Curious case of pregnancy

Ujwal Singh Verma and Radhe Shyam Sharma were walking hand in hand on the deck of the luxury liner, MNS Godavari, on a languorous Sunday evening. There was romance in the air with seagulls making intimate calls hovering above their head. Unable to conceive any legitimate excuse for their leave of absence from their busy work schedule, Ujwal and Radhe had SMSed to their boss an identical message : “Test confirm Pregnancy, need rest”.

The boss was stunned. Sweating from top to toe, Mr. Jaal Daruwala paced up and down his cabin. “God, are they going to hold me responsible? Surely, a memo does not cause pregnancy,” he muttered. In the past six months Mr Daruwala had fired Mohini, Sohini, Julie and Rita for having emailed him similar excuse.

“But, their case was different. They all were truly expecting babies. How can Verma and Sharma give such an impossible reason in their SMSed leave application? This is preposterous. No doubt I had been screwing their happiness in office and denying them bonus. They were poignant but surely this cannot make them pregnant,” he reasoned.

Mr. Daruwala nursed an illusion that at 69 he still looked debonair and gave appreciative smile to the office peons who gossiped within his earshot how the boss resembled Dev Anand in looks as well as in the way he walked and talked. Though he giggled and occasionally broke into a peel of laughter at slightest provocation, Mr. Daruwala could at best be described as a jovial person and not happy and gay.

Verma and Sharma knew well that Mr. Daruwala did often ask Mohini, Sohini, Julie and Rita to stay back after office hours to take dictation from him. This was their biggest grudge against Mr. Daruwala. “We too have many marketing collaterals to draft and email. But never have we asked the secretarial staff to stay back and work overtime,” Verma had complained to Sharma one day.

“Let us teach the boss a lesson of his life,” Sharma told Verma. “Let’s give pregnancy as the reason to go on leave. This will be an ultimate insult to Mr. Daruwala who is often heard boasting before all and sundry that he has climbed the Kutub Minar without going to Delhi via Agra,” Sharma said in a conspiratorial tone.

Verma jumped at the idea. “Mr. Daruwala will turn red faced and closet himself in his cabin on receiving our SMS. He cannot tell the HR that both of us have proceeded on maternity leave. The HR manager knows very well that Mohini, Sohini, Julie and Rita too had taken maternity leave after doing overtime every alternate Saturday. He is bound to spread the word through the canteen grapevine that this time Sharma and Verma too are pregnant,” Verma chuckled.

Bull, Bear & Bullshit

He felt orphaned when Harshad Mehta died and, went into deep depression when Ketan Parekh was arrested by the CBI for his involvement in multi million rupee stock exchange scam. His dream of making it big by following the Big Bull and KP appeared to have been shattered. They were the only God figures he looked up to since he learned to play with marbles.

While other children of his age dreamt of becoming an engine driver, a pilot or an engineer, a doctor or a writer, Hardshell Shylock (HS) told his granny he wanted to become a wealth manager, so focused was he on his life goal. “I don’t mind going to jail or fleeing to Andorra or Costa Rica if only I can make Moolah,” he would tell his close confidantes, who included his female classmates and his loyal maid servant.

To HS, Money, Moolah and Mammon mattered most, not even matrimony.  He lived in Moneynagar, which later became the constituency of his hero, Modi the Nero, popularly known as Nemo. Noticing that all the children of petty shopkeepers in his mohalla attended the local Shakha, HS too followed them to the common municipal ground usurped for the purpose by the pracharak whose side business was booking betting numbers (Worli Matka) on the Ratan Khatri network.

At the shakha, HS learned among other things the importance of Marxism. “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” Karl Marx had said in Das Kapital. The local shakha pramukh used to quote this in his daily sermon while propagating Guru Golmalkar’s preachings. “All swayamsevak’s of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your khaki knickers,” he would proclaim before the gathering of school kids.

HS didn’t mind losing his knickers if he could get a Raymond’s suit in exchange. He saw how his hero, Nemo the Nero, too had discarded the knickers for Armani’s and GAP after his election to the highest executive post in the state. Nemo had executed the Marxist theory by dividing the people of Gujarat on religious lines and intoxicating them with the opiate and driving them into a state of frenzy.

Once elected to the throne, Nemo helped his money launderer KP escape from the long arms of the law. Nemo mastered the art of twisting the law and using corrupt police officers like Bon Zara to perfect the craft of extortion. No wonder, HS was dazzled by Nemo’s super duper strategy of making money.  He started imagining and projecting himself as ‘THE KING OF BULL TIMES’. 

“If Nemo can bullshit his way to power, why can’t I do the same as a wealth manager giving the unsuspecting clients bullshit tips in collusion with the stock market operators of the Dalal Street?” he would tell his confidants.

Of Grasshopper & BBWs

While the world sleeps, Rudy, the grasshopper, hops up and down.  He has been hopping mad ever since he was separated from the flock he had carefully brought together comprising a dozen or so other creatures of the night. There were ants he called BBW, beetle bugs he had picked up from rock bands, bumble bees who had strayed their way to his rave party and a few rare insects he had rescued from the tangled hair of melancholic maidens.

Rudy had migrated to Cyberabad eons ago after he got bored of staring at the miniature sculptures of Konark’s sun temple and imagining himself as an inseparable part of the mosaic of murals there. “Lemme explore the Nizam’s kingdom. I have heard a lot how Charminar, the great erection that it is, transforms rudimentary morons into prince charming,” muttered Rudy to himself, one lazy afternoon upon waking up from his stupor.

Rudy took to wings on a hopping flight from Bhubaneswar to Cyberabad. For any other, the shifting of base would have resulted in a culture shock. Nothing of that sort happened to Rudy because as soon as he landed at the Begumpet airport, he gravitated to the lush green campus of the Central University known for its lakes and rocks.  Rudy felt immediately at home in the university campus rich in flora, fauna and birds.

The grass that grew on the periphery of rocks and lakes was not just green but heady too. Rudy started rolling on the grass and saw the rocks transforming into babes and butterflies. To him, the girls in the campus all looked like sitting ducks who would drop dead the moment Rudy trained his beady eyes on them.

On his arrival, he had filed an affidavit in the court discarding his archaic name given by his father for the hep and short Rudy because the university authorities had refused to enroll him by the new name unless he fulfilled the legal formality. This was understandable as the university administrative staff comprised mostly of Telugu and Mallu clerks who consulted the rule book even before they entertained the thought of engaging in intimate moments of romance.

The rule of nature got to work instantly on Rudy and his surroundings. Mars and Venus came together in a compromising constellation which the campus had never witnessed before. The boys and girls, who used to hum Telugu bhajans they had picked up from cassettes distributed free in their village by the followers of Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, suddenly started strumming their guitars and singing Bob Dylan songs.

Rudy rocked and so did the campus.  

However, the university authorities did not take this kindly because Rudy had dramatically altered the age-old power equations that helped maintain their hegemony over the faculty and their understudy.  One rocking day while a jam packed auditorium was moving and shaking to a raunchy number he was singing to the accompaniment of an equally raunchy and scintillating dance, the university proctor hauled Rudy out and serve him with a rustication order.

Rudy’s rustication became the cause célèbre for the faculty and students who went on a flash strike in his support. The scene reminded one of the students’ uprising in Tiananmen Square and the French Revolution.

 

Ever since he was thrown out of the campus, Rudy has been championing the cause of the night creatures, bugs and beetles on the social networking sites, occasionally espousing the cause of BBWs (beetles, bugs and weasels).

Malice in Hinterland

The Regina was fretting and fuming. Her fancy skull-headed hairpin had been missing since she woke up from her dream world. The Mad Hatter was playing croquette in the backyard with the handmaiden, taking advantage of the queen’s slumber. The little black bird was doing a waltz on the rooftop with her new-found male mate, Raven, to the sizzling hot tune of ‘Radhe Shyam, Pretty Pam’, which was the rage of the day after 'Munni Badnaam Huyi' and 'Sheila ki Jawaani'.

Unable to find anyone in her vicinity, the queen took out her anger on a lazy lizard posted on her Facebook wall by the court jester, Kronje Bray. She deleted the post using a swipe stick and posted back a black cobra on Bray’s wall.  Her anger refused to subside.  She started pulling the rope that rang the alarm bell mounted atop the castle.

The alarm bell sounded like a death knell. All hell broke loose. Everyone in the royal household sprang to attention and started scampering. The chef, Debbie the dabbler, two dozen members of his kitchen harem, the housekeeper, Hardshell Shylock,  and his two dozen girlish looking lads snoring in the corner of the store-room after a night-long revelry, the chief security officer, Subisvell along with two dozen of guards of a private detective agency, all left whatever they were doing or not doing and headed towards the main durbar hall.

“All is well,” shouted Subedar Subisvel. “Good morning all, have a mast, mast Monday,” chimed the housekeeper, who gave free stock market tip offs to gullible members of the royal entourage to make a quick buck on the side. “Good morning your highness,” squeaked Kronje Bray who had quickly logged out on receiving the black cobra pix on his Facebook wall from the queen.

“Has anyone seen my skull-headed hairpin”, thundered the queen, “I can’t find it since morning.” A hush fell on the assemblage. There was a pin drop silence. Everyone was afraid that if a pin happens to drop at the moment, the person next to it would certainly face the gallows. “Your highness, I had seen Debbie needling the petite little maiden the other day. But, surely it didn’t have a skull-head, it had a heart-shaped ruby at the end,” squealed Kronje.

The queen turned her killer looks towards Debbie who cringed and involuntarily winked with a sheepish expression on his face. “I know Debbie has this compulsive inclination of gifting his girls all kinds of trinkets. But, I also know he buys these from the nearby dollar shop. He dare not risk presenting any of these girls with the royal pin,” said Shylock coming to Debbie’s help.

The Mad Hatter was silently watching the inquest from behind the queen. “The missing pin is stuck at the bottom of the Royal gown,” whispered the handmaiden, pressing the hand of Mad Hatter. “Keep quiet, let her highness discover this when she sits on the throne,” said he.