Arathi Menon's Blog: Nothing Beastly About It, page 3

A Portrait of An Artist As A Young Pig

Sus loved to cuss. In equal measure he enjoyed being grumpy, disobliging, bad-tempered, mean and a perfect brute. He would stromp on the newly laid eggs of the hen, eat the apples meant for the horse, sit on the snoozing cat and roll on baby rabbits causing them to vomit their insides out. Yes, he was awful piggy who would burp on your face if you stood close enough.

When he was not being nasty he spent his time wondering how to be immortal. He knew he had to die and become pork chops, vindaloo, pulled pork, bacon, ham, tenderloin pulav, sausages and a million other succulent dishes but that wasn’t enough. He wanted to be revered for his brains.

After three weeks of fervent thinking he came to the conclusion that the only way to be unforgettable was to create art. The problem was he couldn’t draw, paint, sing, write or dance, but wait, he could shit and that too defecate giant loads of dung. Yes, that may be the answer.

He began his rigour the day after he had this creative epiphany. He chose a spot and every day, he would go there and pass motion in a particular way, at a certain angle, in a pre-determined area. The poop would harden with the sunlight into a particular design and the next day Sus would add another bit to this expanding universe. He had begun designing a seminal piece of installation art, which held in its being unimaginable genius.

Slowly, shapes began to form. What in the beginning looked like a mound of faeces began to suddenly have an identity. Mind-bending facades, strange inverted spheres, crisscrossing pathways, unidentifiable intense figurines, dizzying circinate structures – it was not one thing but a zillion odd elements that came together and created a galaxy of breathtaking complexity.

For the farm animals it was an immersive experience. They didn’t know what had happened but that hateful Sus had created something of such magnificence, it both overwhelmed and pacified them at the same time. This giganticism and excessive use of a single material had left all their senses reeling. Sus, true to his nature didn’t care a damn about what they thought. He was intent on making the most powerful work of art known to earth.

A week before he hit his preset weight (After which he would have been killed) Sus died suddenly while making a particularly labyrinthine optical feast. The cause of death was unknown. The farmhand who found him immediately called the boss, who promptly ordered for the pig to be cleaved according to the most popular cuts which were in high demand.

The farmhand got out his butchering knife, but first, he had to wash away that humungous mountain of excrement in which the dead pig lay. For some reason he couldn’t do so immediately. He stood in front of this groundbreaking oeuvre, marvelling at its sublime eloquence when suddenly the ‘sensible’ part of his brain demanded to know why he was staring at a pile of shite. Shaking off the inexplicable wonderment he felt, he hosed down the greatest installation art, the living world had ever seen.

Moral: There is no excuse not to create.



Tvika is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com

Don’t Shock Yourself

Let’s get this straight. Anguilli wasn’t an eel. She was a knifefish. Yes, yes she was called an electric eel but there was nothing eel-ee about her. Of course, her personality could be called electric. 

In fact, she was so electric she would give herself shocks. It was strange for none of the other eels could do this. It wasn’t just plain weird it was bloody painful. 

The first 20% of her body was composed of the vital parts essential for living. The rest of the 80% consisted of 6000 stacked electroplaques, which were capable of giving a 600 volt shock for a duration of two milliseconds. 

Now think of all of that targetted towards injuring yourself and not paralysing some bloody passing animal who was supposed to be food. 

Poor, poor Anguilli. She would happily be swimming when suddenly her tail would hit her backside and discharge a small volatge of pure electricity. Ouch. 

The others in her swarm would look at her and laugh their heads off. It was easy for them to wiggle, waggle, woggle their bodies in laughter as they had no bones.

Anguilli soon began swimming in a peculiar way. Imagine if you had to walk looking at your bum all the time. Wouldn’t that be tummy-splittingly funny? 

One day, Anguilli, was swimming in her crazy way, looking at her mutant tail with fear and trying to move forward, when she spotted a large caiman making its way towards her. Oh no! Though she hated her life, she didn’t want to be anybody’s lunch. 

She forgot about her tail, looked in front and began swimming as fast as she could. The caiman gave a good chase but Anguilli escaped by wiggling through some deep sea brambles. 

She looked back. The  caiman had stopped and was wondering why that eel had run off. Didn’t she know he ate only dead electric eels?

Anguilli oblivious to the fact that she had no natural predators began humming a song. It was so great to hoodwink those who were more powerful than you, when her heart almost stopped.

Her tail was touching her tummy but she wasn’t getting a shock. She wondered why. Had her body self-corrected itself? 

As she lay puzzling she spotted a tiny wooden bramble attached to her tail. It must have gotten caught while she was making her imaginary escape. 

Gently she shook it off. OUCH. That stupid tail gave her a shock again. That’s when the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Clunk. 

In top speed she dived down and found the bramble. She held it with her tail and cautiously touched her stomach. Nothing happened. The bramble had the power to diffuse her electricity. 

If Anguilli had gone to engineering college she would have known that wood is an insulator and it is impossible to conduct an electric current through it.

She didn’t care for the science of things, she was just glad she had stopped stinging herself. Now, everywhere she went, she made sure, a tiny piece of bramble was tucked in the curve of her tail.

Moral: We all have a design flaw.

Anguilli is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com

Blood Is Yummier Than Water

24 hours had passed and there was no sign of blood, not an ounce. Tvika knew she would last only another day and then it would be goodbye world, kaput life. As she flew, ravenous and weak, she spotted her friend Bonaparte. She increased her speed and on reaching the dear comrade, begged for a driblet. Bonaprate thought for exactly two seconds, wiggled his wings, regurgitated some old blood and fed it to Tvika. He knew this life-saving favour would be returned someday.

A few days passed and Tvika was again flying in the blackest of nights looking for a sleeping, warm-blooded mammal. She suddenly spotted a lovely little dog snoozing, probably thinking of some happy hunting grounds. Quiet, like a shadow, she swooped down, used her powers of thermoception and found out exactly where the blood ran under the fur.

She bit her victim and slurped the life-giving red. Her saliva ensured the flowing blood didn’t clot. She drank steadily for half an hour. Burp! The sleeping dog continued to lie. She looked at her blood bank affectionately when the creature next to the dog woke-up.

He was around six foot tall with no hair and Tvika’s thermoception told her this creature had blood running all over, right under its skin. What a great food source but Tvika was full. She idly wondered where she could find this creature again tomorrow.

The creature suddenly spotted her and began screaming. He took out two wooden sticks one horizontal and one vertical, tied with a string, a large pod of garlic and began to wave them in front of him, muttering strange, indecipherable, hysterical things. What a funny creature. Tvika suddenly had a thought. Was this creature trying to scare her off with these odd pieces?

Just to muck with the creature’s brain, she pretended to be terrified and flew off making frightened, batty noises. The creature seemed most pleased. He fell down on his knees and thanked the sky. The next day Tvika flew looking for man for that was what the creature was called.

She found one sleeping below a tree. Under his head were two similar pieces of stick and oddly enough, a pod of garlic. She began to suck greedily on the man’s bubbling blood.

The man woke up and on seeing Tvika’s toes clinging onto the skin of his neck, he began to wave the stick around, blubbering in horror. Tvika ignored him. To stay alive, she had to sip blood for another fifteen minutes. The petrified man tried waving the garlic pod in front of her nose. Just for a change, Tvika took a bite of the garlic and continued supping. Wow! It added so much flavour. Is that why this odd creature was waving it at her?

Tvika finished her dinner and flew away. The man didn’t realise the vampire bat had gone. He was lying inert on the ground having fainted from sheer fright.

Moral: You can’t ward off evil

Tvika is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com

Landing Kills (Not Flying)

Aquila spread her 2.5 metre long wings and glided in a smooth semi circle across the vast expanse of the sky in one fluid motion. You could hear the silence of an unruffled wind in her symmetry. The rest of the animal kingdom arched their necks up and looked in envy at this artist of air. A few of them sighed, ‘If only …’

Suddenly, Aquila perched on a nearby oak and announced she would be teaching a few select animals to fly, every day. The denizens of the tress and the lands gasped. This was the one dream all these earth bound creatures secretly harboured. To fly, free like a bird.

Immediately, the animals started queueing up. Aquila flew over the line, which was longer than the river flowing through the forest and gave each one of them a date. On The first day, a slithery, red and yellow snake was the chosen one.

The others watched with an unadulterated jealousy as Aquila took the snake up to the nest on her cliff, its tail curling and uncurling beside drifting clouds. Snakey was a bit scared when Aquila’s talons held him but he calmed down after doing the breathing exercises the monkey taught him.

Aquila smiled at Snakey. ‘Are you ready for the ride of your life?’ The snake nodded his neckless head, his eyes shining with the thrill of what was to be. Down below, he could see his friends. He wished he had hands. He could wave out or even blow them a kiss.

In a swift swoop, Aquila flew behind the cliff and dropped him, midair. He began falling at an alarming 1000 metres per second. Before he could even hum the first few bars of ‘I believe I can fly’, his head hit the rock below and splattered. Calmly, the hungry eagle flew down and ate him up.

In this way Aquila began systematically reducing the forest population and filling her tummy without the extra effort of a chase. When animals enquired about why the critters who signed-up for flying class could never be spotted, Aquila sneered ‘You think they will stay here? They have all flown away to a better jungle’.

They nodded, ‘True, who would want to stay here?’ They promised themselves when they learnt to fly they would vamoose too. A few months after the classes began it was the turn of Ratufa, the squirrel.

Aquila rose higher and higher with the doomed squirrel. When she flew behind the cliff, much to her surprise, Ratufa, quickly and viciously bit into her foot, severing it completely.

She lost her balance and began crashing down. Ratufa quickly leaped and clung on to her wings. This immediately lowered his terminal velocity, increased air resistance and the wings began to function like a well-designed parachute.

Eagle and squirrel floated down to those very same rocks where she had thrown innumerable creatures to death. Ratufa looked at his flying instructor, bleeding to death and chuckled.

Before she went forever, she heard Ratufa whistle and saw hundreds of other squirrels from the neighbouring trees, leaping down, chattering savagely, all eager to try eagle meat for the first time.

Moral: if you can think of an evil thought, somebody else can think it too.



Aquila and Ratufa are drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com

The Poison In My Bum

‘I have what?’, thundered Vaejovis. His friend nodded. Yes, he had a dangerous venom in his bum, which he could use to kill his prey. ‘What if I sting myself?’ squeaked Vaejovis with all the drama of a diva. His friend sniggered. Our kind never sting themselves.

Vaejovis wasn’t convinced. He crawled under his rock that night and was too scared to sleep. What if, in his dreams, he was chasing a big, fat, juicy spider and he tried to strike it but instead, in real life, he pierced his head. Would he be paralysed for life? Would he die in the physical world or in the dream one?

He couldn’t sleep the whole night. Finally, when the sun sprung up, he began nodding off in sheer tiredness. He woke up to a midday heat with a large headache and a mild anger. He couldn’t believe the powers, which designed him. How could they be so stupid? Who puts a poisonous sac in a living thing?

He fretted and fumed and was about to tie himself in knots with worry, when he remembered he had to meet a cutie behind the log on the grass. He slowly began to crawl towards her. Mostly, on a first date, he used to take a bit of chewed-up bug body part but today he didn’t feel like doing anything special.

She was waiting, sunning her perfect body on a rock. He sighed, so pretty. They got talking, he forgot about his worries, soon one thing led to another and they were sharing a cheliceral kiss, when suddenly, he leaped back.

The scorpio-gurl was frightened, ‘What’s the matter?’ She didn’t think she was that bad a kisser. Vaejovis pointed at her telson and squawked in a quivering voice ‘You have poison there’. ‘Naturally’ she snorted, ‘I’m a scorpion, just like you’.

Vaejovis couldn’t explain his horror. He ran away. Her voice followed; angry, mean, unforgiving. ‘What an idiot!’. He reached his rock, breathless and unsure about what to do next. He knew all scorpions had venom in them and they all lived with it, without any fear. Why was he scared? Where did this anxiety come from?

He looked at the setting sun and knew he couldn’t sleep another night. He wasn’t scared of death, it was just the thought of that paralysing poison entering his body that gave him the heebie-jeebies. With these jitters he could never have a normal life. With a heavy heart he made his decision.

There was nobody to say goodbye to. At least, if he had mated with cutie, there would have been a few babies who missed him. He lifted his tail high, heroically and struck himself. Once, twice, thrice …five times. Nothing happened.

He was shocked. Maybe the designers who created him weren’t that bad. They had made sure he was immune to his own poison. When morning came, he took a half bitten cricket and ran to find a cutie whose poison he could love.

Moral: We all have a little venom inside us.



Vaejovis is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com

The Ugly Duckling Who Turned Into A Duck

You shouldn’t say this but Anatra was distinctively ugly even for a duckling. There was something about her that was a bit off. You couldn’t pinpoint what exactly but when you looked at her, you knew the god of beauty had skipped this one.

The worst part was Anatra knew it too. Nobody knows how. She used to look so depressed about her looks that Mumma Duck decided to do something. She told Anatra the story of The Ugly Duckling, how the ugliest duckling in the world had turned into the most beautiful swan.

Anatra loved the story and she often chanted it to herself, unaware that ducks never change into swans. Poor, poor Anatra , she would waddle around talking about how one day she would be the most stunning swan around.

She would wax eloquent about how the breadth of her bill would widen to perfection and how her pectines would boast of a finesse found in brush strokes. She dreamt of the day when her scaled legs developed powerful swimming muscles. She would often look at her reflection and imagine her short, pointed wings becoming more glossy and gorgeous. In her head Anatra knew exactly what it took to be beautiful.

She would often not eat an extra mollusc, proclaiming when she turned into a swan, she didn’t want to be saddled with any extra weight. In this way ten years passed – the long wait to turn into a beauty. Without her even realising Anatra had become a fully grown duck.

Her Mumma was very worried. How long would Anatra wait? Any sort of advice about getting on with life and not bothering about her looks would fall on deaf ears, water off a duck’s back. It’s not that she would back answer rudely, instead she would begin telling her Mumma The Ugly Duckling story all over again. Her Mumma hated that story.

One day, the usually quiet Papa Duck came and whispered something into Mumma’s ear. Mumma immediately brightened up. The next day, Papa swam up to Anatra and said, ‘What did you do to yourself? Your feathers are glowing like the sun.’

Immediately a nearby drake whistled appreciatively. A worm swam past at a safe distance and hollered ‘What a gorgeous beak, I wouldn’t mind being eaten by it’. Anatra’s heart hammered wildly, she couldn’t help preening. It had happened. It had really happened. She had turned into a swan.

She looked down at her reflection in the water. Usually, she saw a sullen face, which looked hideous from every angle. This time, she took in her sparkling eyes, flushed colouring and the brilliance of her excitement. Together, it made her the best looking duck around.

The drakes immediately sensed a siren had arrived in their neck of the pool and they swam with a determined air of courtship. Each one of them wanted to win the heart of this cutie. Anatra glowed in happiness. Her ugly duckling story had finally come true.

Moral: Compliments work. Use them.



Anatra is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com

My Best Friend

Grampus was an apex predator, which basically means nobody would try to kill him. Nobody would dare, he was 30 feet long and weighed 9.8 long tons. He was, in fact, very proud of being the heaviest orca around and had never gone on a diet his entire life. If you suggested one to him, he would probably eat you.

His humungous size didn’t stop his pod from teasing Grampus. It all began when Grampus was a baby. He was two months old and swimming along the Norwegian coast with his Mama, when he came across the cutest little fish.

He still wasn’t interested in them as food as his Mama’s milk was way tastier. While his mom gorged on Clupea’s family, he made polite talk. Clupea didn’t really register the carnage around her. She had never met such an interesting orca before and being a baby herself didn’t know the boundaries that separated prey and predator.

After Mama had her fill, she turned around and saw her darling little son talking to a herring, who was now the only one left of her school. She decided in a gush of maternal generosity to let the little thing live. After all, Grampus was an only child and could do with a friend.

Herring and killer whale swam across many waters giggling, goofing around and basically having a whale of a time. It was really funny to see that wee 10cm thing swim close to the head of her gigantic 7.9 feet long friend. The rest of the pod thought it was hilarious but mama’s snarling teeth ensured nobody ragged li’ll Grampus about his odd taste in friends.

For a year these two babies spoke about things creatures so new to the universe talk about and lived an idyllic life. When Mama began weaning Grampus off, she shooed Clupea into a passing school of herrings. After they parted, for days they were sad in their respective waters missing each other’s company, the phantom pain of an amputated limb.

Another year passed and Grampus had grown into an excellent killer whale, eating 5 percent of his body weight every day. Whenever he ate a bunch of herring, he always thought of Clupea. He still remembered her jokes and how she was the only one in the world who would call him Grau.

One particular summer, Grampus’s pod was going about their daily business of attacking and living up to their killer whale fame, when a huge shoal of herrings passed by. Grampus immediately released a bunch of bubbles and flashed them with his white underside, scaring their fins off.

As the frightened herrings curled into a tight ball, he slapped them with his tale fluke stunning 15 fish at one go. In the split second all this happened, a tiny voice cried out ‘Grau, Grau, it’s me’.

Grampus stopped his attack immediately but it was too late. His sweet Clupea was floating down his throat enroute to being turned into protein. He swam away from the rest of that excellent kill, his hunger forgotten. He knew he would never eat another herring again.

Moral: When you eat your friend, a part of you dies.



Grampus and Clupea are drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com

Born To Connect The Dots

Nine days after that difficult delivery under the rock, Theria knew she had given birth to a weirdo. The cubs had just opened their eyes. Three perfect little creatures, hungry as hell. As Theria licked them one by one, she saw the tiniest one, Pardus, looking at her with an intensity, which at first, slightly alarmed her.

On reassuring herself she was 91 kgs and 6.2 feet long while this puny thing was 500 grams and 30 inches, she calmed down and offered him a teat. She never forgot that look though and it was something she would get to know intimately. Those strange, staring, unblinking eyes would follow her for the next fifteen years as if they were finding the secrets of the universe in her anatomy.

Pardus didn’t know the cause of his compulsion. As soon as he opened his eyes, he had spotted Mama’s rosettes (spots for the scientifically challenged) and a tiny part of his brain began connecting one rosette to another to make imaginary shapes. In the beginning he made simple things, teats, tiny rodents, dung beetles, a paw with an unsheathed claw. He could see his world reflected on his Mama’s skin.

He had tried looking at the flower-like patterns of his brother and sister but nothing happened. It was only his Mama’s spots that compelled him to connect the dots. As he got to know the world more he began making all kinds of shapes with her rosettes . A plane flying through a multi-spiralled cloud, an eland’s digestive tract clawed out, the sharp canines of a baboon framed by a roaring, powerful jaw. Every day, he would make as many shapes as he could, compulsively, obsessively, passionately.

Nobody realised this inner workings of his mind and neither did he communicate what was going on in a few well articulated barks. To the rest of the animal kingdom (including blood relatives), he looked like an idiot who seemed to be staring at his Mama’s skin all the time, with a slightly daft look, as if he was half in this world and half in another.

In the beginning Mama tried giving him a whack with her paw telling him staring was bad manners but no matter what she did or how much she growled, he would keep looking intensely at her. Soon she got used to it and began ignoring him. His gaze become one of the things in her natural world, like the dream murmurs of monkeys or the smell of an unwashed bat flying at night.

After fifteen years of being looked at, one day, Mama keeled over and died. Pardus waited for the hyenas to come and eat her insides. Soon, all that was left of Mama was her skin and a few bones glistening in their emptiness.

Pardus dragged Mama’s coat up a tree and hung it on a twig. Then he sprawled on a branch just above, looked down at Mama’s rosettes gently swinging to and fro in the wind and started making more and more fantastical shapes in his head.

Moral: Everything doesn’t need an explanation



Theria and Pardus are drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com

Words Are All I Got

The moon decided it was time to visit the sky. That silly sun had taken an eternity going down, it almost wondered whether it had missed a shift. As it rose above and its silver light poured on creatures big and small, a tiny wingless insect chewed a longish word ‘egregious’. She gave a small burp after the second e and thought what an outstanding word this was to snack on.

She nibbled steadily for a few hours and finally managed to finish a page. The page was also a chapter end. Lepisma loved it when that happened for it meant the next day she could start on a new one. There was something exciting about biting the beginning of a story. It felt so fresh and untouched.

Lepisma, the silverfish was very particular about what she tucked into. She didn’t like Shakespeare too much. There were only that many ‘Thous, thees and thys’ she could stomach. She adored cartoon books and would very often gnaw along the line of the cartoon, her mouth taking the exact path as the artist’s pen. There was something reassuring about creation and destruction being on the same route.

Her tastes varied from book to book. Hardbacks had the yummiest glue, eating Kafka wasn’t fun for she always wondered whether she had actually eaten that meal, reducing Ted Hughes’ lions, elephants and jaguars into pulp in her mouth made her feel so strong, Julian Barnes was a bit too dysfunctional but with Donna Tartt she just couldn’t stop munching. What crazy plots her books had.

In her life she had travelled to two libraries through books. The first one was where she was born. This library had only memoirs and biographies. She ate so many lives of great people she was sick to death of them. Luckily for her, the next library had a more eclectic selection. It was a gigantic buffet. Crime thrillers, love stories, poetry, comics, humour, urban novels nudged each other in a random disorder. It had every single genre she could think of (Including potty fiction).

One day when she was devouring a particularly nasty passage on a killer sticking the soles of his victim’s feet onto his with super glue, she felt herself being carried. Oh what fun, she was going to travel to a new library. She wondered what kind of collection this one would have. She prayed for some graphic novels and a few more books by that Banville guy. He used the most interesting words.

After what seemed like hours she stopped moving. She waited for night and then cautiously crawled out. What a lovely library. From top to bottom it was filled with tomes, hardbound in leather on walnut wood shelves attached to movable ladders. There was a plush sofa close-by. She salivated at the feast she was about to have in this posh setting.

She quickly crawled into one of the books. Ouch, ouch, ouch, what was this? There were no words, only some bumpy raised dots. She squirmed and twisted, the bumps kept poking her. She tried crawling out but it was like moving through the jaws of a crocodile. She kept getting scratched and bruised. As she wiggled and squiggled one particularly nasty dot-bump tore her back and she died on the spot.

The next morning Lord Reader felt around for a book and picked the one in which Lepisma had breathed her last. As his fingers ran over the words in braille, he chuckled at what was written. This author was really funny.

Moral: Words can break your spine.



Lepisma is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com

No Maternity Leave For Edible Parts

Cruelty can seem normal if you are used to it. Characidae, even though she was just a month old had a vicious, unscrupulously wicked streak. While all young piranhas were encouraged to be cannibalistic to sharpen their skills, Characidae took particular pleasure in choosing the victims on whom her shoal of baby fish could practise their famous from-meat-to-bone-in-five-seconds feat.

She would encourage little, gullible piranhas to point out their mama or papa or uncle and then, the whole school would go after them. The last thing the little baby would see was the horror of being betrayed in the eyes of its relative. For days later he or she could feel that horribly uneasy guilt of patricide, matricide or avunculicide and it would look at Characidae with a deep forming hate in its eyes, which would harden into the softness of their skins like an unforgettable wart of memory.

Characidae didn’t care a damn. Each shoal consisted of 5000 members. There were enough enthusiastic little piranhas dying to tear apart their kith and kin. She liked this messing of minds more than the mangling of bodies. How their wee eyes would widen at the thought of ripping apart the creature that gave birth to them. How they would try to squash the naturally surfacing revulsion at this indecent suggestion. And later she would watch the guilty ones, swimming listlessly, in a state of constant joylessness, seeped in the shame of having been led to do what was unwanted.

One day, Characidae without even realising it, followed the powerful command of her biological clock and laid several thousand eggs near a few Amazon swords. She had finally changed from baby to adult. A male, immediately seized the chance and fertilised the glistening eggs. Soon both of them began circling their fecund cluster, guarding them from predators, keeping a constant vigil, not sleeping or eating for three whole days.

As the fourth day dawned, thousands of baby piranhas emerged as the proud parents watched joyfully. A member of the shoal (He had been instigated to kill a beloved mother, who liked to crack naughty octopus jokes) suddenly looked at the baby piranhas and said,’Go eat your parents, practise your skill’. In a rare act of unity the entire fleet began chanting’Eat them, eat them, eat them’. The poor babies, they had just come into the world and they followed these instructions blindly. The male fervently wished he had chosen a different mate.

They swam up to their parents eagerly, hungrily. Their single row of sharp teeth on either jaws caught the parental flesh and ripped it apart with precision. Soon only the skeletons of mummy and daddy were left. The bones sunk to the ocean floor and got lost amidst a carpet of disintegrating coral.

The baby fish felt no guilt for they weren’t even old enough to understand what it meant to have parents. As for Characidae, nobody missed her and that entire year the piranhas didn’t eat each other.

Moral: Growing-up may be injurious to health.



Characidae is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com