Six in the evening at the home off the Alemaos which was deserted and dark a few days back is now buzzing. Lots of cars parked outside, the security doesn’t ask anyone questions and the home is fully lit up. Churchill’s wife Fatima greets people at the door and directs everyone to his office. Inside Churchill himself is seated because of a knee cap problem receives the guests himself and passes trays of doce and plum cake and forces everyone to drink a strong cup of coffee.
“All I remember in jail is that Herald raise my issue of having property worth hundreds of crores. In a way, I was elated to know that I have left quite a bit for my children to inherit. But in a way, I was also saddened because you got the math wrong and valued properties of all my married daughters into my assets and made me look rich, bad and corrupt,” starts Alemao.
But we’re disrupted by Mario, Lawrie and the big wigs of the tiatr industry. They all walk in to sympathise with theman, clad in back and are eager to hear his experiences while they want to fill him in on tiatr news and gossip. Lawrie tells him he performed with Lorna in London, Mario talks about taking his team to Dubai and Mumbai to perform his new tiatr and then they come back to Churchill in Colvale.
“I have this knee cap problem, so I requested the jail authority to put me in the mini three bed hospital in Colvale and not a prison cell. So life was not all that bad but being in confinement is horrible,” explains Churchill to the audience in his home.
He explains how his family gave him 50 VCDs of tiatrs and he read some scripture to pass his time in jail.
“I watched a 25-year old tiatr where a girl is raped at the age of nine and gets justice at the age of fifty but no one is willing to marry her then. My baseless Louis Berger case in the Indian courts will face the same fate. I will get justice but I will be long gone by then,” claims Churchill.
His friend Dattaram Nayak quickly fills him up on some police matter and court cases, but Churchill tells him he has no patience to listen to any news political or non-political but only wants to hear tiatr related news.
“I don’t want to hear about cops. I am glad that the Colvale jailor is suspended. He used to harass innocent prisoners in jail. I would hear terrible screams of prisoners being beaten by cops at night in jail. Even with me they would for no reason send back my old and frail supporters who came to jail to visit me on visit days,” asserts Churchill.
He points out to an old hunch back man who visits him in the office and says people of those kind were turned back from Colvale jail and disallowed from visiting him which he says is horrible since people’s visits was what he liked the most in jail.
Churchill who’s keen to do some checkup and leave for Vailankani after he missed the feast after 35 years, explains how he wanted to come for his brother Ciabro’s first death anniversary but deliberately didn’t come.
“They told me to go for the mass with a police escort and jeep. My thoughts were on the emotional supporters I have in Varca, who may go berserk and attack the police convoy and the cops are waiting for a reason to put my people in jail, so I cancelled the visit,” explains Chuchill while feeding his identical triplet grandsons.
He explains how 2 months in jail, the Crime branch never questioned him once besides that late night questioning and he was kept inside only for political reasons.
Discuss Caitu, Miccky, Luizinho Faleiro, Digambar Kamat or any other politician and he smirks and ignores the questions while he’s busy making calls to tell people to watch out for his first television appearance soon. But he only speaks about Santa Cruz and how Mummy (Victoria Fernandes) will make a comeback in politics with a Congress ticket. While he asks how Luizinho is doing, he doesn’t want to discuss Valanka too.
The trays of doce and plum cake along with coffee continue to roll out through the evening, the guests from tiatrists to priests continue to come to the house. The political photos and symbols are all wiped out. Churchill says Navelim and Benaulim cannot be in question now because he doesn’t know how this case or bail will affect his movements as of now and says he’s waiting for legal advice.
Ask him to rant on the current BJP government but all he says is Laxmikant Parsekar is a better and more truthful minister than Parrikar who is the one responsible for putting him in jail.
“First Parrikar found some road work issue and sends the ACB to measure roads and how much tar I put on them. Then the cops started counting water tanks to frame me in some tank case and now they’re tracking water pipelines to finish my career. Not happening I must say,” concludes Churchill.
