I had, until recently, believed that establishing unnecessary relations between two events not obviously connected, rarely even with a comedic outcome, was a personal indulgence to ‘League of Extraordinary Specimens’ like the ones responsible for BigFishMag. I was proven wrong when our respected Health Minister, without instigation, ‘blamed a dead Reeda Shaikh’ for infecting 80 people with Swine Flu in an official press conference.
Issue involving an innocent teenager and a possible death to many is something even BigFishMag deals with cautiously. Health minister’s unlaudable attempt at lateral thinking only managed to excite my flaccid intellect towards everything ‘swine flu’ish about our world today. With few strokes of custom deviation I squirted ideas of absolutely no medical merit surprisingly. The warping of a real issue will certainly be frowned upon by ‘Sensitive fundamentalists’ we always find in a redundant abundance. But now that you’ve read this far, I know you too agree that the best way of dealing with any nascent national crisis is with jokes and cartoons. So read on.
Statutory Note: The following paragraphs are NOT to be seen as a peek into one of the greatest minds of our time. If you do, you might lose your faith in supremacy of humans as a species and accept ‘Swine Flu’ as the just end to all.
Continue reading on.
Is it your opinion as well that Swine Flu could propagate to epidemic proportions simply because no one took an illness named after pigs seriously?
There was a time when diseases had a masculine quality about them. ‘Typhoid’, ’Cholera’, ’Dengue’ sound macho, sound like bad ‘guys’, sound like something to die for. Any lethal phenomenon usually comes with a set of appropriate malicious names by default. Not for dramatic effect, but as a subconscious disclaimer against potential hazard. It is upon the ‘disease naming organizations’ to pick a suitable name that yet is marketable. An apt name for a lethal sickness of pig origin should hence have been ‘Boarphoido-ManFatalus-OinkOinkolera’. Such a masculine illness would warrant martyr status to the deceased in the annals of ‘disease casualties’. But this is where the unseen evil hand of metrosexuality comes into play.
The metrosexual lobby, having already declared ‘Pink is the new black’, now wants to see a ‘Pink Plague’ as opposed to the deadly ‘Black Plague’ of medieval times. No better opportunity at this than the one presented by delicate pink pigs respectfully called ‘swines’ in thankfulness. We first lost masculinity to pink T-shirts and now our lives to the same colour.
Speaking of colours, I was wondering if you’d agree with me on the look of swine flu virus. I see a ‘green salivating pig wearing a pink T-shirt that says ‘piggy piggy swine swine’, holding a glass of stinking mucus in one hand and a trident in the other. The pig has black wings and is capable of saying “Swine flu to you too”‘. We’ve already accepted pink pigs with white wings and a bow & arrow as symbols of love. My depiction of swine flu also deserves global acceptance. In fact we should have pig depictions for everything- ‘pigs in corporate world’, ‘pigs in social circuits’, ‘pigs in parliament’. A very obvious joke now would be that there already are pigs in these places’… so I won’t crack that joke.
Jokes didn’t always have to be created on Swine Flu. Some were government initiatives. When the surgical masks N-95 were appropriated as swine flu prevention, the most popular joke was people showing off their Nokia N series phones (N95, N96 etc.) every time the masks were mentioned. Governments joke here was that swine flu viruses are 13 microns in size whereas N-95s filter particles bigger than 95 microns. Another smart joke was about Muslims not getting Swine Flu as pigs are a taboo in Islam. I personally think government wanted people to look like doctors and scare the virus away. Instead they ended up looking like devout Jains who go to great lengths in preventing involuntary harm to micro-organisms (For more prevention techniques visit our EXTRA section).Maybe that’s why people are dying in increasing numbers and Swine Flu is turning into non-epidemic health conditions like ‘common flu’, ‘chronic heart diseases’ etc. that kill people in such numbers every year that swine flu hasn’t worldwide yet.
Being declared an epidemic gave ‘Swine flu virus’ a way into medical (MBBS) text books. This is blatantly unfair to engineering students. A moderately belligerent illness gave reason for producing smarter doctors! The incompetence of engineering graduates from Mumbai University reached epidemic levels long ago. The only logical solution was to update the curriculum. An upgrade did happen recently but without an upheaval to the aptitude of the teaching staff. It’s like administering three units short of prescribed dosage of Tamiflu and leaving the rest to a weakened immune system.
The Swine Flu commotion also managed to have a divine connotation to it. We know that the second coming of all vagabond Gods has been put off only in waiting for mortal evil to reach Gods’ saturation point. A diligent municipal corporator recently sent out messages to everyone in his ward asking their opinion on shutting schools as swine flu prevention. He thus brought together ‘technology’ and ‘public opinion’ like rarely seen and ideally hoped for in running a modern mortal settlement. He was severely reprimanded. His colleagues were so appreciative of this show of character that a vote to oust him was discussed. I think you’ll agree this is proof enough that evil has reached its apex. Gods should start showing up in ones and twos anytime now. Further delay would take us to a time when kids are born with horns and a pointy tail and the first word they say is ‘Hiel (Fuhrer)!!!’
I will like to end with applause to the government for declaring epidemic after just a single death. That’s an uncharacteristic quickness displayed when they would have had enough excuse on delay.
The first appearance of Swine Flu in 1918 was a microscopic mystery, much like Rakhi Sawant’s brain. This mystery was appropriately dealt with by twenty million deaths; exactly as did Rakhi Sawant’s appropriately enhanced bosoms. The numerical difference between 1 and 20,00,00,000 is far too obvious to not be used as a reason to suspend an epidemic and delay pressurizing the state treasury. An epidemic could even be declared at the midpoint of 20,00,00,000 deaths and still make the government look like saviours for acting before ‘your swine has flown away’ becomes a poetic metaphor for death.
I hope my views haven’t attracted attention of the Swine Flu virus.
Note: The above described green pig is an original creation. If you see it on any news channel curse them on ‘LIVE SMS’ and blame them of plagiarism. Remember ‘You saw it first on BigFishMag’.
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Posts: 2
Reply #2 on : Sat September 19, 2009, 16:10:52