Donkey's Lament
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
"In Pune, Shiv Sena Volunteers forced a man walking with a girl to marry a donkey they were carrying, in protest of Valentine's Day Celebrations"...News Report
"I saved that ass Balaam one day
And carried Jesus on Palm Sunday;
Now on the streets of Poona
Solemnized by Shiv Sena
I wed a MAN this Valentine's Day!"
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I read that in the whole of the voluminous Holy Bible there are only two animals that had power of human speech:
1. The Serpent in the Garden of Eden to Eve (Ouch!)
2. Balaam's Ass to her owner (what an ass Balaam was!)
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During my long innings here I have seen many PMs, all of who did some good or the other.
But if you ask me to share an hour with one of them on Harry's cement bench I would certainly choose Ataljee.
He was different
By the way, where is he now?
Theoretical Physicists sometimes say profound things crisply. Abraham Pais ticked his roommate Feynman off:
"Publicity is a whore"
Just in four short words, he spoke volumes of truth.
Anyway, I remember Ataljee's regime for two good things he did to me:
1. Explosion of mobile phones
2. The Golden Quadrilateral.
Before those squeaky-clean four-lane Highways materialized from Heaven, road travel in AP was a pain in the spine. But nowadays I prefer long colorful journeys by road to short boring flights (they cost the same in time and money to Nellore from Hyderabad).
The other day (when I took casual leave for 3 days) I traveled in the front seat of a spacious Tata Indigo by my trusted driver friend all over AP for 24 hours in two stretches stopping wherever we want for tea.
And I was asking him only one question repeatedly:
"Where have all those famous donkeys of AP gone?" (PJ of our time: "To KGP")
And he too had to admit to his dismay
RKN wrote a lovely piece: "The Donkey" in his unrivaled first Collection: "Next Sunday".
And it is celebratory to its Hero.
That Collection dates back to my school life in Muthukur (early 1950s).
And part of my sweet memories of school life were the omnipresent donkeys keeping themselves to themselves but for a few hours of drudgery to their dhobi owners and an occasional Love Call that shattered the silence of summer afternoons.
Today's TOI had this front page news item that their number in AP has dwindled from one lakh a decade ago to a mere one thousand now.
What a fall was there, my countrymen, as Mark Antony moaned.
And the twin reasons are:
1. Dhobis prefer dark and ugly mopeds to fair and lovely quadrupeds nowadays (Environmental Pollution)
2. Non-vegetarians took to eating their meat on the sly (next will be human's)
And apparently the AP Biodiversity Board has woken up (they will commercialize donkey meat and go into mass production...braying donkeys enter and sleek tins exit the assembly lines)
As another Mark said:
"Man is the only animal that blushes or needs to"
Another chunk of my Muthukur gone forever!
***********************************************************************************************************
The AP Abhimanyus have done it again and bettered their last year's score.
IIT JEE results are out and the All-India Topper (in the Open and Reserved streams) is from AP...from the Coromandel Coast of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
They also bagged five out of the top ten ranks and 25% of all seats.
Messes in KGP will be catering Idly-Dosa-Sambar everyday.
Crazy Opulence as I said sometime back.
**************************************************************************************************************
There is a cute photo of Didi in her famous off-white Dhanikali sari entering the Colonial Writer's Building surrounded by half a dozen body-guards.
I read that in the whole of the voluminous Holy Bible there are only two animals that had power of human speech:
1. The Serpent in the Garden of Eden to Eve (Ouch!)
2. Balaam's Ass to her owner (what an ass Balaam was!)
**************************************************************************************************************
During my long innings here I have seen many PMs, all of who did some good or the other.
But if you ask me to share an hour with one of them on Harry's cement bench I would certainly choose Ataljee.
He was different
By the way, where is he now?
Theoretical Physicists sometimes say profound things crisply. Abraham Pais ticked his roommate Feynman off:
"Publicity is a whore"
Just in four short words, he spoke volumes of truth.
Anyway, I remember Ataljee's regime for two good things he did to me:
1. Explosion of mobile phones
2. The Golden Quadrilateral.
Before those squeaky-clean four-lane Highways materialized from Heaven, road travel in AP was a pain in the spine. But nowadays I prefer long colorful journeys by road to short boring flights (they cost the same in time and money to Nellore from Hyderabad).
The other day (when I took casual leave for 3 days) I traveled in the front seat of a spacious Tata Indigo by my trusted driver friend all over AP for 24 hours in two stretches stopping wherever we want for tea.
And I was asking him only one question repeatedly:
"Where have all those famous donkeys of AP gone?" (PJ of our time: "To KGP")
And he too had to admit to his dismay
RKN wrote a lovely piece: "The Donkey" in his unrivaled first Collection: "Next Sunday".
And it is celebratory to its Hero.
That Collection dates back to my school life in Muthukur (early 1950s).
And part of my sweet memories of school life were the omnipresent donkeys keeping themselves to themselves but for a few hours of drudgery to their dhobi owners and an occasional Love Call that shattered the silence of summer afternoons.
Today's TOI had this front page news item that their number in AP has dwindled from one lakh a decade ago to a mere one thousand now.
What a fall was there, my countrymen, as Mark Antony moaned.
And the twin reasons are:
1. Dhobis prefer dark and ugly mopeds to fair and lovely quadrupeds nowadays (Environmental Pollution)
2. Non-vegetarians took to eating their meat on the sly (next will be human's)
And apparently the AP Biodiversity Board has woken up (they will commercialize donkey meat and go into mass production...braying donkeys enter and sleek tins exit the assembly lines)
As another Mark said:
"Man is the only animal that blushes or needs to"
Another chunk of my Muthukur gone forever!
***********************************************************************************************************
The AP Abhimanyus have done it again and bettered their last year's score.
IIT JEE results are out and the All-India Topper (in the Open and Reserved streams) is from AP...from the Coromandel Coast of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
They also bagged five out of the top ten ranks and 25% of all seats.
Messes in KGP will be catering Idly-Dosa-Sambar everyday.
Crazy Opulence as I said sometime back.
**************************************************************************************************************
Tailpiece
There is a cute photo of Didi in her famous off-white Dhanikali sari entering the Colonial Writer's Building surrounded by half a dozen body-guards.
Lal Salaam, Didi Dear!
Sir, look at this collection of... well, of whatever the name of the blog rightly proclaims it to be: http://www.rhymebomb.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteThanx! Looks like a real bomb!
ReplyDelete