The Start of Unblock Series

There isn’t enough steam left in the tottering economy to go for another costly blockbuster sequel, Lockdown 5.0. So for economic redemption, they are going for Unlock series. Phase one of Unlock gets on the way from June 1. The soldiers will come out of the trench, cautiously avoiding the Corona booby-traps, looking this way and that way like a scared hare lest the sniper shot travels through the hurts, lungs rater because the Corona bullet slays lungs primarily. One cannot win a war by forever hiding in the trenches. Living itself means taking calculated risks.

The market in the town appears shaken terribly like broken palm fronds on a cyclone struck coast. It will take hell lot of courage on the part of even the most money-crazy trader to come out of the trench and start with the same relish for money, especially when people run to wash hands after touching currency like it’s a sin. It will surely take a few months for things to get normal. The train has been completely derailed. It ran too fast and for too long. Nature intervenes to insert pause.

Dostoevsky: “Stupidity is of as much service to humanity as the loftiest genius.” We have lost the trail of our glorious stupidity while imprisoned at homes. The driving force of our civilization, our fabulous puzzlement of stupidities has paused and so has the chugging, huffing, steam-spewing engine of progress and development. This mad rush defines our being alive. Without it we hardly appear like human beings. We look more miserable without our miserable rut of life. A sort of addiction we have!  

Political croaking is swiftly overtaking the Corona chorus in media now. Well, it reminds me of a particular political system. Which political system do you think is inherently the enemy of true life and living? Some clues to the answer: they are the sworn enemies of freedom and individuality; they are the rascally advocates of a glorified mediocrity; propagators of an abominable shallowness; and the dark Angels of some grossly hypothetical equality minus individual freedom and dignity.

Tell friends, tell! I hope most of you have guessed it right. They prune the roots of individuality like one does with the potted oaks. The roots are repeatedly cut to keep the bonsai alive, stunted, well below the full blossoming mark to avail a subservient species. Communism does the same.

The population in China is QR-coded like they are lifeless products stuffed in a swanky mall. This kind of digital surveillance allows the authorities to scan each and every aspect of the citizens’ lives such as where did they go, which transport they used, what they wore, what they ate, with whom they did go, how much they spent, etc., etc.

All US—the land of individual assertion to optimize the full potential—needs to take an edge in the cute war is to puncture Huawei’s tentacles over the global communication network. The speed of the red car will slow down with one main wheel getting punctured. Keep your missiles safe and fire phrases like Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights, Uyghur Muslims, Panchen Lama to name a few. A political system strictly defined by the sanctified lines in the red book gets terribly ruffled by disturbing phrases which appear sacrilegious to the biggest hypothetical dream trapped in the tiny funny book.   

Ruskin Bond says, “To be able to laugh and to be merciful are the only things that make man better than the beast.” How will such stunted spirits laugh? In gross standardization for the base level cut down equality, how will mercy survive as an emotion? Mercy thrives in an environment of freedom. Ever-watchful state system might create material prosperity but it quashes the spirit and breeds misery of the spirit. And miserable spirits hardly can be merciful. Does it mean communism is basically to dehumanize people, to make them nearer to animals than what we know ourselves as Homo sapiens?

Ruskin Bond: "It's unlucky to call a tiger a tiger. My father always told me so. But if you meet a tiger, and call him uncle, he will leave you alone."

Well, given the arrogance and attitude of all and sundry that I see around, everyone should be addressed as "uncle" by me. I find them adorned with the majestic pride of a tiger. But problem arises with men in late thirties and early forties. They are the real claimants of the title of uncle, but the moment I address them as uncle, I mean tiger, they turn a rampaging bull, ready to trample me to death.

Corona you may keep spreading the guttery stench, I have feathered fragrance. An emotion can be far stronger than tons of muscles and physicality. Spreading the fragrance and colors of the land of paradise amidst the burning plains of North India, Kashmiri Gulab! It has delicious smell and its pink color and paradisiacal smell outshine the deadliest blaze of summer sun.

The Juggernaut of Corona has left soot, saplings, plants and trees trampled all along the way. We cry over the loss of mainstream trees and crops. There are wayside weeds also that might be inconsequential from the point of view of our economy, but for Mother Nature they are as good as any high value cash crop. In the mainstream demography, the stateless citizens, the wandering nomads, are like wayside worthless weeds. They too have their share of loss, just that their loss is almost no loss on the economic scale.  

Out of movement, out of petty trade, out of steam, the gypsy caravan is stuck up at a place for the last 3 months. Of all other deprivation and drudgery, they sorely miss their only right, the right to move. These are the intangible losses that would never be counted among the category of Corona losses by the mainstream society.

In 500 years since they took a vow never to settle down at one place after their leader Maharana Pratap lost to Akbar, these nomadic iron smith tribals have moved on the fringes of the mainstream society. They didn't compromise with their freedom and said a firm no to Akbar's offer of a settlement. Meanwhile, modern civilization contrived rockets. As change is inevitable, the gypsy rate of change is pleasantly swooning. The ornate, wooden ox cart is now being slowly replaced by the bike rikshaw. The jostling civilization scattered around is pushing and prodding them a bit harder to force them to move faster on their endless path.

Nearby, the sunshine gets strangulated and caught in high-tension electricity wires and mammoth metallic banyans supporting them to pin a hole in the skies, the wings of these free birds catch fire and they try to fly away and drop one by one.

The nomadic cattle herders who wander around with their hundreds of famished, huge-horned, bony cows now set out with tottering steps like the creaking water wheel over a dry well. How did they even survive while no movement was allowed? The cows scraped dry grass out of dust on a wasteland. Their dung lies littered like jackals poop, so small and miserable. The herder has a flaming red huge headgear, almost a crown of thorn. His gypsy shirt tightly squeezes his slim torso and the windblown dhoti sways like the torn, raggish pal on a lost ship. There they go escaping the desert sands, the nomadic herders from Rajasthan. Dust here means better pastures to them. How I wish we get used to be contented with what we have!

There has been torrential rain quite unexpected for the season bringing down the temperature to 30 maximum from 46. The honeybees take rest from their death-defying attempt at fetching water to cool the hives. Mother Nature has spewed enough water for two days at least. So they don’t return just out of habit. Theirs is a world that is strictly defined by basic needs. We humans nurture habits out of basic needs, which quickly leads to our typical greed. 

In the forest a honey badger is devilishly tenacious. An elephant may surely crush it like an ant, but the little stubborn rascal will stand on its way till the last breath. A jackal flip-flops among cowardice, caution and cunningness. Two extreme characteristics in two species. They test their skills in the game of rope pulling. Unluckily for the poor python, there was no rope in the forest for the contestants. So they used a python instead! As a common man I feel like being pulled in all directions by the smarter species. Poor migrant workers returning on foot on their hundreds of miles long march of misery is the mammoth, fat python that is now being pulled and hunted by the political hunters to get bellyfuls of political pie.

In a tribal hamlet in Gujarat, far away from the maddening crowd and its still madder Corona offshoots, an old tribal woman drags a huge Kobra. A jittery forest official is lucky to shoot the scene on his mobile. She holds it inconsequentially like it’s a junk piece to be dragged out of the habitation. She walks like performing daily chores, holding the poor devil by tail, the latter clueless about what to do and what not. She drags it across the street without even looking behind. The deadly snake throws its hood in desperation along the crowd. She then simply throws it away like an unwanted unusable piece of old rope. The toothless wisdom of a grand-mom: A rope and a cobra are the same as long as your fingers don't discriminate between the two while holding!

Since the start of the Lockdown blockbuster series, there have been 5 occasions when mild earthquake tremors hit the Delhi NCR. Corona forces us to stay inside the box, and mother earth then shakes it to see us toppling out like scared mice. Five mild tremors in such short time doesn’t portend well. Geologically it may mean a big earthquake is waiting in the wings in the area. Moreover, crores of locusts are hovering in the northern skies like the nefarious enemy drones to chuck out crops. God knows what else this 2020 has in its store to stump us!

Dostovskiyan Samadhi

Samadhi is no domain strictly of those full time into spiritual practices. People across the world, belonging to all domains of life ranging from beggars to billionaires, artists to aristocrats, in all cultures, religions and geographies have experienced the touch of divine, the State of bliss, samadhi. The kundalini shakti inspires different people to manifest their realisations in different ways. Take a look at Dostoevsky for example. Do you think it's simply a writer speaking? No, it's someone who has tasted divine, his kundalini shakti pushing him into the zone of divinity, samadhi. Just that samadhi has been hijacked by esoteric cult practices that present religion as a lucrative business practice and a purveyor of samadhi. To me Dostoevsky is as good as a Himalayan mystic when he says in his work, Devils:

"There are seconds — they come five or six at a time — when you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony perfectly attained. It's something not earthly — I don't mean in the sense that it's heavenly — but in that sense that man cannot endure it in his earthly aspect. He must be physically changed or die. This feeling is clear and unmistakable; it's as though you apprehend all nature and suddenly say, 'Yes, that's right.' God, when He created the world, said at the end of each day of creation, 'Yes, it's right, it's good.' It . . . it's not being deeply moved, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything because there is no more need of forgiveness. It's not that you love — oh, there's something in it higher than love — what's most awful is that it's terribly clear and such joy. If it lasted more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and must perish. In those five seconds I live through a lifetime, and I'd give my whole life for them, because they are worth it. To endure ten seconds one must be physically changed.I think man ought to give up having children — what's the use of children, what's the use of evolution when the goal has been attained? In the gospel it is written that there will be no child-bearing in the resurrection, but that men will be like the angels of the Lord."

Lost Trains and Aggrieved Pythons

If at all there is something like Lockdown 5.0, and surely there will be, it will be primarily left to the people’s individual sense of safety and security against the virus. People have rushed out and so are the cases that are surging at the rate of 7000 every day. These are official figures. One can very well imagine what the exact picture is among the millions of the poorest laborers on the way back to their native places. Definitely the infection rate is very high and many cases go unreported, and so do the deaths.

On a positive note, the majority of people are getting cured and success against the virus is more of a routine in the individual battle. But the virus carries far more weight psychologically than its real ravages on the body. The cash-starved government has recognized it and asked hospitals to discharge non-critical patients just after two days of treatments. The people know rest of the self-quarantine, medicine and precautions against the virus as much as the qualified doctors do, having crammed the same for three months while sitting idle at home.

A friend had to travel from Delhi to Goa in car to drop his relative who has got a job appointment. They had stocked their food and were on the road for three days. All along he saw endless trails of poor migrant labors walking beaten, burdened with their miseries, wounded, hungry, starved, carrying their remnants of their urban dreams in gunny sacks, their children kow-towing bravely, their little steps taking the miseries head on. These are the miles long signature lines of miseries that appear to have taken a lot of credit from the government in having managed Corona efficiently in the country. It goes without saying that the issue of migrant laborers could have been handled in far better way. There will be political repercussions. The Congress must be gloating water-mouthed like a crocodile as the beaten and starved wilder beasts continue on the longest walks of their lives. What will encourage and help them to come back to the cities again? What will the cities do without them as they stand on the blood and toil of these intangible and unsung pullers of urbanism? Perhaps hunger and poverty will draw them back as sheer panic forces them to flee. PM Modi will need a vast amount of oratory and gallons and gallons of poultice to balm the aggrieved hearts. If that is not done, the Congress enters the fray as a credible contender without any effort. That is the irony about Indian polity. Miseries of the masses are the seeds of opportunity for the political parties by default.

The railwaymen seem to have lost their typically rattling alertness as the engines cooled their exhausted innards, bogies rested their wheels and the endless entrails of rails slept peacefully after more than a century of relentless search. When the signal for getting back to duty comes in the form of a few Shramik trains taking the migrant workers to their homes, they show signs of restful hangover and perform comically. A Shramik train bound for Gorakhpur reaches Rourkela! Poor, moneyless, foodless and waterless laborers must have felt like tortured inmates being taken to concentration camps having gas chambers.

India fires a cute salvo in the cold war against China. Two of its parliamentarians attend the swearing in ceremony of the Taiwanese President, thus giving a semblance of recognition to the island nation. As can be expected, the red dragon spits still cuter salvos and asks its troops to enjoy still more solitary climes a bit inside the Indian side in Ladhak. PM Modi sends more troops and the armies are staring at each other. The war of eyes!

In MP, masked bride and groom exchanged Covid-19 free certificates before garlanding each other to start their matrimonial innings. Corona has come in between many a hug this season both authorized by law and unauthorized scandalous types. It has beaten romance like anything. Romance has withdrawn in its shell like a sulky old tortoise, but is sure to hit back with vengeance during the latter half of the ear.

Few domestic flights have taken to the skies with a jittery shake of the aircrafts like a sleepy bird shakes off lethargy from its fur and stretches its wings to start the day again. The metallic birds deserved some rest after decades of endless flights in the skies. The cabin crew walk along the scared aisles like astronauts packed in PPE kits on some inter-planetary mission where there are hazards at every nook corner along the curvature of space. A lot many air passengers in India think that staring at beautiful female cabin crew members actually compensates for the airfare more than the service itself. Such passengers will surely think the ticket is overpriced for the stale glamorless service presently. I hope they won’t demand cabin crew in bikni once things get normal to make up for the loss on eye-feasting gluttony.

Looking at miles long queues in front of liquor outlets, a Maulana is miffed. ‘Why not allow the mosques to be opened for 15-20 minutes when you can have crowded 2-3 Km long queues for wine?’ he has a logical question. Just that the economy of a crowd in a mosque gets beaten by Hindu drinkers who pump bucks to the money. Faith is yet to be monetized directly for our common senses to understand it the way the price of a candy is understood in terms of rupees; indirectly of course it drives the biggest business on earth, religion.

Trump has hailed HCQ as a wonder drug against Corona and he himself is taking it on a precautionary note. The WHO finds it not suitable for the patients and so officially bans it. Probably they want to advertize some drug taken by Xi Jinping. But the secretive regime there won’t allow even the type of food taken by the top communist functionaries behind the iron curtain.

The errant kid surfaces and allays many a speculative theories. Kim Jong comes out after playing hide and seek amidst Corona confusion and appears ok. His disappearance for a fortnight was so effective an international news item that it pushed even mighty Corona from the centre stage for a couple of days. He did it on purpose. The fat lad seems to love being in the limelight. Any day we expect him to start firing rockets again. He actually behaves like the street urchin crony of the local criminal, acting in this capacity as a crony of China to keep the area in turmoil, unsettling the plans of the neighboring countries by firing rockets. He just loves fire-cracking and cackles with laughter like a fat chubby boy. But what villainy hides inside the chubby fat!

Saw a video clip in which a smart hyena cunningly snatches away a deer from the grasp of a python. Poor python! It had worked so hard to tame and suffocate the prey in its coils, a back-breaking effort I tell you. Ironically, eating the prey, that is so much easy for the rest of the species, is far-far more tiresome for the reptile, in fact far more weary and tough than even killing it. The hyena just jumps and hops smartly to run away with the booty. The python actually appears like the ever-toiling and sweat-boiling working class that breaks its bones in digging the foundation and erecting the structure, while the smart select few run away with the real exploits. And when blizzards like Corona come they decimate more of pythons (who are least responsible for the happening) than the hyenas (who are primarily responsible for the storm).

A Smile on the Life--Death Bridge

After the terrible rainstorm at night---that blessed the parched land with holy water apart from satiating the summer time thirst of the rough handwritten draft and notes of some book in future, smudging and bloating the words like soaked almonds, apart from allowing many other books to drink some water---the beautiful hibiscus appeared shaken and jolted. Was plucking old withered flowers and by mistake plucked two unopened buds also. Youth has its moment and indomitable spirit. It has to blossom irrespective of the killing strike. They retain their spirit and blossom up like they would have on the plant. If buds don't mind being plucked unripe accidentally and still smile, I don't have any reason to sulk on spoilt script and water sodden books. In any case, it was my mistake in both cases: plucking the buds unripe and leaving books carelessly at a place where they too would get tempted to get a rain bath!

PS: Nothing happens suddenly at a fixed point in this creation. Infinity won't be possible without an ever-occuring transition having a stream of points as we know them. There is a handover, a sort of takeover. Physical Death also doesn't occur at a point as it seems to us. There is still life in the buds to continue running the show of smiles and living. In case of human death, nails and hair continue growing for 13 days on the corpse after the moment of death as we see it on the surface. It means, it takes 13 days for all the life force to leave the last of cells.

Fire-spitting Dragon or just a Fat, Flabby and Jolly Bania

In pre-independence India, the people of trading class, Banias, were the stock markets, banks, treasurer, economists and much more, all rolled into one. Just a few households in every countryside settlement, they were the crown of the economy sitting affably on the head while farmers and laborers sweated out like ant swarms.

Caste and communities were not straightaway imposed on people randomly. These got ingrained with different attitudes and personal traits over generations. A farmer took pride in being called rough and rowdy that pacified his ego and he defined life in terms of keeping his temper and straightforwardness at the tip of his nose perched over mustache brimming with attitude, even if it meant surviving like a beast in the rough and gruff of a hard peasant life.

Some took pride in fighting and made it the illustrious element of life that validates one’s existence. They turned out to be Rajputs, the warrior clan. Others took menial jobs, probably finding these to be easier and less hassled, and came to be dumped at the bottom of caste hierarchy. Another matter that over a period of time these came to be cemented identities decided by birth and the social system fixed them as mighty disadvantages since birth. So the base sunk deeper and deeper into the pits of deprivation and miseries. Here we are concerned only with the way it started, not about the pains that ail the present time disadvantaged castes.

So casteism evolved as a sort of social Darwinism at play. In the same vein, Banias defined life in terms of gold and silver coins in their coffers. Their sense of worth, dignity, respect and over all identity came to be centered around money and the ways and means to pile more of it in their heavy metal chests set in lime and mortar fort like lakhori brick walls. A Bania won’t mind ill manners, abuses and disrespect by a rowdy outlaw kind farmer as long as the latter was indebted to him in his red-cloth bound account book that had the chronicle of many generations of indebtedness jotted down by his pen. From that standard, the farmer was simply a poor devil hopelessly indebted to the money lender. As long as the farmer kept pawning away his buffalo, grains or anything worth the appreciating eye of the moneylender to meet his emergency needs, his bad behavior hardly counted in the monetized version because it didn’t carry any price to the Bania. A farmer would keep grumbling obscenities under his breath, the Bania but would keep smiling and speak with sugar-coated words, all the while fully having a feeling of the foul words. To a well-meant spider the bickering of trapped flies hardly matters for anything.

The Banias kept lathaits, the muscled criminal type stick-wielding guards, their sticks well oiled and muscles twitching with wrestling pit acrobatics and push-ups. In between, the fat, flabby Bania chuckled good naturedly. He never intended to use the power for the sight of blood and broken bones. Never means never! Fighting wasn’t his domain. Trading and making money requires peace, gentle words and an ever-smiling countenance. A farmer would be the first to lose temper and a Bania would be the last. Well, that set up their antipodal positions on the economic ladder. The farmer used brawn and toiled all through life, thinking his rugged misdemeanor and arrogant attitude was all that mattered to define a human life. The Bania used brain and minted gold from the mine of peasantry’s drudgery. Nothing wrong at any end; just the difference between hard work and smart work.

Looking at the almost unused resource--rarely used and thus almost redundant--the stick-wielding group of outlaws, it appeared nearly unnecessary expenditure because trading was the theme not intimidation. It was primarily a symbolic force more for self defense because if you go belligerent you will kill the hens that lay eggs for you. To a Bania it only meant that the rowdy farmer would keep his anger to the limits of cursing and foul words even to the extent of these reaching his bodyguards’ ears. They won’t pounce till the farmer actually attacked the Bania. This possibility was rare because a symbolic force can at least stop the attacker. And if the situation developed to take the unlikely scene of a real physical fight, the Bania would in fact continue laughing in a jolly manner and ask his men not to attack and allow them to use force within the limits of repulsing the attacker only. The Banias indeed have had legendary patience. No wonder, Goddess Lakshmi, loves their peaceful households. The farmers have legendary uncouthness and the Goddess avoids their humble abodes.

The real threats to the Banias from the gangs of robbers—although always present theoretically yet farthest in practice—was more of an exception, since it happened just one or two times in the entire lifetime. For the rest of the time, the Bania was happy to be circled by his restful symbolic force and treated the peasantry like petty truants whose tantrums had to be tolerated to keep them there in the system of economy to continue raising their multi-generational debts. A Bania ate his bread out of his patience and smart work. A farmer did his on the basis of his hard work only.

China is that typical Bania. It has to earn profits and do business at any cost. It has a well-oiled army just like the Bania had his gang of muscle-men, who lazed under the sun most of the time. It cannot afford to kill its trading prospects by getting belligerent in the real sense in the form of  a bloody battle. I mean they may bellicose and create rhetoric like hell but they will surely fall short of an actual war; simply because they cannot think of losing their trade. With your priority to trade and make profits at any cost, you can’t be a belligerent hardcore soldier, however hard you may try. Money has its tremendous soothing effect on one’s senses.

The Chinese are the smartest Banias on earth and smart Banias never fight in the real sense. They just put up a mock show of aggression to keep trading. Even while investing the biggest sums of money in their military, the Chinese government basically thinks in economic terms. The economic and trading implications of maintaining a huge army, that’s the credo. A keen sense of trading automatically smoothens out lot many pinchy edges from one’s persona. One’s craving for profiteering allays the beast aside and puts precaution on the front. To be a really bloody fighting soldier one has to first be a non-trader, a loser in economic terms. The Chinese Red Army is the former and genocidal suicidal factions fighting in the middle east are the latter. You can calculate their economic worth. The Chinese calculate their defense expenditure as one of the overheads in the scheme of economy, where the armed strength and its symbolic visibility on the surface are more in symbol than in substance.

The current flare-up with India across Himalayan borders is a bit more than trading this time. Cornered by allegations over Corona, China is now engaged in these skirmishes to create dustier scenario of a war time situation so that Corona issue gets diverted a bit. Well, armies these days play more of symbolic role than they do actually on the battlefield. In fact, they are more useful in quelling internal dissent than in wading off external threats, which again are exception like an outright attack on a Bania by a robber gang that happened once or twice in his life time.

America keeps it army for all these and something more also. Something extra! Well, that makes it the superpower. About that extra, we will talk some other time!

A Buffalo High on Cannabis Leaves

There have been lots of rains this winter taking the short-lived, effervescent Indian spring well into April. So much so that temperatures have been lenient, pushing the real north Indian summer into the latter half of May. This and the fact that lockdown saw very few people scampering around gave cannabis plants full freedom to encroach every nook corner in the village. Suitable temperatures, sufficient rainfall and less human footfall, that's what the plant of artificial pleasure needs to mushroom around.

Wine outlets were closed for almost two months due to the lockdown, so many a people took recourse to chewing cannabis leaves as an alternative to beat their boredom with life. They chewed like goats absorbed in the greenest pastures. Mother Nature is always kind; even if she has to punish us mildly, she keeps lollypops also to bring a smile to the crying errant kid whose ears she has just twisted. So she gives cannabis growth at every nook corner in this phase of pains and miseries.    

In our extended family, auntie has a well fed, pampered docile buffalo. The bulky creature is gentle and well behaved. No wonder, auntie treats it like her daughter. But then these are testing times for all of us. New problems surface with effortless ease presently. The docile daughter too takes an off from her well-groomed domestication etiquettes. She feasts on wild cannabis plants for a change of taste and gets a high. The affable, gentle daughter gets drugged and misbehavior unspools. The black beauty gets naughty and plays truant. Poor auntie was pinned in a corner, not exactly with the intention of hurting her critically.

Even a buffalo has her version of playing mischief after getting high on substance. Auntie was holding the horns and the buffalo pushed and prodded with enough force to scare her out of her wits. However, the mischief was surely purposely short of really harmful force to avoid breaking bones.

Auntie's other pet, Labrador Tuffy, thought the buffalo is going to kill his godmother. He pounced in defence and pinned his teeth on the offender's hind leg. The buffalo felt insulted. Her drugged light bantering spirits withdrew to allow raw anger to surface. She must have felt terribly insulted on being treated like a substance addict by the canine moralist. The aggrieved buffalo chased the dog around the compound with the intention of killing it. The poor chap panicked and got onto the fence and jumped. It is seen limping now. The buffalo too carries her battle scar on her hind leg. Thank God, animals forget and forgive! Had they possessed memory like we humans, it would have turned into a long standing bloody feud.

Drugged Monkeys

The vendor’s auto laden with fruits and vegetables is chugging with a shaky drooling sound on the tiny village square. A monkey chides and grimaces at the cornered Homo sapiens and escapes with two bananas. But he doesn’t eat them with the typical hurry and greed of a thief on the run. He claims a well calibered ownership of the provisions in his hand. The pink-bummed ruffian carefully sniffs at the stolen fruits as if doing a thorough chemical analysis. The expert lab in his brain gives a clear signal and he peels them and eats with relish. Emboldened with the fruit giving him instant energy, he stalks a woman who has her purchase in a polythene bag. The broad daylight robbery is avoided as a man runs to help her.

Question arises why did he go for the sniffling analysis of the plundered property. Surely the message has been circulated quite well among the Simian population of the village. A couple of days ago, two broad-backed, thick-bummed, pink-balled rascals paid the price for not doing a thorough sniffing analysis. They had enlarged their domain of chronic mischief to include even tasting the skin on human calf muscles. These two stood out as the main plot-hatchers who probably thought they can do a coup and scare the humans away to have the entire village to themselves. Nothing wrong with the intentions by the way. They have a right to whatever we humans do. But we are smarter than them. The drugged bananas found them out of senses sloths on a porch. They were nicely packed in a gunny sack and disposed off to a far off place.

The rest of the Simian populace seems to have learnt a lesson and they have agreed to go for a chemical analysis of whatever we bigger monkeys offer them.

In a nearby town, my friend has a sorry tale of Simian wrongdoing. Tortured by their ever-breeding ways of both progenies and mischief, the locals gave a contract to a professional monkey catcher. He but turned out to be too smart for both the monkeys and the humans. He would drug them with fruits, gather them in sacks and dispose them in the dark of night at a nearby town. Now, the townspeople there also had given him contract for the same. Here also he did the same and offloaded the fainted offenders at the former town. The business went smooth. But this continuous drugging left the Simians very irritated and aggressive. During the lockdown, these aggressive and drugged monkeys literally ruled the streets.

That friend of mine was brushing teeth bent over the sink. An irritated rascal, in lugubrious high spirits, jumped from a height of one story and landed straight on his head. Poor fellow fell headlong. The offender ran away screeching with glory. ‘A monkey has a lot of weight man!’ is all that poor fellow can muster up with his jolted senses. On another occasion, his mother paid a big price for breaking the lockdown curfew. Poor auntie walked with apprehension as she crossed the deserted street now ruled by monkeys. Can you believe it? Look at their guts. They pinced her down and sat on her. She was just an ounce short of having a heart attack. People ran to save her and salvage Homo sapiens’ price. Luckily she wasn’t bitten.