With the fork!!

The innocent hoi polloi of the town was waiting for this significant day. They were promised Jackfruits, specially designed orange hybrid Pineapples, unique silk-woolen cloths, pencils and pens made of gold and Lord Buddha’s blessing wrapped in transparent polythene for some weird reason. The kids were running ‘havoc’ all over the town, their excitement was unimaginable, and they loved pencils. The elderly crowd was smiling for all they could do was smile. The young and exuberant men and women were celebrating with colors in the middle of nowhere and shouting out encouraging words for no reason whatsoever. The dogs and cats annulled out their long tradition of pointless antagonism and joined other ugly, demented and hopeless animal-brothers in celebrating the eventful day in their weird way. The birds were not promised anything but they felt ‘celebration’ was the need of the hour and so they joined in too, by flying over the top of people’s head like they do anyways. Everywhere, every body was celebrating except for the beggars who were sad. When asked by somebody why they were sad, they just started crying out loud and ran at random directions.

The moment had come. The sky cleared out the clouds which were disconcerting the incessant paranoia of the town by throwing in some disturbing rain droplets. The trees kept quiet even though the leaves felt a huge urge of moving in random directions, but there was no point in moving at random directions because there was simply no breeze. The old sheep-eating tigers that were ready to chase goats on this day, just for a change, changed their minds and went back to the forest and felt quite disgusted about this whole ‘celebration’ thingy going on in the town.

The gate-keepers smiled and opened the gates of uncertainty.
The 25 horse carriages entered the town of Phoolishnagar. The crowd went quiet. They waited with bated breath. The birds stopped flying midway in the sky and tried hard balancing but most of ‘em failed to do so and fell down rather meekly. The carriages stopped and everybody closed their eyes so that they could dream one more time whatever they were dreaming for the last few days. Somebody blew a shrill whistle and an old man died of heart attack. Nobody cared a bit. They just waited for the carriage doors to open.

The moment had arrived. The doors were opened and… fell down in dozens, scores and especially in grosses, lots and lots of brinjals. The crowd was flabbergasted beyond anybody’s wildest possible imagination and those hyper things that happen to people when they get really really shocked. One small kid holding a half-eaten strawberry lollipop in his hand, screamed out ‘With the fork!’. An elderly man who had exactly one tooth (or maybe just one could be seen) responded by saying ‘With the fork!’. A lot of ‘Hunh? Hunh? Hunh?’ totally bemused hushes were heard among the devastated crowd. They didn’t know what to do and so they started shouting out together…’With the fork!’..’With the fork!’…’With the fork!’. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. The King’s men laughed out like crazy and left the town leaving the carriages and the brinjals behind. The sun gave a slight smirk and went down calling back the irritating clouds to carry on with their routine, good-for-nothing downpour.

Somewhere very very far away on the top of a hill, a fox screamed out ‘With the fork!’ and jumped from the top of the hill. It had a parachute. It lived. It lived for another day!