Hope Springs Eternal

Hope was the last item in Pandora’s Box. Pandora was the Greek predecessor of the biblical Eve. Like Eve, Pandora was the first woman of mankind and the sole purpose of her creation was to bring evils and misery into the world of men. She descended on mankind with a box that contained all the evils which were let loose as soon as she reached the earth. Hope was left behind in the box where it still remains like a mirage.

Was hope left behind in the box because it was another evil, the ultimate evil? Hope can be a terrible evil if it gives you false aspirations and destinations. Imagine the common man on the street or the adivasi in the jungle who hopes that one day a Messiah will come to deliver them from the exploiting and mendacious politicians.

Messianic hopes are quite asinine if you know the story of this donkey from the circus which was asked by a launderer’s donkey, “Why do you endure such painful and risky acts? Why don’t you run away and join us at the launderers where you’ll only have to carry linen and not ride bicycles or bray at lions?”

“Ah, but you don’t know what fortune is awaiting me here in the circus,” said our protagonist.

“Fortune?”

“Yup. The other day the master told that beautiful girl you see over there, practising on the tight rope, that if she fell down again he’d marry her to this donkey and I was the donkey he pointed at. I’m hoping and waiting for her fall.”

Hope has continued to sustain that donkey to this day, I hope.

Messiahs have come and gone and the world has continued to become worse and worse, but we still continue to hope. If we can still place our trust and hope in our politicians, then we have all the more reason to hope for our eternal reward somewhere up there in a place the Messiahs have pointed at again and again.

Hope is universal simply because without it life would be unbearable. The other day I learnt that chickens too have hopes. One of the chicks in my brood asked the mother hen, “The puppies drink their mother’s milk and so do the calves and the kittens. Why are we chicks condemned to eat worms?”

“Wait till the 2019 general elections, my darling,” Mama Hen said. “The dominant political party is very animal-friendly. The Murg Sena has submitted a supplication to them to provide nipples to chicken breasts.”

“And make the breasts meaningful,” muttered Papa Cock who was listening all the while. He hoped to demand a sacred status for cocks, if not for hens too, eventually.

“Hope springs eternal in chicken breasts,” Pope hummed. Alexander Pope, that is.