Another one from the archives. A piece I wrote in March of 2006 on Milosevic's death. The piece won me a fresh follower- now turned my zealot-
in one John Muchangi. They said it was a good piece...
By Nzau wa Musau
SLOBODAN Milosevic is at supper now. Not where he eats but where he is eaten.
A certain convocation of politic worms are even at him this very moment.
This is what becomes of all men when they have shuffled this “mortal coil” they so jealously protect from harm all their life.
In the end, our fate is sealed with the same old blanket of death regardless of our variables in terms of nobility or pauperism.
A pauper may fish with the worm that has just eaten a king and another one may eat the fish that has just eaten that worm. The fat king and the lean beggar are but variables of the same fate--two dishes but one table. That is as far as human bodies are concerned.
The angel of death came to the rescue of the Milosevic in his prison cell last week and in his wake leaving a lot of protest and relief among those who hoped he would be pinned to the ground and made to account for atrocities attributed to him.
To say the least, Milosevic died away unloved, unmourned and unwanted. Rather than invite tears of sorrow, his death evoked tears of relief. A good riddance, they said.
A famous poet once wrote: “Within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king, keeps death his court, and there the antic sits, scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, allowing him a little breath, a little scene- to monarchise, be feared and kill with looks, infusing him with vain conceit, as if this flesh which walls about our life, were brass impregnable.”
This is the folly of these “little gods” who seize the plight of their nations with their twitching palms forgetting the “antic” is watching them and advancing. He scorns at their folly, the angel of death, and mocks at their vanity.
In their time, they ride rough in their nations, lighting unnecessary fires and in their wake leaving a trail of destruction, burning, looting, rape, plunder and death behind them.
When they grin, beggars roll into the gutter. When they smile, innocent children are blown off their minds with automatic weapons. When they cry, the whole nation is soaked in blood.
These are beasts without a heart who think themselves constant as the northern star. They strut and fret their hour on stage foolishly believing the scene will last the drama out but are knocked off their senses when the curtain finally falls on them.
Rather than expand their royal fortune, they seek to merge it and scorn the appointing gods who erected them on their pedestals. They plunder their own fortune and dig their own graves in the sands of time.
Then the day finally comes--when the keepers of the house tremble and the strong men bow, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the widows are darkened.
Solomon in his Ecclesiastes describes the day as the one when the doors are shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he rises up at the voice of the birds (angels?) and all the daughters of music (voice?) are brought low.
“O ever the silver chord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher broken at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern”.
With all his glories, triumphs and loses, the despot returns to dust. Death steals them away from jaws of earthly justice seeking to settle the scores.
But even when they are pushing up the daisies, the hate persists and rather than cease, grows stronger. The feeling is that the angel of death has flown them to regions unknown where it might never be known if they were ever punished at all.
Some Christians hope that despots will burn a week longer than the rest of the sinners owing to their grave ills but this does not make sense considering the fact that the hell fire is supposed to last forever and for every sinner alike.
Some Hindus wish they are reincarnated as a frog to always change colour or better as snakes which have no legs of their own but writhe in moving.
Those that believe in rebirth hope that despots are born again strewn naked of all attachments of royalty--as paupers. They will be hated, tormented and eventually killed for no apparent reason. Essentially, wish them some misfortune in their afterlife.
Whatever fate awaits the soul of Milosevic, it is not a sweet one. His own karma has sealed it and there is no escape to it. He had the fortune of becoming a leader of a great country but like a mindless swine that has a pearl attached to its snout, he moved on.
His demise, the form and fashion, is a great lesson for those in power and in whose “high heads”, the fate of millions below them rest.
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