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).