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Reader’s Corner
‘Pet’ animals begin waging silent freedom for emancipation
Man boycotting France caught eating French fries
Ahmed Adib
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Mr Cool Shaan bent over the coffee table and lifted the morning paper. He quickly scanned the usual banality of the front page: traffic accidents, pollution, corruption, rape, murder, and disappearances. Problems of the poor, mostly. At the right was a section titled “The Daily Stare”, which documented area-wise reported instances of uncomfortable stares received by women in the preceding 24 hours in the city. The daily had started this recently and was apparently thinking of scaling it up to nationwide coverage.
Mr Shaan flipped the paper to its back page. There was an ad about a movie by a knockoff group of recent film school graduates Roshuun-dhora Films, titled ‘Hunger Games: Catching Garlic’. He dropped the paper and took the sunlit living room into view. It was Friday and he had slept in. He deserved a weekend-sleep, after all he worked quite hard. He stretched his torso and walked down to swing open the main doors.
Their golden retriever was in the front yard sniffing the concrete at the locked grill gate. “Miley!” He called. She turned flicking her tail, and scurried over to him past the chauffeur washing the two parked cars. “What’s in your mouth?” He asked playfully as he ruffled her head with one hand and with the other gently pulled out whatever she was holding. It was a sealed envelope with no writing. Curious but cautious, he opened it to produce a neatly folded piece of paper.
We, the House-Pet Liberation Front (Society for the Promotion of Animal Welfare), call for abolition of “ownership” of animals outside the categories of bovine, caprine, porcine, and poultry, and for a ban on calling them “pets”. We grow weary of your hypocrisies of semblance of kindness, being “nice” to servile animals who don’t talk or opinionate, while you live with the blood of countless cockroaches, spiders, and ants on your hands (not mosquitoes because that’s mostly your own blood). You’re not special; you’re one of the millions of self-important people around the world who have received this message. We will draft and communicate a 6-point demand soon. Looking forward to your kind or forced cooperation (you choose). – LS
P.S. We are not familiar with Harry Potter, especially since the recent ire being drawn by its author.
Mr Cool Shan finished reading and blinked. He took three large strides and bellowed at the chauffeur, “Where did the dog get this?” The chauffeur jumped, glanced perplexedly at the paper clenched in his employer’s outstretched hand, and faltered, “I don’t know, it was exchanging barks with a stray dog at the gate.” Mr. Shaan’s cellphone rang. It was his daughter who lived at another apartment of his.
Apparently she had just received the same letter and it was already on social media. She hadn’t seen where her pet cats found the envelope but she had opened her door to find and shoo off a stray cat going to the toilet on her doormat.
“They’re using the strays,” whispered Mr Shaan.
He assured his daughter not to worry, hung up and dialed the mayor’s personal number. As he entered rushed conversation with the mayor, Miley weaved between her owner’s legs, tail tucked low. She had got the gist from the stray dog. For now some pet cats and dogs were colluding against their owners.
Many like herself were rattled and perturbed about their future security. But then peace never makes history.
Karim Benz
Khalid, 31, a resident of the capital, was caught last night eating a plate of French fries. His friends, who caught him in the act, recorded the whole incident and uploaded a video of it on social media, where it instantly went viral with 62 likes and eight shares.
Khalid had earlier made a proclamation of boycotting French products after Karim Benzema, star footballer, was once again overlooked for the France National Team.
“I cannot believe they did not select Benzema once again. Yes, he made some mistakes, but look at his form over the past few years. He should have been selected just for that alone,” Khalid had said at the time. “I will no longer buy French products until this great oversight has been corrected.”
But less than a week after making the announcement, Khalid has been found to be violating it.
Khalid’s friend Walid explained what he saw last night. “We heard some crunching sounds and followed the noise to the living room. There we saw Khalid sitting down with a bottle of hot sauce in one hand and a plate of French fries on the other.
“At first we did not say anything, because we weren’t sure what he was planning on doing. Maybe he would make a post with the fries and explain his views. But no, we then saw that he was actually eating the fries with no regard for what he had said,” Walid explained.
Contacted, Khalid said the whole thing was being blown out of proportion. “I was boycotting the make-up brands and the noodles brand. But let’s be honest, I do not really buy original products so the movement was not as impactful as I thought.
“Still I kept going. But the French fries, I call them Benzema fries. I made them with my own potatoes and I did not use anything from France for making it. It’s just the name, but what’s in a name,” he asked. Khalid, who had gained some sort of following after his boycotts had begun, is now considered a virtue-signaling fraud.