Leo and The Priest: A True Story about Surviving God

"History", said the great Sir Thomas Carlyle, "was made possible by the shortage of Viagara." Indeed, we have evidence that when the choice princes of each age were unable to make love, they made war.

Recall that the only parts of his mistress that Hitler regularly assailed with violence were her ears. Recall that Bill Clinton rained bombs on Serbia only when he was cruelly cut off from Monica. Note that the present Bush, who clearly suffers from too much Bible and too little Laura, takes out his ire on Iraq. Recall that his father, who suffered from too much Bible and too much Barbara, did the same. And lest you should think colored people are somehow immune to this trend, recall that the only two times India popped a nuclear device instead of the regular 1000-wallah, it was led by Indira-ji and Atal-ji, both of whom were officially celibate at the time.

To find a possible exception to the above rule, you'll need to go back to 1st century BC. Augustus, the greatest of the Caesars, then ruled much of the planet. He loved but one woman in the whole world, and strangely enough it was his own wife. Unfortunately, when left alone with her, Augustus, like the average Bangladeshi batsman, displayed much vigour but little placement and even lesser staying power. This, one would have thought, spelt doom for the world. Not so. As historians point out, Rome was never more at peace than under Augustus. Remarkably, our hero, in spite of not seeing action at home, waged wars only in Egypt, Gaul, Germany and Spain. Just four wars in fifty odd years makes for an extraordinarily peaceful reign, as any sane man would agree.

Alas, even this exception only proves the rule. Augustus, it is now known, was no monk. In fact, his much-loved-yet-unloved missus, in order to spare the people of the world, actually arranged for L'Empereur to accidentally meet luscious young ladies on rainy nights. Like India in league matches, Augustus, it is said, performed spectacularly when the pressure was off.

That leaves us with a cardinal, unbroken Golden Rule: When Big Chief don't get no fun, he'll whip out the big gun. If people want to avoid the draft, they should choose a real man as leader, and keep him well-supplied.

Tragically, this lesson from history is forgotten. The man on the street but dimly recalls the glory days when the King numbered his children because they were far too many to name. Bill Clinton, that path-breaking hero, had the ability to bring back those good old days, but he was tragically thwarted by the times he lived in. Virtue on the throne, regrettably, is here to stay.

I survey this scene and I'm deeply saddened. Let it not, however, be assumed that I am a sentimental pacifist. Honestly, I don't think war is a big deal. After all, only about 2000 Americans have died in Iraq, and as Dubya will probably tell you, most of them are teenagers who would have killed themselves in road accidents anyway. There is the small matter of 30000 dead Iraqis, but considering how many brown people there are in the world, does anyone honestly think 30000 more or less makes a difference? No, indeed. If an under-sexed El Presidente kills himself a few thousands, I say Hail the Chief, Halelujah and could-we-switch-to-ESPN.

No, what really concerns me is not the effect of my Commander's abstinence, but its cause. After all, people always elect a leader who is just like themselves, only a lot richer. If Dubya behaves like the Grand Inquisitor, I ask, can Joe Republican be far behind?

Anybody who follows the ways of the Free World would know that things are in bad shape. God, who seemed for a few centuries to have popped off to better worlds, is back in a big way. As a child, I was afraid of ghosts, and my grandfather comforted me by quoting the Vedas which said God is everywhere. It sounded vaguely reassuring. Now, I am grown-up, I live in Texas, God is everywhere, and I am scared shitless. I've always thought God is a quiet sort of bloke, but He seems to be a Talker. Lots of people are hearing stuff from Him, and it ain't increasing their love for their fellow man. Ten years back, the only things people seriously looked for were marijuana and Madonna's perenially missing underwear. Now, they are looking for Communion with God, the Inner Voice and Spiritual Bliss.

More than anything else, however, God's born-again children are looking for Sin. Almost anything you do, from petting your dog to not petting your dog, is sin. Nothing is beyond the purview of the moral police, and nothing escapes its attention.

Most interestingly, while the virtuous disapprove of sin, they cannot really tolerate virtue. This is, of course, natural. Cops cannot be said to love thieves (unless the cops happen to be Bihari and the thieves happen to be women, but that is a different story). However, cops clearly do not want the end of all crime, for that will make them redundant. Likewise, the virutous need sin so that they have something to disapprove of.

John Kerry lost the elections not just because he looked like a mummy and made it worse by trying to smile. No, he lost because he was squeaky clean. Dubya at least had a police record and had confessed to sniffing a little bit of crack when the old man bothered him too much. At any rate, our Lord and Master is such an imbecile that it is almost a sin. Kerry, on the other hand, was fifty years old at birth and aged rapidly hence. The man was just too damn dead to sin. If he were to be the President, where, I ask, would the public have gotten their moral superiority? Is there any wonder, then, that he did lose?

The Land of the Free is now one big moral circus. The only pleasure people have allowed themselves is that of finding and loathing sin. They just cannot accept virtue, for it denies them this one remaining pleasure. If Jesus were born today in Alabama and if he miraculously survived the hurricanes that God regularly sends to punish the poor for being poor, he would be lynched to death anyway.

The question of the day, particularly for men of sound moral fibre like your humble correspondent, is this : Is there a way out? Can any moral man survive in this country? Is it possible for a sinless bloke to soothe the suspicions of the righteous?

The answer, strangely enough, is yes. And the man who found the way was none other than Lev Nikolaiyevich, the greatest author that ever lived, and my childhood hero. Leo, as he is fondly known, spent what one might call a real man's youth. Having had his fill, he then declared that sex is immoral. The local priest, of course, found this highly suspicious and promptly interrogated Leo. Here's how Leo quelled the priest's doubts.

Priest : Do you, sir, think that sex with women, even with one's own wife, is immoral?
Leo : I do.
Priest : You are into men, then?
Leo : No, indeed.
Priest : Children?
Leo : Of course not.
Priest : Hmm, you are truly a strange beast! Hmm, beast! You like animals?
Leo : How dare you?
Priest : Animals neither. A queer fish indeed! Ah, but of course! Fish?
Leo : Puh-lease.
Priest : Not fish either? I see it now. I must tell you, sir, that the Bible strictly forbids toys. What do you say to that?
Leo : I say screw the Bible.
Priest : Ah! A bibliophile! Why didn't you say so earlier? It is slightly unusual, my boy, but hardly unique. Confess and I'll absolve you.

There it is, clear as day to any that can see: In a society that is obsessed with sin, the only way for a moral man to survive is to pick one acceptable sin, and specialize in it. As Lord Bacon said, "Practise maketh sufficiently imperfect."

A Great Tragedy

Greatness contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. The force of life is the same as the force of death, and it takes but one small error to convert the one into the other.

Note, for example, the curious case of Dubya and Christian values. Christian values were Dubya's unique, and only, selling point. It seemed that as long as he had Christian values, no war, no hurricane, no downturn could touch Dubya. Recently, alas, Dubya nominated as the next Supreme Court judge a ridiculously soft-hearted woman who only kills liberals but does not drink their blood. Incensed by Dubya's lack of faith, the keepers of the the self-same Chrisitan values are now calling for his head.

Note, for example, the curious case of the White Man and technology. The White Man used technology to subjugate the brown, black and yellow people of the world. Alas, instead of nerve gassing them en masse, he spared them and educated them to serve as his clerks. He counted on their lack of brains, which was fair enough. Alas, he did not account for his own lack of brains. As he made technology simple enough for himself to use it, he also made it simple enough for brown, yellow and black people to use it. And while both brown and White men can write software, only the former can breed prodigiously, as anybody in New Jersey would have noticed. Having failed to close the issue when he was on top, the White Man is now a marginalized foreigner, a hysterical second-hander, in his own country.

But the grandest tragedy of recent times occurred not in the prosaic West, but in that land of Legend, that cradle of Epic, the great nation of South India. Aye, in South India, there recently lived and died a man whose life illustrates the self-desctructiveness of greatness more poignantly than anything I have seen or read. It is his tale I recount here.

The late N. T. Rama Rao, or NTR as he was known, was a lot of things: he was film star, politician, friend of the common man, not-just-friend of the common woman, and in more ways than one, the Father of the state of Andhra Pradesh. His greatness cannot adequately be described in my humble prose, so we take up NTR's tale towards the end of his life.

NTR was slowly receding into the dusk. In his old age, he developed a fascination for vans, which he tried to convert into chariots; and middle-aged women, whom he tried to convert into Headwomen of Andhra Pradesh.

In the former, he succeeded spectacularly. Andhra Pradesh is full of people who will call anything a chariot if you promise them some cash. Some of the more inspiring Telugu poetry of recent times likens the headlights of NTR's van to the lustrous saphire eyes of an Arab thoroughbred.

The latter exercise, namely, that of making people accept NTR's mistress as their own, proved more challenging. In India, women get voted to power only if they had spiced up the public's private fantasies at some point of time in their lives. Unfortunately, NTR's middle-aged woman looked, well, middle-aged. Worse, she looked like she had looked middle-aged all her life. But NTR knew that even this could be overcome. In Andhra Pradesh, as I've said, a little bit of cash goes a long way towards ensuring suspension of disbelief.

Cash, and NTR's image, ensured that the public did indeed flock to see NTR's anointed successor. When NTR finally died, he did so thinking that he would rule through the person of his mistress for another forty years. However, fate had willed otherwise, for NTR had made an error that was to undermine his own greatness and annul his legacy. It is this fatal error that I shall now describe.

The Tragedy:
As mentioned earlier, NTR was quite active in the production business. He wanted sons to carry on his legacy, but even he could not control the gender of his offspring, and some of them turned out, unfortunately, to be girls. It was a problem, but one which Indians solve regularly and ingeniously with some rat poison in the baby's milk, or an extra affectionate hug. However, NTR's prolific rate of production made production control well-nigh impossible. Consequently, some girl children did get away, and flowered into doe-eyed beauties. NTR knew that daughters, if they were allowed to marry, would bring sons-in-law, who would compete with NTR's own sons for power. So, he fiercely guarded his daughters from lustful eyes. As poet Vemanna recounts,

Andamainadi NTR gari kooturu,
Dani choodadaniki abbaiyilu potaru,
Kopam ostundi NTR-ki valluni choosi,
Tintadu vallatho koorelu chesi.

which, in the infinitely less poetic English language translates to

The beauties that NTR did sire,
Were courted with much desire,
But suitors suffered the sire's ire,
Yea, their privates were set on fire.

It appeared that everything was under control and NTR's lineage would not be challenged by strange men that he had not fathered. But then Fate struck in the person of Nara Chandrababu Naidu, or simply Naidu. Naidu managed to marry one of NTR's daughters by the simple expedient of looking so ugly that NTR's henchmen considered him harmless. It must be said that their judgement was not far off the mark. However, they forgot that NTR's daughters saw NTR regularly, and that lowered their expectations from men as far as looks went. So it happened that NTR himself unwittingly drove one of his daughters into the waiting hands of Naidu.

The rest, as they say, is history. After NTR's death, NTR's mistress, now wife, and his son-in-law Naidu were involved in a power struggle. The wife told the people that NTR had loved her, and she was his rightful heir. All of Andhra Pradesh was awash with posters of her standing beside NTR to prove the point. It was, she believed, a surefire winner. After all, Naidu had never been in a picture with NTR.

And then Naidu pulled off a blinder. He simply had his men write "He loved this?" below the posters.

Needless to say, Naidu won the elections convincingly. He dedicated a grand tomb to NTR, cut off all neighbouring trees and released crows in the area. The tomb is now called the White House of Hyderabad.

NTR's wife has not been heard from in a while.

A 55-word story

Determined readers of this blog would have noted that "TheDQ" left a comment on my last post, which said, and I quote : "Dr., you have been tagged." This message greatly disturbed me.

TheDQ, as she calls herself these days, is a charming young girl. I have often had occasion to buy her biscuits on my way back from work, and she always says, "Thank you, chacha-ji", and runs quickly to stash them away in her secret hideout. (TheDQ is a Gujju, and she believes in saving up, since you never know when she and her 42 children will be struck in a remote Himalayan cave for 263 days before the CNN crew gets there, followed, in another 94 days, by the Government relief trucks.) TheDQ's chief charm is that she does not, like most other children, insist that I play hopskotch with her.

Now, when such a charming well-behaved little girl says "Dr, you've been tagged", you fear that this is the beginning of the end. The next thing you know, she'll insist that you take her to the fing-fing in the lot-lot, and play pickaboo with Winnie-Pooh, otherwise she'll su-su all over your fofa. Clearly, preemptive measures were called for, to avoid a rapid descent into depravity.

I wrote her a stern e-mail to go play with kids her own age, and not disturb chacha-ji. And then she patiently explains that this is not some children's game where the simple objective is to gouge everyone else's eyes out. No, sir! The idea is that a bloke, say person A, writes a 55-word story. In the process, he discovers that writing 55-word stories, and not Peanut Butter, is the key to salvation. Fuelled by the good samaritan spirit, person A then wants persons B, C, D, E and F, all bosom buddies and childhood mates, to also bite off the fruit of Knowledge. Then these people write stories and invite their bosom buddies to do so, and so on.

I have had a long career of hearing idiocy, since I talk to myself quite a bit. But I've never ever heard anything quite so idiotic. That is when it struck me that neither Evolution nor God can end up creating anything as ridiculous as Man. Then, sipping my hot tea, I came up, in a trice, with the brilliant theory of the Big Prank, which neatly explains how and why we are what we are, and puts forever to rest the Creation-Evolution debate. But that's for another post.

I was going to send a legal notice to TheDQ, but then I realized that she had a point. For all my God-like virtues, I'm after all, human, and writing 55-word stories is the way of all flesh. So here goes mine:

Allah said, "I created men. I am the one true God."
Krishna screamed, "Liar! Impostor! I created men."
The devil entered, and said, "Good job, whichever one did it! They tag each other to write 55 word stories."
Allah said, "You created them, you fool".
Krishna said, "Don't blame me! You did it! Pig!!"
Amen.

Note 1
TheDQ : I'm being a creep, to put it mildly. This is not the first time, it won't be the last. But it was just too tempting, and you know that I'd sooner offend a friend than lose the opportunity for a joke. But hey, I did at least write a 55-word story. In fact, here's one more:

Mr. Verma said, "Munnoo, caam heeeyar. Uncle ko namaste bolo!"
Munnoo rolled in, looking at me coldly.
"He ees jaast chaild, but he can kaawoont up to 10. Munnoo, uncle to numbers bolo!"
Munnoo squeaked, "One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten!"
Mr. Verma smiled apologetically, and said, "Baccha hai, Seekh jaayega"

Note 2
Since friend collection is not one of my hobbies, I don't know 5 blog-writing people whom I can tag. P~ and ~P, you are welcome to write ghastly 55-word stories if you want. Just don't blame them on me.

An Evening By A Lake

I walked alone once to a lake,
Remorseful and heavy of heart,
Ashamed, in a quarrel's wake,

Of playing in pettiness a part.

In truth, there was but little pain.
A tiny ripple in a sea of calm.
And what of pain did remain,
Was really a bittersweet balm.

(For remorse is but a game
Every kind man slyly enjoys.
Virtue often courts the blame,
In its own rigour to rejoice.)

The conflict seems simple now,
But that day it seemed profound.
And I paced, with furrowed brow,
Now thinking, now looking around.

I glanced awhile at the setting sun,
And asked why man with man strives.
I turned and saw the east darken,
And sought meaning in our petty lives.

A full hour I spent thus thinking,
Of questions grand and far too grave.
To the red sun, now slowly sinking,
'Twas but divided attention I gave.

Perchance I turned, and behold!
The west now wore heavenly hues.
'Twas blood, brick, brown and gold,
'Gainst grey and a million blues.

For a while, I stood in dumb awe,
But thought slowly, slyly returned.
And I sadly rose to leave, but I saw
Near me a robin, westward turned.

He was staring at what I'd just seen.
But briefly he turned to catch my eye,
And turned quickly back to the scene,
Like one asking me to look at the sky.

To leave would have been impolite,
And so I sat and looked westward.
Together, we mourned the dying light,
Two brothers, not just man and bird.

As night fell, he quietly flew away,
With not even a chirped goodbye.
There wasn't anything left to say:
We were one--he, the sky, and I.

As I bid farewell to the lakeshore,
The big answers I still didn't know.
But I asked big questions no more,
So I gently smiled, and rose to go.

Epilogue:
My wisdom alas soon did ebb,
For wisdom is but a living thing,
I'm caught again in the web,
Again have I fallen to striving.

But not all of me stoops to fight,
For even as I hear the battlecry,
I dimly see a bird in fading light.
And I smile, for I'm he, and he's I.


Note
This attempt at poetry was made on October 2nd. On the same day, it was discussed in a popular forum, frequented, my dear reader, by cultured art lovers like you. You can find the article here.

Meter Lost, Poet Suicidal

From our special correspondent
Dallas, TX

Serial poet B. is disconsolate: his magnum opus "An Evening By a Lake" (link) was so nearly a critically acclaimed classic. It had everything: a touching core idea (inspired, let us say by Frost's "A Tuft of Flowers"), a beautiful photograph of Lake Yellowstone, and even rhyming lines. Critics claim, however, that the complete absence of meter in it makes the poem something of a failure. Meter, as the reader might know, is commonly used to make poetry rhythmic.

A press-release from serial poet Badri says : "The absence of meter in the poem was forced on me by the sudden and unexpected loss of my own meter, and the unavailability of replacements in the market." The release continues, "I had it [the meter], I even used in the first line, but I took my eye off because I was getting the lines to rhyme, and before I knew it, it was gone."

When contacted, serial poet Badri was depressed and incoherent. "It [the poem] would have been a masterpiece. If I hadn't lost my meter, it would have sounded musical. But now, it sounds like I ate too much mirchi bhajji before writing it."

We asked serial poet Badri if he couldn't make do without meter. He replies with an emphatic no. He laments:

"Writing poetry without meter,
Is like wiping up without water.

The result doesn't appeal a bit,
The damn thing's just full of shit.

For verse, meter is a vital part,
Without it, you get fart not art."

Citizens with the good-samaritan spirit are requested to either seek out serial poet Badri's lost meter, or lend him one for the interim. This is an emergency situation. "There are just two things I really crave," says serial poet Badri, "..., and the second thing is to write poetry."