Arathi Menon's Blog: Nothing Beastly About It, page 5

Telling Tales To The Wind

The mole is a unit of measurement, which is defined thus: the mass of substance containing the same number of fundamental units as there are atoms in exactly 12.000g of carbon. We are not talking about this mole though. Our mole has velvety fur, extra thumbs, inconspicuous ears and powerful paws that like to dig.

She was happiest when she was unearthing stories along with mud, earthworms, small invertebrates and the occasional beetle. Mullvad, for that is her name was a born storyteller. Perhaps it had something to do with living underground. That dark place where no light came. She began her first story as an experiment. It happened when her venom struck the 672nd earthworm, incapacitating it into an immobile mass. On impulse, she created a story about a little earthworm, who lay paralysed in the mole larder, developing a deep and unfulfilled friendship with the other paralysed worms.

It wasn’t a happy story. All of Mullvad’s stories had a tinge of sadness. A spider who got allergic to his web, a stone that lost its way in the mud and could never come back, a berry, which hated its centre. She would make up small, strange tales. She didn’t know why she did this but it gave her the deepest happiness possible, even deeper than the hollows she dug.

Six years and 700 stories later Mullvad died peacefully, while composing a story about a distant star that landed on a grumpy mole’s nose. She never had any artistic angst about composing stories, which nobody would ever know. About fame coming late, when she was no more there to receive her. She was just grateful to have been able to be a storyteller.

This story, however, doesn’t end here. The seeds in the mud, where Mullvad would speak her stories, grew up to be mighty big trees with more leaves than anybody could count. Each bit of the gigantic trees had captured Mullvad’s stories and now every part of them, the leaf, the stem, the branches, the trunk, the roots, the xylem, the phloem carried the stories in their being.

When the wind would blow, the leaves would whisper the stories to the breeze and the air would carry her stories further than she had ever been. Even today, if you pass a tree with large leaves, listen closely. You will hear the leaves speak a Mullvad story softly. It could be about anything, even about your life.

Moral: You don’t need an audience to do what makes you happy.

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

May I Interrupt Your Life?

Imagine if your whole life is about being born, mating, chewing a tunnel of escape for your lady love and then dying without a single taste of the outside world. Aagaon didn’t mind the mating bit. It seemed natural, quick and over. What was disgusting was the chewing through all that fig and that too not for himself but some chick he had just met once.

Aagaon was the first fig wasp in the history of wasps (and figs) to have developed a distaste for figs. You couldn’t blame the fruit though. Poor figgy things, they were technically inverted flowers and could only be pollinated from the inside. They relied on the female wasp who was born inside them to take their pollen outside who in turn relied on a male wasp to tunnel her out (always a bad idea).

The female wasp who was Aagaon’s mate looked at him and thought what a sharp-toothed, wingless whiner he was. Once his duties were done, he was supposed to quietly die in the fig, getting digested by plant matter and adding to its sweet, chewy crispness. Instead, here he was loudly mumbling about not wanting to die and become fruit.

Before either of them could have a lover’s tiff a premature knife cut through the fruit splitting the fig and Aagaon’s mate into two. An unripe fruit is an inedible one and the knife wandered away looking for riper victims.

Meanwhile Aagaon, perched precariously on half a fig sat blinking at the sweetness of sunshine. He had never seen it before. Its dazzling light danced before his eyes and unveiled a world of colours for him. What an amazing place. Why were his species forced to live in the darkness of fig flesh? Why were only the females gifted the freedom to explore this dizzily exciting carnival of life?

He fumed for a second at the injustice but the beauty of what was on offer sucked away at his negativity, leaving behind a grateful heart unable to bear so much happiness. He saw the other female fig wasps flying around, doing the bizzy things they were supposed to do. He didn’t have wings and couldn’t fly. He didn’t mind. He just sat on half a fig watching everything. In some time, the sun set and still he looked and still the wonder grew.

A new day arrived and he saw how light changed the world. He nibbled weakly at a little bit of the fig. It still tasted disgusting. Ugh. He knew he was going to die. This knowledge didn’t kill him. He was, after all, the first fig wasp in 34 million years to get a taste of the outside world.

Moral: The unexpected knife may be the welcome break



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

An Edible Age

It was that time when animals who eat little animals crawled out of their caves and hunted the weak with a ferocious appetite. Tlv-da-tsi looked up at the circular moon and stuck out her tongue at it. If she could she would pounce on that bright orb and gobble it along with today’s daily dose of raccoons. The damn thing when it decided to shine full power always gave away her position, helping her prey flee, lengthening their lifespan and shortening hers.

She noted with grim approval the moon didn’t stick out its tongue at her. Good, it better behave. Tlv-da-tsi suddenly stopped fooling around. She had heard a twig snap. She stood alert for a few minutes listening. It was a little hare who had decided to nibble some grass before popping off to bed.

Pounce. Before the gobble, the hare pleaded, ‘You are a cougar, you are supposed to eat animals younger than you. I am an ancient hare already past my 6th summer.’ Tlv-da-tsi paused.Yes, she too had heard cougars prey on younger animals. Damn, she had just turned five this February. She retracted her claws (four claws and one dewclaw). The hare ran faster than the moonlight that had begun to stroke the leaves.

Tlv-da-tsi wandered a little more and she came across a porcupine. Though a bit pokey to eat, the flesh when you finally got to it was always yum. Especially if the creature had eaten a stomach full of raspberry canes (Gamy meat tastes better with a splash of sour). She pounced. The porcupine squealed, ‘I am 14 you can’t eat me. Find someone younger.’. Word had gone around on how to avoid getting eaten by a hungry cougar.

The capybara claimed to be a questionable eight years old (though its average lifespan was 4), the mice marmots claimed to be twenty-two (their skin did look terrible), the mule deer said it had just hit twenty and was going through a midlife crisis, even the damn grasshopper declared it was eighteen and could now vote in the jungle elections.

Tlv-da-tsi began to wonder whether it was the youngest animal around. To add to this frustrating age scenario she was starved, so starved she couldn’t remember her age. Just then she saw a grandfather coyote, old and wrinkled he had come to die on a rock.

She looked around. Nobody was looking. Tlv-da-tsi leapt 30 feet, on to the coyote’s back, held the struggling coyote with her sharp claws and bit into his neck. The animal died immediately. Tlv-da-tsi chewed on the ancient meat that had lost its vim and elasticity. She didn’t notice. It was a fantastic, succulent, luscious hunger-pleaser.

Moral: If yummy, age no bar.



Tlv-da-tsi and mister mule deer are drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com

How Much Does Your Love Weigh?

The yummiest food is found 240 feet underwater and Enhydra knew that. She dived down with the sure confidence of a deep sea diver with an oxygen tank strapped on and found the fleshiest octopus going on a stroll.

With a deft paw, she tucked it into the loose flaps of her armpit and made her way back to the surface. There, she rolled on her back and with her paws facing the sun ate the struggling octopus completely. Slurp.

Enhydra was the prettiest sea otter around. All the other boy otters knew she was the beauty of their romp. Unfortunately, she knew that too. Every day they would try to woo her. They brought her food, beautiful sea shells, corals that sparkled more than flowers and one of them even made her a giant heart out of some kelp.

As she surveyed her choice of males she kept chewing. She had to make sure she wouldn’t lose a single kilo of her 30 kgs. Sea otters prefer their ladies a bit heavy. The aspiring mates watched their lady love demolish another species of snails. She looked so cute chewing their heads off. They begged her to decide who the lucky guy will be. She yawned, popping another snail into her mouth, she said she would choose tomorrow.

Lutris heaved a sigh of relief. This meant he had another 12 hours to think of something spectacular. He had fallen for her a month ago and was slowly but surely making his plans on how to win her fickle heart. In that time, Enhydra had turned into a beauty and all the other otters began to get interested in her. Those dogs. It wasn’t just her weight, her pelage was riveting too. An almost black with silver-grey speckles. Sigh! He was so sure she was his soulmate. He had never expected competition and he had just got her five clams, arranged in the shape of a flower. He thought that was sweet but when he saw the tremendous effort the others had put into their gifts, he didn’t stand a chance. He hated all of them especially that installation artist who could do fancy-schmancy things with kelp.

The whole night he swam in the water, under the moonlight thinking. Morning began to make its way into the next day, he still didn’t have a single clear romantic idea. Just as most of his hope began to get dissolved in the water he saw a mama otter licking her pup, lying on her belly, happy to be stroked by another tongue.

Holy crustacean! He had his idea. As the other otters waited fiddling their whiskers for Enhydra to finally decide, Lutris pushed his way through, flopped on his back and invited her to step on him. Her eyes became bigger than her vanity. She had of course ridden on otter-belly when she was a kid, but now, with 30 kgs of meat in her?

Why not, thought the beauty. If he can’t bear me, I won’t sink, I’ll swim away, far away from him. She placed a dainty paw gingerly on Lutris’s stomach. The breath in him almost got whipped out but he took it like a man. Slowly, with great caution he began to move his feet and they were off. They went on a lovely long ride together, he being the boat and she the passenger.

Needless to say by the time they returned they were deeply into each other. They reached their holt unaware of the cloud of disappointment that hung over the other suitors. She jumped off his belly, her eyes still locked into his. He reached up and bit her nose. She giggled. Yes, it was love.

Moral: The heavier the love, the lighter it will feel.

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

Owlasana

Strigee’s forward facing, sclerotic rings held eyes blinked twice. The sun was squirrelling up the sky and it was time to do his Surya Namaskar. With immense concentration he completed the 12 yogic poses required to perform one set of Surya Namaskar. He didn’t stop there. He began on his second set, this time starting with his left wing instead of the right. He would continue this rhythm for another 100 sets. The other owls sniggered watching him. Then, they quickly shut their three eyelids and went to sleep as the world woke-up.

Strigee, contrary to popular myth, could see during the day but the sunlight was harsh and hurt his iris. It didn’t stop him from doing his yogasana. He just did them with his eyes closed. After he was done with the Surya Namaskar he would move on to the Tadasana.

He would stand still like a mountain aligning his body to its centre. This would improve his respiration, digestion, circulation and help his internal organs to function more efficiently. It would also strengthen the 14 vertebrae on his neck. Occasionally, if he felt bored doing the Tadasana, he would shape his body like a boat, balance precariously tree branch he was perched on and do the Navasana.

This was supposed to improve his digestion but Strigee didn’t really need that. He had given up eating. During the day he couldn’t see very well and at night when he could, he wanted to sleep to wake up in time to do his Surya Namaskar. Like the ancient yogis in the towering Himalayas he had learnt to live on fresh air and deep meditation.

The other owls tried their best to co-opt him, to get him to be like them but the Navasana also improved his confidence and he refused to follow their path. Soon they gave up, waking up every night to marvel at his good health and still thriving life in spite of not having had a rat in months.

At night, while sleeping Strigee would do the Sirasana. As he stood on his head, the blood flowed into his brain improving its circulation and calming his desires. It soothed his tense nervous system, which was urging him to fly, to follow the path nature had ordained for him. It also removed the fatigue from his body that starvation brought. The next morning when he woke up, he had the youth of a new born owlet.

One night when he had reached the stage of delta sleep, a sound infiltrated his almost dreamless trance. He heard from somewhere faraway, disturbing noises, thud, thud, thud. Reluctantly and with great effort he opened his eyes and twisted his head an effortless 270 degrees.

Behind him, his owl friends fell from the sky, mid-flight, some of them still clutching a squealing rat. He spread his wings and flew down to inspect their inert bodies. They were all dead. For the first time in ages he didn’t sleep at night and awaited the break of dawn.  

As the sun began its morning rise as if tugged by an invisible pulley, he overheard the bossy eagle warn her mate. ‘Do not touch the rats, they’ve all been sprayed with rat poison’. He was now the only owl still alive in the forest. He began doing his first Surya Namskar with the equanimity of a yogi, as his parliament lay dead on the tree floor.

Moral: Being different can save your life



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

The Destruction Of You

Azandica roared majestically. Any living thing, in a 8 kilometre radius quivered with fear and wished it was dead or eaten. The grasslands were tired of him. After being thrown out of the pride (he was eating too much) Azandica travelled for three days and nights. Finally, he reached a place where he could smell no lion. He roared claiming this territory as his.

He slept for ten hours straight. After this refreshing slumber he woke up and began eating. He ate continuously, pausing only for four hours every day to sleep. The first things to go were the wildbeast. They were all eaten up in a matter of three weeks.

Chewing continuously, Azandica systematically eradicated the population of zebras, buffaloes, warthogs, nilgai, wild boar and 40 species of lizards from the region. None of the animals could understand why he was eating so much. They wondered why it never showed on his body (not an ounce of fat did he gain) and why he went on such a rampage, destroying the finely balanced ecosystem of their home.

Even the birds weren’t spared. He would wait for one of them to land unsuspectingly on a branch. Just as it began to relax and contemplate the colour of the sky he would open his mouth wide enclose the entire bird in it. Birdie would die of asphyxia without uttering a single panic-stricken cheep.

Once he finished eating all the animals with the names we know, he began killing and devouring wildlife with strange names – the kudu, hartebeest, gemsbok, eland and springbok.

Soon there was nothing for Azandica to eat except some grass. He tried eating a mouthful but spat it out immediately unable to comprehend why any intelligent thinking animal would eat vegetarian gook.

He looked around hopefully. There was nothing stirring except for the plant life. For a second he almost wished he hadn’t eaten everything in sight. Then he spotted his giant paw, which helped him run 56 kilometres an hour. The pads of it were extremely soft, like the tongue of a giraffe. He decided to give it a shot.

He began chewing his paw. Not bad at all. He moved on to his leg and slowly, one by one, he ate all his four limbs. Then, he began attacking his body from the back. His beautiful tail with its cute little tuft at the end was swallowed in one go.

His rump, back, sides, abdomen and underbelly followed. His head was a bit problematic. The magnificent mane surrounding it choked him a bit but he persisted. Soon he ate through. He took a break to cough out some hairballs and gobbled his eyes, ears, nose, cheeks, whiskers and the flesh around his mouth.

All that was now left were his 30 strong, sharp teeth, including the large piercing canines, which grabbed and killed, the scissor-like molars, which sliced the flesh and the small incisors that scraped the meat from the bone.

They clacked together loudly in this land, where no living animals could be found. They seemed to still be hungry and still demanding more food.

Moral:: Even if you try, you can’t destroy all of you.



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

The Beauty of Ugliness

Pinyin kept chewing. When you have to eat 20 Kgs of bamboo a day to survive, it’s a good idea to keep those cheek muscles moving. She was also thinking hard. The forests of Gansu had decided to hold a beauty contest and she was desperate to take part.

She had looked at her reflection in the water that morning, one tubby hand placed on a wholesome hip and she had to say she was a knockout. With the help of her modified sesamoid bone (thumb to the unscientific) she plucked a bamboo flower and placed it fetchingly behind her black ear. Awww, pwreetee. Then she marched to register for the contest.

A wren who was taking entries tittered when Pinyin gave her name. Pinyin was so outraged, she demanded an immediate explanation for the mocking. The wren, who had a Chinese-British accent, in haughty tones told her in the history of the world nobody with dark circles had ever won a a beauty pageant.

Pinyin had a stubborn streak. You would too, if all you did was eat one type of food 16 hours a day. She knew what sticking to plan meant. She ignored the wren and walked off haughtily, swaying her hips in that enchanting beauty queen way.

Once she was out of sight she began to bawl. After the tears subsided, she looked at the two large tear-shaped black circles around her eyes and wondered how to make it white. She tried crushing the white petals of a Paeonia Rockii and smeared it around her eyes. Nothing happened. She got an itch and the jet black of her fur peered inconsiderately, behind the mutilated petals.

Then she tried pulling her white fur (Ow, Ow, Ow) and sticking it with forest sap onto the black circles around her eyes. It hung in clumps and she looked like she had an acute attack of mange. She washed her face in the clear running stream and looked at her beautiful self.

The wren must be a bird brain she thought darkly, for why else would it think this sweet, charming, friendly face looked ugly. Yes, this panda was a Leo with an Aries ascendant and had no self esteem issues whatsoever. She stared some more at her gorgeous self, huffed twice, barked thrice, growled four times and made her decision.

She would take part in the beauty pageant with her dark circles. Not only that, she would accentuate her circles and make them the most striking feature of her face. She found a bit of burnt wood and smeared the coal on her dark rings, deepening it into a blackness found only at night in bat caves.

The pageant had begun and the animals were gliding past the judges, their gait trying to be graceful and glamorous. Pinyin lumbered over and stood in front of them. A Nodding Lilac was behind her ear and her eyes glittered from their dark orbs. There was something stunning about this contrast in black and white.

Her winning answer is still a legend in the Gansu forest -’A panda symbolises peace for we have the yin and yang in us. The black and the white are contrasts, which co-exist in harmony, in beauty’. As she sashayed away with the trophy (A cluster of bamboo shoots) the judgemental wren hid its face in its quivering wing.

Moral: Accentuate your ugliness to make it beautiful



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

Surviving Humans

Bzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzz, bzzzzzz, Mansonia did a few somersaults near a brown, rather dirty ear before piercing her proboscis into the nearby neck. Blood, sweet blood. Delicious mouthfuls of never ending blood. Life was glorious till a shadow of the hand loomed over her, threatening to swat away her existence,

She flew off leaving behind only an itch. The human cursed. He had tried everything to rid his house of these ectoparasites. Nothing seemed to have worked.

The coil he burnt had choked off a sizeable population of the mosquitoes (and his grand aunt who suffered from asthma) but the next generation had evolved to be coil resistant.

He tried installing a bizzing frequency, which was supposed to irritate all six parts of a mosquito’s mouth simultaneously. It worked for two weeks. In that time they learnt to love the sound and probably even created operas with the zzings.

He sprayed the dreaded DDT, a lethal nerve poison all over the house. In the process he killed his beloved butterflies, earthworms and moths. The end result? His little creatures died and the mosquito became the first living thing in the world to develop a resistance to DDT.

Someone had told him that keeping a lemon grass plant at home prevented these bloodsuckers from inviting themselves in. He gave it a shot. The pesky creatures danced with the lemongrass leaves, waiting for him to sleep.

He had almost given up hope and was looking at a life of constant bites, itches and impotent slaps, when the still-grieving granduncle as an early birthday present gifted him a bright yellow mosquito killer racquet. Charged with electricity, all he had to do was wave it in the general direction of the mosquis and they’d get electrocuted to death. The frying noise, which the racquet emitted, when it hit a mosqui was perhaps the sweetest sound he had ever heard. And that beautiful, crisp fried aroma of mosquito bodies charred to death promised him a night of uninterrupted sleep.

The mosquitoes were puzzled. They tried changing their DNA, their partners, their timings but no matter what they did, they couldn’t be immune to electricity. There was now a serious threat of them being wiped out forever. After 210 million years were they finally going to be history?

Mansonia saw how troubled her elders looked and she wondered what she could do. She thought she may get some serious science clues closer to the human. She flew up to him boldly and noticed the dreaded yellow bat lying next to him. He sensed her presence, lifted the weapon and waved it around. Instinctively, she ducked a bit too low and hit the floor.

His razor sharp eyes began to hunt for her all over the room. He finally spotted her on the ground. He laughed aloud and sang, ‘dead, deadd, deaddd’. Then, he placed the bat next to him and continued to read.

When she heard his stuttered snores she rushed back to the other mosquitoes (but first she took a quick nip of some blood) and shared her secret. To avoid the racquet they didn’t need to evolve by mutating their DNA. All they had to do was ‘play dead’. He would never realise the mosquitoes, which lay inert on the ground were alive.

Moral: When sophistication doesn’t work try dumbness.



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

The Not-Knowing of Life

Protylopus was a placid Bactrian camel. She had long eyelashes, large dark eyes, a protruding eye ridge bone, gorgeous thick eyebrows and even a third eyelid to protect her eyes from the sand. Her two beautiful humps were 30 inches high and was covered with the softest looking beige fur. She was a true beauty.

If we had put a matrimonial ad for her in the paper or a profile description on a dating website, the line of suitors would stretch from one end of the Gobi Desert to the other. She belonged to a Sheikh who liked to be comfortably wedged between her two humps. He never noticed her beauty and being the gentle creature she was, she didn’t mind.

The Sheikh was a kind and loving master with just one weakness. No, it wasn’t belly dancers, it was chocolate. He had to have one after every meal and sometimes he would gobble them up between meals too. The camel was used to the sound of a chocolate wrapper being torn and the strange chocolate-melting-in-mouth mmmmmsss that would emit from the Sheikh every three hours.

Protylopus had a good life. All she had to do was walk when the Sheikh sat on her. She didn’t mind taking a stroll in the desert for her flat, leathery footpads and wide two-toed feet helped her walk through rocky terrain and shifting desert sands without sinking. At the end of each day, her grass and five gallons of water would be provided by one of the Sheikh’s minions. What more could a camel want? Very often, as the sun set, you could hear Protylopus grumpling, bellowing and grunting happily.

The Sheikh was very worried. The world’s supply of cocoa beans had run out and he had only two chocolates left. It had happened suddenly. One day, the world was gorging on chocolate and the next day there were none to be found. Conspiracy theories buzzed in the air, ‘The aliens have stolen all of earth’s chocolates, the CIA is making nuclear weapons with cocoa beans, the fundamentalists have hidden it in a safe city, etc.’. Nobody knew the truth and the Sheikh along with millions of chocolate addicts was facing acute withdrawal symptoms.

Now, unknown to even Protylopus, her humps were filled with chocolate. Blame it on her pregnant mother who ate only cocoa beans during her pregnancy. Every day, the Sheikh would sit between the chocolate humps and travel miles and miles looking for chocolate. If only he knew.

The Sheikh couldn’t take a world without his favourite food and decided to end it all. He got on Protylopus and asked her to march to the middle of the desert. Once there, he got off and waved goodbye to his camel and the only chocolate in the world. Protylopus didn’t feel sad at all. She just liked following instructions. Her master had told her to go home and that’s what she would do.

Calmly chewing some regurgitated grass she started walking back leaving behind a weeping Sheikh. It took four weeks to reach home. In that time, the only chocolate in the world began converting itself into fat to keep Protylopus alive. By the time she reached her shed sans Sheikh, her humps were small and shrivelled, devoid of any chocolate.

Moral: What you miss is not yours to know.



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

Don’t Do Monkey Business This New Year

Imagine being the most popular person to be called for a party and then being the most unpopular person there. That was exactly Lorise’s problem. She was called for all the parties as her ten toes and fingers were designed for grasping. This really helped when you had a heap of party decorations.

Most animals couldn’t twist the vine around the flowers to make the multi-coloured garland. Or string fireflies on a Banyan tree prop root for those much needed disco lights. They couldn’t even make the cute little leaf umbrellas for the palm toddy cocktail (One part palm toddy, one part spring water, fresh berries and a dash of bark for bitterness). Even if all the decorations were made, none of the animals could climb and tie them around the party venue with as much ease as Lorise.

Before a party, everybody loved Lorise. She was sweet, friendly, helpful and always willing to go that extra mile for the decor. Once, for the kingfisher’s baby shower, she even hung-up ten dead fish on a branch. Now, this may not be everyone’s ideal party decoration but let us not get judgemental. The kingfisher was thrilled to bits and even today, when her fledglings have flown from the nest, talks about that day being the happiest in her life.

The problem with Lorise was that once the party started, she got really excited. So excited that she would shoot down four palm toddy shots at one go. The other animals had tried advising her. Go slow. The alcohol won’t run off. You have a small body, you get drunk faster. She would nod sadly, her hungover head in her hands, ashamed about the shenanigans of the previous day.

Come the next party and she was up to her monkey tricks again. Down four shots of palm toddy, start teasing the ladies at the party, make burping, farting noises when a male and female animal were talking, pull down all the decorations she had so carefully put up and sometimes, she even shat on the party table, which was groaning under the weight of all that yummy food.

The animals were furious. Their carefully curated treats would sit temptingly on the wooden log bench and none of them could touch it. Monkey shit had an unbearable stench. They would go home hungry, angry and completely miserable. The host would feel even worse. Her party had been a humungous disaster and it was all the fault of that stupid monkey.

What happened next was predictable. The animals began calling Lorise to put up their decoration. Then, they would find some pretence to send her away. ‘It’s an elephants-only party, My husband is allergic to monkeys, It’s a non-veg party, etc.’.

Lorise was completely miserable but she couldn’t stop herself from going and putting up those decorations. The animals were kind, they would let her eat a little of the party food. Also, it was the closest she got to happiness, this being near a fun venue before the fun began.

It was New Year’s Eve and the panther was throwing the biggest party of the year. The entire jungle was invited. Lorise was summoned to put up the decoration. She worked two days with just four banana breaks to make it look spectacular. The panther was highly impressed.

Poor Lorise. She was too scared to ask the panther whether she could attend the party. After all it was New Year’s. Her shoulders sagged and she began walking away, a pitiful primate, sorrow-struck on New Year’s Eve.

The panther’s heart melted. He invited Lorise to stay. She whooped in joy and almost kissed the panther’s whiskers. The party started. She downed four shots of palm toddy, started teasing the ladies, made burping, farting noises. Just as she positioned herself to shit on the food table, the panther growled, leaped 20 feet across the woods, pounced on Lorise and hit her with his giant paw, killing her instantly. Some of the animals brought in the new year by chewing on yummy monkey heart. For them, it was definitely a Happy New Year.

Moral: Don’t party with anybody who can eat you.



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