalism – somehow the two always
seemed corollaries.
Democracy and Capitalism – the increasing weakness of Socialism
were becoming embarrassing, even to many hard core leftists.
South America has always been this ‘ we love a political
mess’ kind of a continent. While all its political pangs and upheavals across
Chile, Argentina, Brazil, or Bolivia, Columbia and Venezuela deserve to be
termed more as an aspect of Political evolution and the problems related to
citizen apathy than say a corresponding problem of the continent, lying exactly
opposite viz Africa.
Being a crossbreed of Spanish emotions and native American naivety.
The region’s emotions- its revolutions, riots, coups were all different in
Character in comparison to say a similar coup or a riot in Africa or say in
regions like Egypt or Istanbul. Daniel knew the region intellectually since he
used to have extensive discussions with his Father’s friend and later his
Mother’s companion Arvind.
Arvind had a deep interest in the affairs of almost every
country in the world that espoused Leftism.
And used to get quite agitated everytime he came across news
that a budding revolution in say Chile or Argentina was thwarted by some
Military junta. Or when there was news that the Russian Government had refused
to get involved in the Falkland war between Argentina and UK.
Arvind had through his party administration and their offices
a large amount of literature on Eastern Europe, South America, Cuba , Africa
and China. He even had extensive access to literature on the Naxal movement and
their inroads in the States of West Bengal Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Madhya
Pradesh, Maharashtra, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and even neighbouring
countries like Nepal and Burma – he called it inputs from his party cadres ‘intelligence
units’.
Daniel and Brian, Daniel’s Reuter colleague, went to Political
Rallies of all the three incumbent presidents, conducted interviews of
important political figures like Duhalde and Ferdinando and strolled into
restaurants, took bus drives to Santa Fe and then walked along the Palermo or
the Ocean front always looking for the public pulse. All through the days a
constant theme that was coming back through all their discussions and meetings was
a fear of an impending economic crisis, the possibility of a Nation going
bankrupt.
But despite all the apprehensions life on the streets of the
la Telmo, Beunos Aires most favoured Street Shopping and tourist destination
was full of Tango, Daniel sometimes found Argentina dancing on until 5or 6 am
in the morning. The city’s very own Milonga Tango parties were as wild as a rave
night club party in Pataya. The Milonga party locations too kept shifting
places but Brian knew all the right keys to land at the best for any night. Brian
was a hard worker, who loved his work in the morning and then liked letting his
hair down in the night. Once he did that anything was game, Dan often himself
sitting outside a brothel or a Milango bar at 2 or 3 in the morning, himself
down by at least a few bottles of Argentinean wines and admiring some of the
most beautiful women he had ever seen in his entire life. The good part about
an Argentine woman is not just her looks, 9 out of 10 young women you meet on
the streets of Argentina are intelligent beyond your average global women, they
are more assertive and to a large extent grounded and more than willing to be the
woman they are supposed to be , She simply did not hide any of her assets,
which often included a well rounded political knowledge of both the left and
right .
It was 3 AM as usual
Brian was inside a brothel, he had by now become friends with some of the more
glamorous prostitutes around Palermo, Daniel somehow was never attracted to the
proposition, he preferred the old form of acquiring an asset, and just sex wasn’t
really the only objective, it wasn’t like he fell in love with all his women,
but he had to come to like them before entering into their physic. Nor was his
avoidance of a Prostitute anything moral, he was beyond such traps, in fact he
could sit and sip coffee or a drink with a Prostitute and have a healthy
conversation about life and the traumas of growing up and such, pay the bill,
give a hug and meet again the following day.
Brian was an opposite pole – once the clock struck down 5pm,
his mind could only think of Sex , Women and partying.
Dan was beginning to get weary, waiting. For an instant he
thought he could call Annie in Lisbon but then decided against it.
Just then his mobile started ringing and he picked it up, to
his surprise it was Annie. He picket it up even before he could say Hello,
Annie was off talking with a flurry of words, She saying –
“Dan listen, where are you ? You still in Buenos Aires? Ok, great!
Its like this I want to get out of this place. Lisbon sucks and this German
with whom I came over here is a moron, I want to get out this minute, wouldn’t
want to spend a minute more in this place and maybe join you at Monte Video”.
Monte Video was an Uruguayan port that was easily accessible
by ferry from Buenos Aires. And click the phone was cut.
Dan tried calling her back, in fact his work in Argentina
was finished and he was planning to check out after resting, but Annie was not
answering her phone. So he sent her text asking her to call back. But there was
no response. Eventually Brian came out, cursing the bitch, saying she fleeced
him out, Daniel shook his head in consternation and started walking back to their
hotel.
It was about 4AM and Daniel could still hear a number of
Milango parties still going strong. Must have been about 8AM in Lisbon.
Buenos Aires was tangoing and so was Daniel’s head.
But while Buenos Aires enjoyed, Dan clearly wasn’t.
Before long he just let go off all the nuclear activity inside
his head and simply crashed.
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