An author who has written four previous communications from the character, Cyrus Behramji Puranafurniturewala, this letter penned by Chandru Chawla, to President Xi Jinping of the Great People’s Republic of China communicates a concerned citizens woes:
To His Excellency, President Xi Jinping,
Leader of the Great People’s Republic of China,
Beijing
March 20, 2025
Dear President Xi,
Greetings from the cluttered workshop of Cyrus Behramji Puranafurniturewala, a humble craftsman in a land where furniture holds stronger than promises. I write to you with a heart heavy with envy and a tongue dipped in satire, gazing across the Himalayas at your glittering megacities, your relentless factories, your citizens marching in lockstep towards a future we in India can only glimpse in Bollywood sci-fi flops. China, it seems, has sprinted so far ahead that we’re left wheezing in the dust of your progress, trapped in the low-middle-income dump—or “trap,” as the polite economists call it.
And so, I come to you as a desperate petitioner, begging you to level the playing field. Not by lifting us up, mind you, but by dragging China down to our exquisite level of self-inflicted chaos.
We in India have become maestros of mismanagement, with a towering figure whose name echoes through the winds (and WhatsApp forwards). He has gifted us a playbook of dysfunction so masterful it deserves a Nobel Prize in reverse engineering. I implore you, Your Excellency, to borrow a few pages from it. Let China stumble for a decade or two – make it three—why rush greatness? Unleash upon your orderly nation the divine art of bedlam, and let’s compete as equals in the swamp of stagnation.
Here’s how you might begin.
First, take a leaf from our economic gospel: prop up a single tycoon until he’s a colossus, towering over fair competition. Shower him with ports, airports, coal mines, and contracts, while smaller players choke on red tape and despair. Watch your GDP soar on paper while the invisible hand of the market gets a cramp from saluting one man. We’ve perfected this art, ensuring that wealth trickles up to the penthouse while the rest of us scramble for the crumbs. It’s a brilliant distraction—people are too busy marvelling at private jets to notice the potholes.
Next, throttle your opposition with the finesse of a chess grandmaster. Unleash your agencies—tax authorities, investigators, the works—to hound dissenters into submission. Label them traitors, freeze their accounts, and raid their homes at midnight. Turn this into a national sport, ensuring that only one voice rings out, loud and unchallenged, while the rest are gagged or exhausted. It’s democracy, but with a twist—like a Bollywood plot where the hero always wins, and the villains conveniently vanish.
Then, force a linguistic straitjacket on your diverse nation. Pick Mandarin, perhaps, and ram it down every throat, from Tibet to Guangdong. Tell the rest their tongues are quaint relics, unfit for modernity. We’re doing wonders with Hindi, alienating our southern states—those pesky, prosperous rebels who dare to thrive without bowing to the northern script. Add a dash of delimitation to the mix—redraw your political map to dilute their influence. Threaten to shrink their parliamentary seats, and watch them squirm as power tilts toward your loyal heartland. It will be called a masterstroke, ensuring unity through resentment.
While you’re at it, dismantle your autonomous institutions with surgical glee. Universities, courts, election bodies—turn them into obedient puppets dancing to your tune. Steadily strangle them, replacing inconvenient independents with nodding loyalists. It’s liberating, really—why bother with checks and balances when you can have a choir singing your praises? And if you’re feeling generous, cede some territory to a neighbour—perhaps a chunk of Xinjiang to Russia. Call it diplomacy, shrug off the critics, and let the maps rewrite themselves.
Now, for the cultural flourish: embrace mumbo jumbo with open arms. Promote cow dung and cow urine as cure-alls—or pig dung and pig urine, to suit your tastes. Declare them scientific marvels, peddle them on state TV, and jail anyone who dares to snicker. Just like bovine worship here turned into a growth industry, side-line pesky things like hospitals and labs. Sprinkle in some religious fervour—proclaim yourself a divine avatar, maybe Mao reincarnated with a heavenly mandate. Let your people riot over your celestial guest list, as one is seeing here with Aurangzeb’s ghost. It’s a splendid way to keep them busy while inflation leaps like a kangaroo on steroids and unemployment cripples the young (they’re too idle anyway).
Speaking of distraction, target interfaith love with righteous zeal. Call it “love jihad” or some catchy equivalent—say, “Coupling Sabotage”—and paint it as a conspiracy to undermine your nation. Turn romance into a battlefield, jailing couples who dare cross religious lines, while mobs cheer. It’s a unifying cause—nothing bonds a people like policing bedrooms. And don’t stop there: dehumanize a few groups for good measure. Pick your Muslims and Dalits—perhaps your Uyghurs and rural poor—and strip them of dignity. Call them threats, invaders, lesser beings; let laws and lynching do the rest. Hone this craft, ensuring that unity comes at the cost of a few million souls.
Let communal disharmony bloom like a toxic flower. Stoke ancient grudges—dig up some Ming Dynasty feud and make it today’s headlines. Learn how you can profit from resurrecting Mughal ghosts like Aurangzeb to spark riots while the present burns. Set a few provinces ablaze—your own Manipur Moment—and watch drug addiction rise like incense at a prayer meeting. Cronyism, too, should flourish; let your loyalists loot the coffers while the rest queue for handouts. Orchestrate your tycoons and riots in perfect harmony—progress can wait.
The beauty of this plan, Your Excellency, is its sheer audacity. Your bullet trains could rust into bullock carts, your AI hubs morph into astrology dens, your global dominance fade into endless debates about who built what 500 years ago. Distract your citizens with grand tales of your divine origins—a comet foretold your birth, perhaps?—and let the graveyards of history become your national pastime. Turn nostalgia into a narcotic, force-feeding your people the past while the future slips through their fingers like sand.
I confess, there’s a sting in this plea, a bitter edge to my satire. We are folks who were once sold a dazzling dream—trillion-dollar visions, a seat at the world’s table. But now? We’re cheated of that promise, marched backward to exhume skeletons while your great nation builds tomorrow. Our youth scroll X for memes, our leaders peddle cow dung cures, and our southern states simmer under Hindi’s yoke. Muslims and Dalits are scapegoats, love is a crime, and a tycoon’s empire grows while competition withers. Agencies silence dissent, institutions crumble, and territory slips away—all under the banner of greatness.
So, I beg you, President Xi: join us in this grand farce. Mismanage your nation with flair—let religious fervour, cronyism, and chaos reign. Let’s race to the bottom together, two ancient civilizations wading through the same muck, our people too busy fighting over dung to notice the stars. Only then can we compete on even terms, equals in entropy, comrades in collapse. May the best mismanager win—and may the furniture I craft outlast both our futures.
Yours in sardonic solidarity,
Cyrus Behramji Puranafurniturewala
Mumbai, India
(Where the wood is solid, but the dreams splinter)
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