Tale of a Guinea Pig Colony

Posted on 03/11/2023 (GMT 08:40 hrs)

Once upon a time there was a king named Mr. Bovine, who was assisted by his minister Bovine (we will call him Bovine 2) to run the Kingdom of “Walden”. Their group was further aided by two rich merchants: Mr. Ass with another Mr. Ass (we will call him Ass 2). The king with his minister maintained the auto-theocratic ethos in Walden very effectively by being benevolent dictators without scientific temper. Moreover, they kept on amassing large quantities of wealth, which was not used for the sake of the kingdom’s common population but for filling up the coffers of the king’s secret personal treasury. However, the inhabitants of the Walden kingdom could not understand the source(s) of all this astronomical amount of wealth. It was all kept unreachably away from the eyes of those inhabitants.

One fine morning, the king introduced a financial bill for the treasury by calling the Counsel. The King declared unanimously: this new code must pass the litmus test in any possible manner, or else, the king’s prestige would be completely destroyed. This was not a new event in the King’s Counsel, since it was in the king’s nature and mode of working to effectively pass any bill he introduced before the counsel without any debate or discussion. If anyone in the Counsel raised a voice in opposition to the King’s proposals, he/she vanished off the spectrum the day after. Yet, no one knew when, where and how.

Still, everyone started to believe that everything was for everyone’s benefit. The King can do no wrong.

In order to execute the cherished plan, the King’s Counsel searched for guinea pigs to test out this newly ordained financial code. So they searched for two things: one was Mr. Ass’ secondary kin, Mr. Bull, who could now be rewarded for his earlier services to the king and general loyalty; the second thing was some colony of guinea pigs, on whom this code could be duly tested without the King getting affected in any manner. Both King Bovine and Minister Bovine 2 thought that the whole world was their laboratory.

They soon found (through funded royal spies) that one of the king’s treasurers, Mr. Bear, was not so loyal or dedicated enough to the functioning of the king’s personal treasury. He did not donate enough gold coins to the king, but instead performed treason by donating much to a rival king. Hence, the guinea pig colony commanded by this particular treasurer along with all the property that Mr. Bear distributed amidst the colony could be sacrificed for a “just cause”, in the eyes of the king!

Hence, the King’s Counsel immediately employed the senior advisors of the Treasury Board to attain this end as soon as possible. These advisors removed Mr. Bear from his position as one of the treasures and threw him to the prison cell guarded by hungry werewolves ready to chew off the flesh of the seditious Bear, who had cut a sorry figure to satisfy the itching palms of the guards of the secret royal treasury. Mr. Bear tried to compensate this loss caused by donations given to the secret treasury by taking his recourse to the illegally legal path of opening fictitious “shells” as his shelters.

Consequently, a new, expensive special counsel was set up to monitor the process of sacrificing the colony of the guinea pigs as well as property of Mr. Bear’s guinea pigs for the sake of handing over that guinea pigs colony (with all the highly profitable property that it contained) to Mr. Bull without further ado. To this end, the members of the counsel received additional amounts from the King for smoothly directing this “return of favour” to Mr. Bull. Many merchants, travelers and mendicants arrived at the kingdom with the promise of getting hold of the luscious property of Mr. Bear, however, the King’s special counsel rejected all their bidding proposals to protect Mr. Bull’s predefined, predetermined interests.

Mr. Bear tried to shout out from within his prison cells a plea: “I will distribute all my property to my colony of guinea pigs. Leave them alone. I promise! Don’t give my property/share in the treasury to Mr. Bull, since he is cruel and mischievous. He understands nothing but power and money!”

The King’s Special Counsel broke the throat of the Bear so he could no longer utter a word. Mr. Bull was so pleased. His deal was passed with an overwhelming majority of the King’s appointed Special Counsel without further delay and the Special Counsel ravaged the guinea pigs by taking away the latter’s money! The Special Counsel annihilated the guinea pigs by using the very money that the guinea pigs held under Mr. Bear’s command.

Soon enough, one of the old advisors of the king asked the king to reconsider Mr. Bear’s proposal so that the colony of guinea pigs would be benefited from it. The old advisor was left unheard and was exiled to a far off country. The King’s Counsel only wanted to give the gift of Mr. Bear’s treasury to Mr. Bull without caring about the colony of guinea pigs that came under Mr. Bear’s control.

Some of the guinea pigs committed suicide, some died out of shock, some were killed by the King’s assassins and some took to the road to protest and resist. However, some cunning agent guinea pigs were installed by Mr. Bovine and Mr. Bovine 2 within the protesters’ group in order to dismantle the latter’s non-violent uprising. Moreover, the protesting guinea pigs were branded not only as “phoren-funded followers of the German (or Russian?) Bearded Guy”, but they were also portrayed as the “enemies of the people”.

Among those guinea pigs, some are the disciples of the Lord Varuna (the God of Air), some are the disciples of Lord Indra (The God of Lightning), some are the followers of the Holy Dove (The Son of God), some of them are the protectors of the impaired etc. Thus, the theocratic state, self-contradictorily enough, punished their own religious followers.

The exiled old advisor, now a pauper, joined these protesters. He took the protesters to another old wise man, who lived in the mountains. He was a knower of the past, present and future. He told the protesters that the King wrongfully handed over Mr. Bear’s property to Mr. Bull. It is completely unacceptable and irregular. Thus, the protesters are on the right side of justice.

However, there was a royal spy hiding in the forests close to the wise man’s hermitage who listened to the conversation and immediately went back to report this entire development to the King and Minister Bovines. The latter got pretty scared and informed Mr. Bull.

Mr. Bull wasted no time. He went to the apex royal court, paid to the appointed court-judges a lump sum amount of money- and killed off the old wise man from the mountains and set off all his claims as “fictitious” and “unfounded”. Mr. Bull, being so pleased, made an offering to his guru, the guru who was once a bandit-cum-murderer in the far off jungles!

The guinea pigs lost all hope. They wept, panted, screamed in agony. They thought all the roads have been closed, all the possibilities of recovering their rightful claim to their property have ended forever.

If guinea pigs took their shelter to the apex court to turn the course of events by putting forth their real concerns, the special counsel would fight against them by using the guinea pigs’ money! What a paradox, it seems!

On the one hand, the king and the minister took out road-parades in celebration. They awarded Mr. Bull with coins, new residences and what not.

On the other hand, Mr. Bear contacted through a secret passage below the prison the rival king that he previously donated the money to. In fact, the so-called “rival king” once prosperously commanded King Bovine’s kingdom earlier (it is to be noted that “Walden” was actually called “Jambudvipa“, but the Bovines changed it to suit their own narrow ends without consulting anyone else), but Mr. Bovine forcefully seized the kingdom with the show of his might and turned the rival king into a “childish enemy” of the kingdom. Hence, the rival king now took on a struggle by connecting with his old associates to topple down the unjust, anti-people rule of the Bovines.

And hence, the tale of revolt and resistance started to sound in the nooks and crannies of a wounded Walden…

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