Jun 30th, 2012
JESUS VERSUS SANTA -THE TV TALKSHOW COUP OF ALL TIME
B.A.D. Magazine takes pleasure in introducing for the first time select chapters from Raja Changez Sultan’s latest book A NOBLE PRIZE AND A THOUSAND WIVES. Each chapter is written in the form of a letter to his daughter in which he delves on the good, the bad and the ugly from dinosaur days to the present – and indeed into the future. In each episode his contributions result in his winning the Noble Prize and a thousand wives and thereafter he ends up playing tennis on the Islamabad Tennis courts with his mentor, Razzaki. enjoy the read
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Dearest Muki,
You must have heard of good fighting evil, and evil fighting evil, but I bet you have never heard of good fighting good ever before! Well, you see recorded history has its drawbacks; it never tells you the whole story!
Back when the Savior was busy saving souls, there was Santa whizzing about with his reindeer and his army of elves spreading joy and happiness in the world. It was expected of both to do their bit lest the world rolled down a dark abyss, and so life went on year after year without much ado.
Then the unexpected happened, the TV talk shows became the order of the day, and as was customary, huge sums of money began being offered to all kinds of celebrities! The competition got tougher and if CBS’s anchor wanted anyone, then NBC’s anchor made sure it got some one else of equal stature and the ratings game continued. Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah and Moses had all appeared in the past, along with of course, Socrates, Plato, Ibne Khaldoon, Buddha, Aristotle, Homer and others!
Scary King and Soaprah Sinfree were then the dad and mum of talk shows. Their ratings were such that, when asked to be on their show, the Dalai Llama walked all the way from Tibet to New York so as not to miss an appearance.
Naturally the soul saving Jesus too was approached by both camps, but he kept politely declining on account of his busy schedule and also because he was terribly camera shy. Santa, on the other hand was no less a draw, but he too was an overworked jingler of joy and also, at his age, a bit past it.
The fixers for these shows kept on offering fantastic sums of money to both these stalwarts and were turned down each time, till one of the Sinfree guys lured Santa into a trap. He convinced a little blond girl to write him an e-mail saying that what she wished for that particular Christmas was that Santa should appear on the Show and spread goodwill among all men so that his message is heeded by believer and heathen alike! The granter of children’s wishes was left with no option but to agree!
Not to be outdone, Scary King’s henchmen spread the word that the great maestro needed his soul saved as he had decided to take leave of this world on air during his 3 000,000th appearance. For that his last request was that Jesus to be his guest.
The ruse worked and Jesus was lured in!
As both Shows were pitched against each other and the audiences did not wish to miss either Jesus or Santa, everybody went and bought a second TV set and set both of them side by side!
Without realizing it, Scary King and Soaprah Sinfree had set up a competition between Jesus and Santa, and though neither of them had accepted any fee for their appearances, it was projected as the biggest match-up ever in the history of the boob tube – barring possibly the time Cleopatra had bared her boobies in a pre-announced program on Sinfree some years earlier and had thereafter married Caesar.
Anyway, the world was in for a rare treat! Pre-program sales of popcorn and nuts all over the developed and developing world broke all records as men, women and children, and their pets, huddled around TV screens and waited for the magic moment!
The shows went on air. Both were given due respect by their respective hosts and both had ample opportunity to bathe in the adulation showered on them by the audiences and both came out winners! The ratings put them neck and neck throughout and the newspaper reviews scored them equally.
But then, as time passed, everyone began to wonder who the bigger super hero was. In truth, both of them also began to wonder the same; here was one busy saving souls, and there was the other enriching the lives of all around, and the question unanswered remained as to who deserved the greater praise!
A media war began between the supporters of the two camps. Placards proclaiming JESUS IS MY HERO and SANTA FOR ME began being paraded all over town. Graffiti wars began; whole campaigns got launched to project their heroes, so much so that a time came when both were drawn into an election for the number 1 slot in the World Directory of the Who’s Who!
Here was a battle royale in the making! JESUS VRS SANTA the billboards read and the campaigns got in full swing! TV crews followed them everywhere, newspapermen began to hound them and the differences started being exploited. Jesus was labeled as a conservative, Santa a liberal. People were split into Democrats and Republicans and the war for supremacy got into full swing!
MATERIALIST they yelled at Santa. Jesus was labeled a JEW, not so because he descended from the Jews but more so because he was so miserly with his miracles! There was no holding back; the gloves were on and the ringside seats taken!
The venue of the Elections was Las Vegas. The vote count began after strip artistes had done their bit and Tom Jones and Elton John had sung their numbers and supporters of both camps had worked themselves into a frenzy.
The supercomputers kept churning out the counts and the neck-to-neck battle was contested right to the last vote – cast incidentally by a native Indian from the Amazon Jungle who had braved the squeeze of an anaconda in the process of getting to the voting booth.
Just at that precise moment, however, there was a virus attack so powerful that all the supercomputers blew up with a bang. Pin drop silence everywhere ensued as the entire world was plunged into darkness. The earth began to quake beneath them. Tsunami waves began to rise and fall in the oceans, and then, just as suddenly as it had happened there was a still in the air. Not a leaf stirred in the dark.
A speck of light appeared overhead and started getting brighter and brighter until all the surroundings were set ablaze by a light more luminescent than a thousand Suns and people everywhere heard His voice ring out:
SO THAT IS WHAT YOU DO TO MY EMISSARIES? PITCH THEM AGAINST EACH OTHER? SHAME ON YOU! NOW GO BACK HOME AND KNOW THAT THIS MOMENT HAS NEVER PASSED!
The sound faded away, darkness reappeared and everybody returned in hushed silence. In the morning they went about their work and all memory of one of the fiercest election battles ever fought had been erased.
Unrecorded history, however, was vigilant enough!
For that you have to thank me and in reward bestow a few Nobel Prizes, a royal residency and a couple of thousand wives!
So dearest Muki I now take leave of you and head on to the tennis courts to match my wits against Razzaki, who, in his own right, does as much good for my superego as Santa or Jesus ever did for the Christians!
Loads of love
Dadski,
The teller of unrecorded events!
Raja Changez Sultan is an internationally recognized poet painter and his work can be seen on facebook.
Jun 19th, 2012
WERE I A GENIE
B.A.D. Magazine takes pleasure in introducing for the first time select chapters from Raja Changez Sultan’s latest book A NOBLE PRIZE AND A THOUSAND WIVES. Each chapter is written in the form of a letter to his daughter in which he delves on the good, the bad and the ugly from dinosaur days to the present – and indeed into the future. In each episode his contributions result in his winning the Noble Prize and a thousand wives and thereafter he ends up playing tennis on the Islamabad Tennis courts with his mentor, Razzaki. enjoy the read ……………
Dearest Muki,
Were I a genie just out of the lamp and you had three wishes, I’d tell you which ones to make!
For one, you should ask me to destroy all the weapons in the world. Naturally I would begin by knocking out all nukes everywhere and – short of a hand held catapult – I would collect every other piece of hardware from every nook and corner of the globe, stuff them in a container, take it to outer space and fill the vacuum of a black hole with it! That should leave the world a slightly happier place!
For another, you should ask me to find a way of balancing the world population in such a manner that every man, woman and child has enough to eat! Only that number of births per family will be permitted which will balance off the dying population and sustain the ecology in a most admirable manner!
The third wish you should make is to get an endless number of wishes! This way, between you and me we could cure all the world’s ills and have everybody living in a utopia of our making!
Obviously by the time we are through the Ozone layer would be restored, all mountain ranges will balance off their annual glacial melt with the amount of rain received and there will be no room for global warming, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and all other natural disasters and no one alive, including trees will ever again be struck down by lightning!
Next you should ask me to release all prisoners locked up in jails after extracting all evil from their hearts and erasing past memory of what they might have done to end up in jail! Though I may not be able to knock the devil out of this world but I would try locking him up in his beloved Hell so he does not get after the souls that currently reside in the living at least!
While we are at it, why don’t we erase all geographical boundaries as well so there are no distinct countries! This way, no one would require passports or visas and police registrations and a whole lot of paper work that keeps our immigration departments busy. Without Countries around, naturally the United Nations and its many such-like arms would also become redundant; as would the World Bank, The IMF and all international banking!
Now, were I able to do all that – and whatever else you ask – I would be one hell of a genie wouldn’t I?
Well I have news for you! A genie like this one is the sum total of all goodness that, in tiny parts, resides in each one of us – young and old; white, brown, black or yellow! Because we do not allow it to come out often enough and do its bit, the world has become a sorrier place!
Now for this absolutely brilliant deduction, I am sure to get my Nobel Prize, a royal residency close enough to Paradise and 1000 wives who are always up for discovering the genie that resides in them!
Am off now to meet up with Razzaki on the tennis courts! I hope he has not as yet discovered what his genie can do for his cross-court forehand! The day he finds out, Rafa would be in deep trouble!
Dadski – from inside the Lamp.
Raja Changez Sultan is an internationally recognized poet painter and his work can be seen on facebook.
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