Monkeys and morons

I wrote this for a creative writing contest in my first year at IIT Madras. The topic was:

"Monkeys and IITM guys: Compare and contrast" Or something to that effect. So here goes. **

The monkeys of IITM, smart, capricious and joyful, bond greatly with the morons who crack the jeenius exam and invade their privacy. Having evolved from these monkeys, the morons share a lot of similarity (and space) with monkeys. Their greatest achievement till date has been opening a Sharav room successfully. Only, the morons have never managed it.

These monkeys then go through the wardrobe which gets darker as it gets deeper. So while the monkeys enjoy the smell of the cream, the apple and other smooth aspects of life, the morons turn green with envy.

Morons, in a desperate attempt to be like monkeys, copy whatever they do.

They hang around trees, and have recently also begun to imitate the monkeys' habit of jumping from one branch to another. The morons who have successfully jumped from a lower branch to a higher branch work tirelessly to win the race and reach the top of the tree so that they can sit there, waiting for the apple to fall on their heads. But these are just the smart ones.

Basically, the morons are jealous of the monkeys. The monkeys belong to IITM whereas the morons come through the gates by a high level IQ test in which they are given four circles, all of which they need to darken as creatively as possible. They fill their brains with pride of their brilliance and with no place to sit in the CRC, (having no tail to oblige) they cram themselves with other people and their heads with monkey crap.

At the end of the day, the monkeys snooze and the morons booze.

So the monkeys and morons, their differences aside, reside in perfect harmony in the forests of the Himalaya region and the surrounding rivers of Ganga and Jamuna, making life heavenly for their deer children.

When a moron gets up and realizes that a monkey had spent a large part of the night with him, he regrets the heavy booze. It had not occured to him to close the room door and obtain some privacy.

That's why they're morons.

** Offence meant :P

Drain in vain

A couple of summers ago, I went for a drivers' license test in Kerala. I got my 8 and H right, the road tests were smooth, but then the certifying officer asked each one of us who cleared the test to generally put treat of Rs 500 in cash.

Hey, don't judge anybody, you. The poor chap is obliged to sit all day long, looking at people take their tests. Obviously, the Goverment pays him far too less for his effort.

Anyway, screw all that. I need to talk about something important.

I met a Scientist from Indian Space Research Organization a couple of weeks ago. They have various "grades" of scientists there. He said he was SD. So he gets a pay of Rs 15,200 per month.

The essential qualification for the coveted post of Scientist in ISRO is PhD in Theoretical Physics or Applied Mathematics.

The pay might seem low to some of you, who are undergraduates and who're earning three times as much as your starting salaries. But hey,

• He loves what he does.
• He is extremely good at what he does.
• He wants to live in India and serve the country.

God has made him intelligent. He loves what he does. Why should he get paid for doing what he likes? Let his wife stand in line to get a ration card by paying the right amounts to the right people. Let him take his family to Ooty for a trip while his peers take their families to Canada. Serves him right for being passionate about what he does. He doesn't deserve money.

Save all the money and give it to the RTO guy who adds value to society by selling out licenses as one would sell black tickets and whores in this country; the country whose culture we are so proud of that we desperately want to stay back here, work here and die here.