[Reader-list] hilarious, giving it back to Sir Rushdie...

[Ravikant]

....in more than his own turns....

Enjoy
Ravikant 
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THE HUMBLE OFFENDIE
- Sir Sulkman and the Offence-pimps

by Ruchir Joshi

(The Telegraph, Sunday, July 01, 2007) 


Sixty years ago, in the city of Bom-Marta, was born a boy who was called 
Sulkman. This boy grew up and went phorenbroad and became a pretty good 
storyteller. He wrote first a forget-okay book, then a nearly great second 
book, then a fourth-good third book. Then, when he was already famous and 
people expected greater great things from him, Sulkie tried very hard and 
came out with a huge-fat-not-so-good-book. This book would have been the 
classic “that mediocre dip at the end of the beginning of his career” book 
that every noveltiser is allowed, and Sulkman would have carried on writing 
and written perhaps some more bad books, some good ones and possibly a great 
book also. Problem was, there was a man of letters in our capital city called 
Stupwant who thought a few thin pages of this fat book would offend the 
Hum-ho-Akbas and he told the government led by Prime Minister Naniyaad 
Diladenge to ban the book. Naniyaad, being a weak man, agreed and banned the 
book.

In another not-so-far-away country, sat a self-important Virgin Weasel, 
Ru-halla Kamkhaini, who ruled over one branch of the Hum-ho-Akba religion. 
Kamkhaini heard about this ban and decided to go one better. Without reading 
one word of Sulkie’s book he declared a Fartwa that it was every 
Hum-ho-Akba’s holy duty to turn Sulkman into Rosti. The Weasel couldn’t read, 
so he took the word of a fellow old man: our own hard-drinking, hard-lusting 
Stupwant. “ALL of us Hum-ho-Akbas are offended!” the Weasel proclaimed, “And 
so are our sentiments! And our religion! Not to mention our culture! So, go 
and kill!” Thus the King of Intollah-rance let loose a new think-plague upon 
the world, or actually, a revived version of an old think-plague, one should 
say.

This disease spread rapidly; like a plague, in fact. Or, maybe, it was 
actually more like an addictive drug. In Afghan poppy fields people took not 
opium but Offence; in the backstreets of Bradford and Leeds, Asian youth 
avoided crack-cocaine and went for the more dangerous option, they took 
Offence; in the back-rooms of religious places of all different kinds, 
priests no longer offered their guests mint tea or coffee, “Would you,” they 
asked instead, “like to take some Offence?” As Sulkman went into hiding, all 
kinds of Offence-pimps and Offence-pushers took to the streets of 
Beefstekanchal, leading hordes of young men hopped up on Offence. The 
henchmen of the Chief Virgin Weasel Kamkhaini sent out killer-teams to look 
for Sulkman, assassins high not on hashish but clearly on the Offence. 
Governments thundered, armies readied, and the air of many different 
countries filled with the smoke of burning paper. People got killed, fried, 
Rosti-ed. “See?” said some people in our country, “See what that Sulkman 
fellow has done? He has caused offence and death and destruction! Thank GOD 
his book is banned! Can you imagine the hellfire here in 
Saare-Jahan-Se-Kachha if they hadn’t banned it?”

In the meantime, hiding in the rabbit warren of safe-houses, surrounded by the 
security guards of the Treacherite government that then ruled Beefstekanchal, 
Sulkman Rosti began to do things for his own defence. When women’s groups 
approached him, saying: “Mr. Sulkman, this Intollah-rance affects women in 
all religions most directly, whether it’s the Hum-ho-Akbas, the Fatha-suns, 
the Chosen-Peepulites or the JaishreeHums, the priests and community leaders 
always use their religion to make us the first targets, so will you join with 
us in condemning this lethal stuff?” Sulkie would have nothing to do with 
them. Taking the opposite route, he contacted High Hullahs in one of the 
biggest Hum-ho-Akba universities and begged them: “Effendis! Big and Holy 
Sirs! I accept I have caused grave Offence. I beg mercy and forgiveness. I 
want to come back to the bosom of my original Hum-ho-Akba religion!” The 
Effendi High Hullahs said “Okay, you can re-convert.” So Sulkman did.

When Ru-Halla Kamkhaini heard this, he was very pleased. So pleased, he 
declared a Sequel-Fartwa: “Okay, so this Sulkman is no longer an apostate 
rat. Good. As a practising Hum-ho-Akba he should now quickly give himself up 
for execution. His is, after all, a Grave Offence.” Oops, oops, 
oops. “Effendi! You were supposed to defendi!” Sulkie quickly and fastly 
back-pedallo-fied and vaporized into the protective lap of Treacherite 
security for several more years.

Meanwhile, the think-plague aka Religious-entimentophylis spread and spread, 
with Offence becoming the best offense for many skullduggists of different 
persuasions. Suddenly, bristling bee-hives of hurt-sentiments cropped up 
everywhere. An old crumbling Hum-ho-Akba prayer-building? It’s built over our 
God-space. We will take Offence, JaishreeHum! A painting by an HHA painter 
depicting our woman god on a monkey-tail? Offence! Attack! A film showing two 
sari-wearing women doing lesbian with each other? Kill! Rape!

In time, HerHim upstairs reluctantly took Kamkhaini back into the heavenly 
storehouse and allowed Our Hero to re-surface. Virgin Weasel Ru-Halla 
Kamkhaini might have been obliged to leave behind his earthly garments of 
skin and hair but he had won big-time: he had, most likely, killed off the 
storyteller in Sulkman Rosti, leaving him a husk of self-regardery and 
self-promotion. But, by the time Sulkie demonstrated this fully, the plot had 
sidled away from him. He had become a two-dimensional cut-out, pushed to the 
side by many far more engrossing 3D protagonists.

The Offence Syndrome kept spreading. Fatha-sun believers attacking films that 
portrayed their main Son in the wrong light and the Chosen-Peepul attacking 
back in counter-Offence. Different Hum-ho-Akba types naturally fought hard to 
keep what they perhaps considered their own original franchise, they blew 
away large and ‘offensively’ sculpted stones in Afghanistan, and later let 
loose all chaos when some vicious fool decided to cartoon their prophet, but 
none of this matched another HHA hero who tried a top-down re-design of the 
Big City of the Republic of Kno-Nothing.

At the time of the Big Attack, SR had just moved into the Big City, having 
abandoned Beefstekanchal as ‘provincial’, and was presumably settling in 
nicely with his wife Paddylac and his car Cadillac. In response to the 
attack, Sulkie’s keyboard thundered. “They don’t like our women wearing 
mini-skirts! What would life be without short mini-skirts?” Stemming from 
this analysis came El Sulko’s political position: he decided not to speak out 
too loudly when Commander of Kno-Nothing, the Election Thief decided to go to 
war with the rest of the world.

Around the same time, we in the land of SR’s foreparents, us Saare-Kachhas, 
had greeted the Mousetro’s return from vanvaas with high-pitched yelps of 
joy. Sulkie-sahab had had a triumphal tour of the country, including his 
hometown Bom-Marta, this great city of Horibol, and, of course our capital, 
New Bhenchi. Everywhere he went, The Grand Rosti was chased by a tsunami of 
press, photographers and fawnistas. But, but, but…despite all the fore and 
afterglow of admiration, he still had an angular relationship with the 
government of SJSK. Neither the successors of Naniyaad Diladenge nor the 
JaishreeHum-wallas’ administration were about to offer the great man so much 
as a Sahitya Apparition award. And, for us admirers of the remnants of the 
leftist, contrarian, political man, this was yet another thing to add to his 
fast-depleting saving-graces: at least the guy was not a government mollusc 
like that Sir Vidiamort fellow SR himself scathingly calls ‘Lord Naipaul’.

Alas, alack, ’twas too good to last. Now the departing premier Mr Baloney 
Stare has offered him the most parochial of awards available in the world and 
Sulkie has accepted with silky alacrity and fulsome noises of gratitude. “I 
feel thrilled and humbled,” he has said. Prithee, why dear chap? Why-for-ko 
are you, South Bom-Marta’s greatest literary tiger, humbled, exactly, by the 
stale-Imperial offering from this departing wreckage of a spineless politico?

The question for the rest of us is what we do now and in future about the 
undead mass of Offence-pimps who have once again rolled out of their 
all-too-shallow and all-too-open graves; but that will, one suspects, have to 
wait till after the ex-great man finishes his next tour of Saare-J-S-Kachha, 
wait till the dying out of all the sycophantic shouts of “Sir Sulkman, Sir 
Sulkman! Offendie, Offendie, this way, Offendie!”