Come on the Arnab!

“Are you saying this is not a victory for the people?” the bespectacled and suited man bellowed at the lady sitting inside a television. “I’m sensing some sour grapes here ma’am, I really am. Could it be that you’re not happy because someone else achieved something that you’ve wanted for a while?” The other humans in the room nodded sagely, while I crawled around on the speakers’ head. “I think,” began the lady he was talking to, but she was interrupted by a bald and sharp featured man, “No ma’am, I think you should answer the question. It’s only fair.” “I think…” the lady began again, only to be pulled up short once again. “Haan, bataiye na, aapke chehre pe muskaan kyon nahi hai? After all, it’s a day to celebrate!” said another man, sitting next to the bald one.

Usually, I don’t get myself involved in this sort of thing. Excited humans tend to behave very childishly, and that’s usually deadly to my kind. Keeping an eye on the humans, (and when your eye is half the size of your head, that means a lot), I began to clean my wings, waiting for the tea and biscuits that usually followed the show.

“I think,” began the lady, again, and then glared out of the television set, as the bespectacled man took this as his cue to interrupt. Perhaps this was some sort of ritual. Humans are so odd. “Look, this is the first time in many years that this has happened! The government has capitulated, how can you disagree?” “But I’m trying not to disagree!” she wailed. “That doesn’t matter,” the man bellowed in return. “You said this is not a complete and uncontested victory. What kind of cynic do you have to be to not think we’ve won, utterly and completely?”

“I think the problem here is,” a heavily bearded man, inside another television began, “is that some people are quite rightly asking what has been achieved. If you look at…”

I don’t understand what he said, but the bespectacled man sure took offence. He swelled like a bullfrog, and I hastily leapt to the air, looking for calmer resting grounds. The youngest man in the room looked like a good bet - he hadn’t moved around much, and wasn’t going to, it seemed, and that was enough for me. Keeping an eye out for the now wildly gesticulating four eyes (I know, I’m one to talk), I buzzed toward relative safety, wings moving overtime. Spittle is deadly when you’re my size. “…I mean, sure, you might have more experience than I do, and perhaps you’re more suited to analysis than me, but who’s chairing this debate? You or me? Me, right? Good, then I’m the final arbiter on everything that’s said here, and I say that you’re an unashamed cynic, and unpatriotic also. Just because history is on your side, just because the people who have promised to do what we ask are habitual liars, is no reason to disbelieve that this is an utter and complete victory! So you can just think about that, while I ask the other people here to agree with what I just said. You, sir,” he looked toward my present perch, “what do you think, am I right, or am I right? After all,” the decibel levels mercifully dropped, and he adopted a more grandfatherly tone, “we’re doing this for you, the youth of the nation. Any false sense of superiority I get out of this is purely a bonus, regardless of how I might make it seem. What do you think, young lad?”

Had I not been so utterly blown away by the volume and saliva, I might have noticed the young man’s hand as it swept toward me. The last thing I heard before darkness took me was the bearded man in the television muttering to himself. “Bloody moron. Last time I come on this show…”

Trifeck