Skip to main content

Octopus and Leech


Insipid humour like life

“Yes, Sir, I was just thinking of you,” said Dr Prerna when Dr Rakesh walked into her office.  He was not even in the most remotest part of her thinking.  He knew it too.  That was just one of their many secrets. 

Dr Prerna had done her PhD on the artistry of octopus tentacles and Dr Rakesh’s thesis was about the destiny of leeches for sucking blood.  The former was the principal of the school and the latter was a leading principal-aspirant.  The latter warmed up to the former hoping that she would recommend him for the vacant vice-principal’s chair and the former entertained the latter as he played the role of both the stooge and the snitch.  Having buried his soul in the most dishonest flattery and having informed on all his colleagues who matter, Dr Rakesh would cover up the stench and filth of his inner rot beneath his three-piece suit.

“Your disrobe looks fabulous today,” said Dr Rakesh as usual trying to flatter his boss’s new dress.

“What?” Dr Prerna was scandalised in spite of herself.

Dr Rakesh’s knowledge of English was one of the many handicaps that he hid beneath his three-piece suit.  So he had sought the assistance of the English teacher, Joyonto, to learn the name of the Queen’s latest garb which looked like a hybrid between the cassock of Catholic priests and the habit of Tibetan monks.  The crooked Bong had played a nasty game on him, realised Dr Rakesh.  Saala, what does he think of himself?  That eating fish-head will make him more shrewd than Dr Rakesh?  Let him wait and watch what Dr Rakesh, the Chanakya of New India Residential Public School, has in store for him.

While the Chanakya sat in the air-conditioned office of his Queen, Joyonto was taking his usual evening walk on the campus with his little son.

“Be careful,” he warned his son.  “Don’t fall down.”

“Why, dad?” asked the boy.  “What will happen if I fall?”

“Friends will laugh,” said Joyonto.

One of Joyonto’s friends was having his laughs sitting in the Principal’s office.  “He is promiscuous,” Dr Rakesh had learnt that word from Joyonto the other day.  “Have you noticed the way he flirts with the lady teachers?”

Promiscuity was a good allegation, thought Dr Prerna.  She encouraged the stooge to exercise his creative imagination and fabricate some substantiating episodes for Joyonto’s promiscuity.  Every staff member has to be kept in his or her place.  A principal who doesn’t know how to do that is a potential failure.

“Your AC is very good,” said Dr Rakesh having come to the end of the creativity of his imagination.  He thought it wise to depart from the disrobe while flattering the Queen.

“Sir, sir,” the Queen became suddenly excited.  That was one of her diseases.  “Have you heard the joke about the patient who complained about the cold in the operation theatre?”

“No, tell me, madam.”  He said though he had heard the joke twenty-five times since the lady assumed her present office.

“The AC is very cold, said the patient.  Then the doc said, if you find this cold unbearable how will you bear the cold in the mortuary?”

Dr Rakesh roared with laughter.  “Oh, I’m sorry.  You made me laugh so loud,” he apologised.

Don’t be sorry, you numbskull!  The Queen said in her heart.  Your mortuary is getting ready.


Comments

  1. “Your disrobe looks fabulous today,” :-D :-D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm sure you have come across such characters in real life.

      Delete
  2. What a character! I would have sued you for slander on my name, but for the laugh. :D

    Too funny, sir! And, yes... I've really come across such creatures in the corporate world. :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your name is as common as the moon :)

      Today schools are more corporate than the corporate world!

      Delete
  3. I liked the choice of the topics.I myself had a narrow escape with errant behaviour of nauplius larvae under xyz conditions. Now you made me wonder if there was more to the name ..eh?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Larvae are very common in today's workplaces. They take upon themselves the mission of ruining those who have greater potential than them.

      Delete
  4. Octopus - brainy yet hideous, doomed when they meet their mate. The principal satisfaction for the principal would be just promiscuous tales....:)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...

A Lesson from Little Prince

I joined the #WriteAPageADay challenge of Blogchatter , as I mentioned earlier in another post. I haven’t succeeded in writing a page every day, though. But as long as you manage to write a minimum of 10,000 words in the month of Feb, Blogchatter is contented. I woke up this morning feeling rather vacant in the head, which happens sometimes. Whenever that happens to me but I do want to get on with what I should, I fall back on a book that has inspired me. One such book is Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince . I have wished time and again to meet Little Prince in person as the narrator of his story did. We might have interesting conversations like the ones that exist in the novel. If a sheep eats shrubs, will he also eat flowers? That is one of the questions raised by Little Prince [LP]. “A sheep eats whatever he meets,” the narrator answers. “Even flowers that have thorns?” LP is interested in the rose he has on his tiny planet. When he is told that the sheep will eat f...