Killi the talking parrot from Kilinochchi was furious. She was squawking at the top of her voice. At first I tried telling her to keep her voice down or my neighbours would call PETA.
“That would be justice”, she squawked so loudly that the glass into which I was about to pour my third drink of Famous Grouse cracked. I looked at it disbelievingly while Killi, delighted with the outcome, was now cackling away insanely. I was too irritated to look for another glass so I swigged straight from the bottle. That was when she began to sing in a childlike voice:
“Paulie put the kettle on
Paulie put the kettle on
We’ll boil you in a bit”
Here she paused and effortlessly shifted musical gears, rocking on her perch, shifting from one foot to another, her wings pressed forward in a caricature of a namaste, and cackled:
Wakka Wakka Heh Heh/
Dumbo, heh heh/
Dumbo, heh heh/
The first cut ’n you’ll scream in pain.”
For the last three days the Killi had been giving me the treatment for going to Paul the Prescient for a little bit of journalistic titillation in order to get some insights into the eternal questions that continue to animate us: When would Afzal Guru be hanged? Would Ajmal Kasab use his time to perfect and patent a recipe for mutton biriyani? When will Warren Anderson be extradited? In which city would the next Made in Pakistan bomb blast occur? Would the Kalaignar win the next election by giving away free plasma television sets which when voters switch on will automatically subject them to a 10-minute song on the greatest Tamilian alive or dead or ever will be born before you can switch only between Sun and Kalaignar TV? Would my friend Shashi Tharoor be back in Manmohan Singh’s reshuffled Cabinet? I particularly wanted to know if Kanimozhi would ever get the Nobel Prize for Literature or at least the Sahitya Kala award.
I idly thought it would make our prime minister’s life a little easier, with Paul on his side. In fact, some nights previously while watching Germany being beaten by Spain through a haze of Tequila shots, I almost pictured Manmohan Singh as some kind of Davy Jones, that character from Pirates of the Caribbean, with a light blue turban instead of a pirate cap, clutching his hands in front of him. It was an unnerving sight, with the octopus arms wriggling about. I blinked twice and then once more to make sure it was no Fata Morgana occurrence but no there was Paul and Manmohan Singh together, I mean, as if, you know — photoshopped. It occurred to me then that this way Manmohan Paul Singh could navigate his way through the maze of multiple choice answers that gnaw at him daily. I briefly wondered if our prime minister was allergic to mussels. But mainly I was thinking of the money I lost by not taking Paul seriously in the first place. I knew Killi would not take kindly to my (astrological?) infidelity but what the heck? We would cross that bridge when we came to it.
I prepared elaborate choices for Paul:
Afzal Guru would
a) Be hanged 10 years after Ajmal Kasab is hanged
b) Will be hanged immediately after the next terrorist attack on our Parliament
c) Will die of suspense — wondering when he will be hanged
d) Would die an unnatural death — of boredom
Shashi Tharoor
a) Will eventually succeed in producing vibhuthi from thin air while at the same time chanting in fluent Malayalam
b) Will be made minster of state for table tennis in a new look Manmohan Paul Singh Cabinet where Sharad Pawar will hold Cabinet rank
c) Will make the Booker Long List for writing a racy Harlequin Romance called Sweet Sue, Just You, involving cricket and an undercover operator, full of backroom skullduggery and manipulation with two Canadian passport holders as heroines
I didn’t want to make it too complicated for Paul so for this question I kept it simple:
Manmohan Singh
a) Will be the only person other than the President of United States who will continue to back the American football team in the World Cup
b) As a confidence building measure, will do Smokey Robinson’s Cruisin’ as a duet with Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Gillani, choreographed by Hillary Clinton, Prof Hafiz Saeed and the ISI chief with Sonia Gandhi in a brief appearance as a high stepping chorus girl. It will be a Youtube hit in North Waziristan, PoK, among stone throwers in Srinagar and in some parts of the Washington beltway.
c) Is thinking of bringing in a Bill in Parliament requiring Indians to sing the national anthem by placing the right hand on the heart in time for Obama’s visit
Paul’s trainer was sufficiently intrigued by the choices I was offering the octopus. But she drew the line on the Kanimozhi choices which for reasons you will understand cannot be elaborated here. She said if Paul went for mussels with such choices he would get acute indigestion and move on to the post-retirement state prematurely and nixed the whole plan.
I explained all this to Killi but she was unplacatable. “But... Nothing happened with Paul”, I told her repeatedly. But I could see that Killi was in a mood for murder. She meant business. Her hips weren’t lying. Neither were her eyes which were beadily piercing me. Killi had been looking up internet recipes for cooking octopus. After poring through some she began to look in Youtube on the very many ways of eating octopus and she began to emit sinister whinny laughter like a horse neighing when she came across Koreans and Japanese eating octopi alive after rolling them up in chopsticks and dipping them in sauce washing them down with sake and soju. I told her Paul was too big to be rolled around a chopstick, dipped in sauce and eaten. “Maybe I should just chop him into little bits and deep fry him” she responded thoughtfully. “I like the way their legs wriggle even after they are cut up and doused in sauce. Maybe we could set it to music. Do you think they will dance to Wakka Wakka?” she asked me tauntingly and broke into that squawky sing song voice, “The last time for A-freakk-ahh!” With a sigh, I prepared myself for another interminable evening with my Grouse.
sudarshan@expressbuzz.com