For the second time in four days I have take the liberty to reproduce another piece of fiction that I read somewhere many moons ago. You are cautioned that characters, places and incidents reproduced below should strictly be treated as work of pure fiction, a work of imagination running wild.

You should avoid blaming anyone else but yourselves for mixing up fiction with real life if you fail to draw the line between the following work of fiction and real life. Now read the fiction reproduced below at your own risk. In short, read the following at the risk of your own well-being. Here it goes:

Once upon a time the rich and noble rulers of a far off land strived long and hard to turn it into a heaven for themselves. Their untiring efforts finally bore fruit when mana wa salwa as well as rivers of milk and honey started flowing fr themselves. Their wealth multiplied overnight, only the most expensive cars were permitted to be included in their half-a-mile long motorcades. They encompassed such unheard of riches that their own banks ran out of strong rooms to guard it forcing them to keep accounts overseas. The rulers were so just that they punished the pettiest of the criminals most severely so as to maintain the law and order at its best. This apparent cruelty was actually a blessing in disguise aimed at the betterment of the land simply because all the crimes, heinous or otherwise, were only committed by the treacherously rebellious people of the land who, to the chagrin of the rulers, comprised overwhelming majority. Thieves, dacoits, murders, profiteers and petty criminals were awarded the exemplary severest of punishments as long they did not belong, or had any link, to the class of wise and noble rulers. Nobody should have the least sympathy for such law breakers even if every single one of them belonged to the lowly segments of the land under discussion. One should take pride to understand that the noble and wise rulers of that distant land in this story were not like their treacherously rebellious rulers. The noble rulers of the land were so benevolent that they took upon themselves the shoulder the heavy responsibility of administering each and every affair of the land be it sharing its riches among themselves, taxing their people to death or even blow them to smithereens by any means possible with or without foreign assistance. They copyrighted patriotism, national interest, proverbial iron-hand, the menacing writ of the government, claim to throne, etc exclusively in their names simply because they felt that the illiterate, uncivilized and poverty-ridden majority was just not fit to make a claim to copyright of these rights given to them by nothing else but God Himself.

The people of the land under discussion were so rebellious that they insisted on demanding rights at par with their noble rulers. They were so treacherous that they agitated at the least important issue such as incessant increase in the prices of such most basic essentials as petroleum, wheat, rice, cooking oil, pulses, milk and any other edible item. They agitated when long power failures cost them even the most lowly of the jobs or let them go without sleep for many days at a stretch. The rebellious people unjustifiably asked the rulers to trim down their luxuries paid by their taxes, to bring profiteers to their senses, to receive half-decent medical care, access to reasonably pried education, at least one square meal a day and one pair of clothe a year, a roof over their head even if shoddy. The noble and wise rulers of the land, kind as they were, took great pains to treat the rebellious malice of their people. They tried to convince them that in any civilized society luxury of the rulers is a norm and thus should not be treated as something unusual. They informed the people in their kindest tone that inflation is a global menace and incessant escalation in prices of essentials and utilities and the cost of living is not profiteering at all. They tried to educate the people the necessity of maintaining the army of ministers and advisors. They profusely defended their policy of allowing foreign friends to kill the people. They justified taxing the people to death saying that it was for their own good. They insisted that prices of essentials and utilities were fair in the context of "˜international prices'. They primised that load-shedding will end by this or that month or year for good.

Despite the best efforts the people; illiterate, treacherous, rebellious, wild, uncivilized and lawless as they were, refused to believe the honest words of their benevolent rulers. The conflict continued raging between the humane rulers and uncouth people of that distant land under discussion.