Remembering being called a friend of the Russians ...

I can remember once being told that I was a friend of the Russians - 

Those words came back to me, early one morning in Kerala - 

We were on one of our walks before breakfast - a delicate boy was placing a folded copy of The New India Express upon the driveway of a Gulf house - a gentle ancient picked up discarded plastic bottles, gazing at us with milky eyes - 

I then saw, by the side of the road, a red plinth, bearing a swashbuckling hammer and sickle -

I recalled that Kerala had been governed by either Left Democratic Front or United Democratic Front coalitions since Independence -

They had been ruled by kings until then the Colonel said - 

I thought of the sycophantic headlines I saw at home, the faces of Royals depicted in the hireling press -