Everybody Hates Me and Vice Versa

The panther sauntered past a frowning Pilosa and yelled a cheery, ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?.’ With characteristic familiarity she stuck out her tongue at him. It was a really long tongue, longer than her head and it accentuated her rudeness.

The panther felt his cheerful mood popping like a balloon on a burner and much to the dismay of the frolicking rabbits he was in a nasty mood the whole day. The forest was beginning to be affected by Pilosa’s hatred towards everybody.

Most of the creatures in that particular stretch of woods were friendly, genial souls who always apologised before wolfing down their prey. The deer would even discuss the weather with the lion when she knew his stomach was full.

In this garden of love and friendship was born Pilosa who detested everybody and everything. She was mean to all without any discrimination. She would say the nastiest of things to the other animals and follow the insult by sticking out her tongue and waggling it offensively.

She called the frog, ‘Bulgy Eyes’, told the bear he stunk of yesterday’s vomit, sneered at a worm’s diet, poked fun of the owl’s cries and ridiculed the sloth’s slow gait. If you asked her why she was being such a pill, she would fix you with her unblinking eyes and think of a fresh, new, hurtful insult aimed at you.

The other animals tried to keep away but the forest was too small to allow the luxury of space. They couldn’t do anything but put up with her churlishness, which spoilt their mood and curdled their joy.

As the forest slowly soured with the disgruntled rage of happy animals, a migratory crab docked by the stream of that forest to mate. He flexed his red pinchers and looked around for any sign of ‘female’.

All he saw was an anteater who told him he was so ugly he should pinch himself and then boorishly stuck out this indecently long tongue at him. Enraged at her incivility, he scrambled sideways towards her and with his pinchers cut off that ungracious tongue. Dropping the shameless appendage into the water he swam away vowing to find a place with more positive energy to procreate.

Dear, disagreeable Pilosa, she couldn’t believe she didn’t have a tongue anymore. How would she eat? She resigned herself to starve and die. The animals slowly began to notice that nothing abusive was being said to them anymore. At first they wondered why, then word got around, starting from the proboscis of a hovering butterfly – Pilosa’s tongue had been hacked off by a wandering crab. Yaaay!

The forest folk were a kind lot. Every day, one of them would volunteer to take a leaf full of dead ants for Pilosa. They would leave this offering of food in front of her. She would glare at them with her unforgiving eyes and in her head think, ‘brain-sprain beaver, idyot ibis, rubber-lipped woodpecker, divvy duck ‘ and so on but of course, she couldn’t say a word.

Moral: Nobody can take away the insults in your head



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