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Dead On Paper · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
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  Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: For as long as humans have walked the earth, we've
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  Speaker 1: wondered what happens after we die. But in the mid
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  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, a poor merchant from northern India found out
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  Speaker 1: the hard way. His name was Lal Bihari. In nineteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy seven, he was twenty two years old and getting
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  Speaker 1: ready to expand his small hand loom business. In order
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  Speaker 1: to apply for the bank loan, he traveled to his
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  Speaker 1: birth city to collect proof of identity. But when he
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  Speaker 1: met with his local village officer who controlled the documents,
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  Speaker 1: he got some shocking news. Lal Bahari was dead. The
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  Speaker 1: bureaucrat told him the official registry indicated that he had
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  Speaker 1: died just the previous year. When the surprise wore off,
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  Speaker 1: Bihari started asking questions. This wasn't a joke and it
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  Speaker 1: wasn't an innocent clerical error either. Bihari would soon learn
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  Speaker 1: that he was the victim of a bizarre and sinister
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  Speaker 1: form of fraud. His own uncle had bribed public officials
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  Speaker 1: to falsely record Bihari's death, allowing Bihari's cousins to inherit
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  Speaker 1: a plot of ancestral land that should have gone to him.
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  Speaker 1: The young businessman could accept the loss of the tiny
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  Speaker 1: plot of land, which didn't even amount to an acre,
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  Speaker 1: but being dead, just even on paper, presented a serious problem.
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  Speaker 1: If Bihari couldn't prove that he was in fact alive,
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  Speaker 1: he couldn't get the loans or licenses that he needed,
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  Speaker 1: and his business would never have a chance at success.
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  Speaker 1: As it turned out, getting the government to correct the
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  Speaker 1: records was more difficult than Bihari could have ever dreamed.
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  Speaker 1: For several years, his letters to public officials went ignored,
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  Speaker 1: but rather than giving up, he became more determined to
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  Speaker 1: get the government to acknowledge his existence. So he started
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  Speaker 1: to cause trouble. Bihari interrupted a meeting of state legislators
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  Speaker 1: and had to be dragged out by guards. He intentionally
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  Speaker 1: got himself arrested and then ran for public office, all
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  Speaker 1: in an attempt to get his name on official records,
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  Speaker 1: but none of that worked. Bihari threw himself a funeral
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  Speaker 1: and added the Hindi word for departed to his name.
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  Speaker 1: He also applied for widow's pension for his wife, but
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  Speaker 1: was denied without explanation. Bihari eventually became so frustrated that
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  Speaker 1: he resorted to kidnapping his cousin, the child of that
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  Speaker 1: uncle who had defrauded him. For five days, he took
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  Speaker 1: the boy to the movies, then waited to be arrested,
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  Speaker 1: but the police never came. Bihari considered sending his uncle
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  Speaker 1: the boy's shirt soaked in goat's blood as a scare tactic,
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  Speaker 1: but he lost his nerve and sent his cousin home instead.
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  Speaker 1: Almost a decade after his crusade began, Bihari's cheeky spectacles
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  Speaker 1: finally got the attention of a journalist. His story was
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  Speaker 1: published in a state newspaper, but the government still did
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  Speaker 1: not act. Lal Bahari remained legally dead to the world.
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  Speaker 1: By this point, he learned that he was not alone
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  Speaker 1: in his plight. He had met countless others who had
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  Speaker 1: been recorded dead in fraud schemes, usually by family members
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  Speaker 1: like his to champion their cause, he created the Association
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  Speaker 1: of Dead People. Under Bihari's leadership, the organization continued to
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  Speaker 1: organize protests and exert political pressure on the state government
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  Speaker 1: to address the epidemic of the living dead. For Bihari,
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  Speaker 1: at least, the story has a happy ending. In nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety four, the government finally hurt his complaints, changing its
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  Speaker 1: registry to record him as alive. His ancestral land was
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  Speaker 1: officially returned, but Bihari decided to let his uncle's family
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  Speaker 1: keep it. It never had been about the land for
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  Speaker 1: him anyway. Bihari had been fighting for his life. He
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  Speaker 1: had lost almost two decades to the crusade, though, but
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  Speaker 1: he wasn't done yet. For years to come, Bihari continued
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  Speaker 1: to lead the Association for Dead People to raise awareness
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  Speaker 1: for the organization. He actually ran for a seat in
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  Speaker 1: Parliament and did surprisingly well, and in two thousand and
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  Speaker 1: three he received these satirically named Ignobel Prize, honoring those
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  Speaker 1: who quote make people laugh and then make them think.
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  Speaker 1: Most recently, Bihari's life has become the subject of a
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  Speaker 1: Bollywood film, turning him into something of a celebrity. Not
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  Speaker 1: bad for a man who spent two decades dead on paper.
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  Speaker 1: There's nothing like receiving the perfect gift. When a friend
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  Speaker 1: or loved one gets us something that really speaks to us,
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  Speaker 1: it makes us feel seen and appreciated. It doesn't matter
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  Speaker 1: if the gift was made by hand or bought in
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  Speaker 1: a store. It could be something as original as a
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  Speaker 1: handwritten poem or as classic as a fruit basket. But
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, some factory workers in China received
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  Speaker 1: a gift unlike anything they had gotten before. This present
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  Speaker 1: took on such importance a cult soon emerged to venerate it.
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  Speaker 1: People bled and died for it. What was the gift Mangoes?
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  Speaker 1: It all started in nineteen sixty six, when Mao Zetung
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  Speaker 1: launched his Cultural Revolution, calling for workers and students to
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  Speaker 1: overthrow the bourgeois academic authorities across the country. Students banded
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  Speaker 1: together in paramilitary groups known as the Red Guards. While
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  Speaker 1: the many factions that made up the Red Guards were
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  Speaker 1: loyal to Mao, they did not get along with each other.
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  Speaker 1: As the revolution took off, skirmishes between the groups became
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  Speaker 1: increasingly violent. Then, in the spring of nineteen sixty eight,
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  Speaker 1: the in fighting came to a head. At Singua University,
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  Speaker 1: fighting broke out between two rival Red Guard groups. Students
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  Speaker 1: hurled spears, stones, and even acid at each other. The
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  Speaker 1: fighting wore on for several months before July twenty seventh,
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  Speaker 1: when Mao got fed up. He summoned thirty thousand Beijing
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  Speaker 1: factory workers and so them to intervene. The student Red
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  Speaker 1: Guards immediately turned on the workers, and the fierce battle
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  Speaker 1: broke out. The workers great numbers eventually prevailed, but not
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  Speaker 1: before five of their members were killed and over seven
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  Speaker 1: hundred were injured. The next day, Mao responded by officially
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  Speaker 1: disbanding the Red Guards for good. To show his appreciation
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  Speaker 1: for the factory workers, he sent them a box of
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  Speaker 1: forty mangoes, which he had recently received as a gift
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  Speaker 1: from the Foreign Minister of Pakistan. Now, clearly, forty mangoes
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  Speaker 1: split between thirty thousand people might not seem like the
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  Speaker 1: most sincere thank you gift, especially after what the workers
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  Speaker 1: had been through, But the fruit wasn't common in China
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  Speaker 1: at that point, and few of the workers had ever
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  Speaker 1: seen them before, let alone tasted them. They may even
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  Speaker 1: have believed that the mangoes were peaches of immortality, an
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  Speaker 1: important fruit from Chinese legends. One of their most memorable
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  Speaker 1: appearances comes from the Journey to the West, where the
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  Speaker 1: mischievous Monkey King steals and consumes an orchard full of
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  Speaker 1: the magical peaches, causing his power to increase many times over.
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  Speaker 1: The workers were amazed by the gift and responded by
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  Speaker 1: praising Chairman Mao's limitless generosity. Rather than attempting to divide
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  Speaker 1: the mangoes up amongst themselves, they decided to preserve the
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  Speaker 1: fruit so that everyone could appreciate them. The mangoes were
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  Speaker 1: submerged in formaldehyde, taken through the country, and paraded through
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  Speaker 1: the streets. Within months, mangoes took on a cult like
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  Speaker 1: status across China. Wax replicas were created and distributed. Images
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  Speaker 1: of mangoes began to appear in communist artwork. A massive
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  Speaker 1: mango adorned float became the centerpiece of the National Day parade. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: anyone who disrespected the mangoes were severely punished. One dentist
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  Speaker 1: was executed for simply suggesting that they looked like boring
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  Speaker 1: old sweet potatoes. Eventually, the mango mania dwindled, then died
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  Speaker 1: when Mao passed away in nineteen seventy six, but for
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  Speaker 1: a brief period, mangoes served as an unexpected but potent
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  Speaker 1: symbol for the promises of the Cultural Revolution. For centuries,
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  Speaker 1: China's emperors had been viewed as semi divine figures, benevolent
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  Speaker 1: envoys of heaven who had stepped out of myth to
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  Speaker 1: rule over mortals. By calling back to the peaches of immortality,
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  Speaker 1: Mao had once again transformed myth into reality, only this
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  Speaker 1: time the power of heaven had been handed over to
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  Speaker 1: the common people. It's hard to say for sure whether
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  Speaker 1: Mao expected the extreme reaction to his gift. Supposedly he
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  Speaker 1: disliked mango's which would explain why he regifted the fruit.
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  Speaker 1: Most likely, he never guessed that by sending them to
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  Speaker 1: the workers, he would effectively transform ancient Chinese myth into
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  Speaker 1: communist propaganda. And it just goes to show the impact
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  Speaker 1: that a single sweet gesture can make. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. This show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manke in partnership with how Stuff Works,
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And
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  Speaker 1: until next time, stay curious.