INDORE: His Highness King Suyash the First, a 24-year-old Indore boy, has given birth to the idea of the first 'virtual governance of a kingdom' named 'Kingdom of Dixit', which will be ruled online from India. A software engineer from the city decided this after he declared himself the king of an unclaimed strip of 800 square miles of land between Egypt and Sudan.
In an exclusive interview with the Times of India, Suyash said that he did not necessarily want his kingdom to be a place where people came to live, but instead wanted to run a country on a community basis.
"To make money, I might also offer people to be the President of the country for a month and charge a huge amount for it," the king said, declaring his plan to form a community based kingdom where everyone will be connected to each other online.
An avid internet surfer, Dixit had read online about this only patch on Earth which was habitable but not a part of any country several years ago. 20 days ago when his trip to Egypt was finalized, he sought the blessings of the former claimant of the land, a US resident Jeremiah Heaton and made plans to become the king.
Suyash, who is also the CEO of a IT company, has till now received over 800 applications from people across the globe to be his kingdom's citizens and has received over thousand friend requests on his social media website.
Speaking about his adventure, Suyash said that he achieved the actual task of going to the place and becoming the king within a day and it was not until he boarded his flight back to India on November 7, 2017 that he declared himself as the king of the territory.
"The thrill began when I had to board a flight from Cairo to Abu Simbel of which I was the sole passenger. Once in Egypt, I had to literally beg the drivers to take me to the remote spot. I was allowed to take the precarious Egyptian military road on three conditions - I had to return before sunset, no valuables and no photographs of the area," he said adding that he deliberately chose a full moon day to take the trip.
The journey was so scary that Suyash had asked his friend Esraa to immediately inform police if he did not return by midnight.
"Driver Mustafa and I survived the 319-km-long to and fro journey only on a few packets of chips and water bottles. We were explicitly told not to turn on our headlights as it may alert a vicious terrorist group from North-Sudan," said the Game of Thrones fan.
Once back to India, the self-proclaimed king was overwhelmed by the response that he got from the netizens. While some asked him to open a 'Poha factory' (famous snack in Indore) in his kingdom, the others asked him to book their tickets to Egypt for the ground breaking ceremony.
The land which Suyash has declared his own is arid and its permanent resident are some lizards, which were declared by him as his kingdom's national animal. However, he has plans to set up a dozen tents in his kingdom, with the help of his Egyptian friend and newly-inducted 'external affairs minister' Abdul Rahman Rafai, as the United Nations' criteria for declaring a land as a country is that it should be inhabited by permanent residents.
Suyash is the son of Rajesh Kumar Dixit, former scientist and Head of Department at New Holkar Science College (now president of the kingdom) and home maker Sangeeta.
Suyash claims that he will return to his kingdom next year and till then his minister will take care of the affairs! !