The Madness Has Begun

The last two months have been shit. Absolute fucking shit. I have knocked on every door, hoping that at least one, at least one, would open to something interesting. But it wasn’t to be, my luck had run out. And we are not talking about ladies here, let’s not even go down that road. I have climbed every hill I could, even climbed one of them thrice, the last of them under the cover of darkness…..been to every watering hole and restaurant. I was so bored that I even went to the blooming air show after having sworn that I would never go for it ever again a couple of years ago. I managed to, however, succeed in staying away from the Maiden concert, thank god for small mercies. My fish kept me busy for some time, but my present lot are the peaceful kind, the live and let live types, even the infamous Red Devil that has a reputation to devour any object in his field of vision, even rooted plants leave alone the stupid gold fish I feed him, has turned himself into a vegan. Only fruits and berries for him. He happily gorges on little green and red pellets and plays hopscotch with the other girlies in the tank. God save him.

If there was ever a scale of human irritation, I would have set a new record high with absolute ease.

People thought I was going through a mid life crisis.

Just when I thought all was lost, my good friend, the fiend, wakes up from his winter slumber. He yawns. He stretches. Groggily he searches for his wristwatch that’s lost under the bedding; a heap of soft straw and fragrant leaves. He finally finds it, stares at the dials for a whole minute. Still drunk on sleep, he sees the time through slit eyes. He smiles and is about to hit the sack thinking he awoke a little earlier than schedule, when suddenly he leaps out of the bed. Shit! He should have been up a whole month ago.

Madness, Eccentricity, Insanity, three of my best friends, live just around the corner. They spent the whole winter anxiously waiting for his arrival. Then, they see it coming. A shining black steam train, breathing fire as it cuts through the heartland, the gleam from the chrome cowcatcher is juxtaposed with the mile high trail of smoke that’s ascends into the heavens. The-Man-Upstairs, shuts the windows of his pearly white mansion and shouts at his assistant to turn on the aircon. With bated breath he murmurs to himself, “That son of a bitch is back”.

In the distance, he watches Madness, Eccentricity and Insanity. As the train screeches to a halt, sparks fly off the rails. The blaze sets fire to the grass growing alongside the track. That sets off a forest fire. It’s not long before it’s turned itself into a flaming inferno. The towering flames set fire to the canopies hundreds of metres high in the sky. Birds and baboons flee the flames, but it’s futile. They are soon engulfed and consumed by the flames. The air is rich with the aroma of bush meat, “well-done”.

Madness, pulls up the handbrake, quickly runs into the forest, grabs a nicely grilled a baboon and hops onto the train. He was ravenous. He starts gorging on it, without sparing a thought as to which end he’s starting his meal from, not like it really matters.

The fiend smiles. He’s happy. That was some entry. He’ll win five Oscars for that.

Meanwhile in the background, I can hear “Puli…Puli…Puli”.

Oh, don’t worry, that just some thousand fans chanting my name. They do this all the time. They are just happy the master’s back. Let’s put on our cool sunglasses and smile at the crowds. These fans…. What would you do…..


“What’s the plan, Master?”. “What’s the plan?”. Shall we use the telephone lines to dry our underwear? Shall we tether a buffalo in the office parking lot? How about we wax that hairy sardar? Shall we ask the archbishop the way to the closest sleaze bar? Shall we pour ourselves one shot of whisky each and ask the traffic constable to judge who poured the perfect sixty? Shall we enter a night club through the fire escape?”

Suddenly everything goes quiet. The silence is deafening. Even the clouds have stopped sailing across the sky.

The fiend loses it. Slaps the guy who uttered the last idea,, I think it’s Madness, all that monkey meat must have done that to him. “Shall we enter a night club through the fire escape?” I have already done that! In true * Rajni style Insanity mutters, “Kannaa, you lack ‘origgi naality’. That’s not very original either, but the fiend hadn’t heard that joke before. He was enjoying his winter slumber remember.

(* Joke on the local radio. A comic depiction of Rajni Kanth, defines originality as Oru G = one joint of grass(G)/weed, and naal T = 4 teas.)

It takes a gifted person to see what I see. Just as spring bucks, after a long, cruel dry season, look yearningly towards to the sky and on watching storm clouds gather on the horizon, spring into the air in sheer delight, for the days of hardship are nearing to an end and the season of abundance is just around the corner, my fan club waits, nervous and impatient.

Are they ready? Can they handle it? One of them is so excited that he runs fast and sinks his head into the rear of a hippo. Another is tickling a crocodile. A third just pinched the one sitting next to him in the backside. A minute later his countenance took an international flavour as he had what looked like a maple leaf imprinted on his face. But he doesn’t mind, it’s all worth it, its nothing when compared to what the master has in store for them.

The steam engine races along the track, setting the old teak sleepers on fire, it’s rails white hot. The burning embers cast against the dark night gives it a very surreal look. And then, the engine leads into a tunnel and disappears without a trace.

Scientists at the space station frantically send panic messages to NASA. No sooner did they do that than there’s an explosion at space station. It goes up in ball of fire. A star gazer in some obscure land thinks points it out to his girlfriend as a shooting star, and asks her to make a wish. Too bad, he doesn’t see any action that night.

Back home in NASA, a message prints on the telegraph machine. A man rushes to read the message. The next moment his head explodes scattering grey matter all over the carpet. The telegram flutters as it lies glued to a chunk of grey matter covered in coagulating blood. It reads, “Puli is going to build a bicyle”.

The madness has begun.

The End.