(Compare this with another piece - which I believe predates it - found in
howlingHistory.txt)
The following is taken from The Times of India dated Sunday 6 July
1997:
A new history of India
================
One of the nice things about being married to a school teacher is that
it allows you to keep in nostalgic touch with your own school days.
There are other advantages, of course. Besides having a professional to
supervise the kids' homework, it gives me unlimited access to quality
raw material for my chosen field of leisure activity: My hobby is
collecting devils. No, not the kind you are thinking about, but those
that appear so frequently in our school textbooks and student
worksheets. Therefore, it rather helps to have a resident school
ma'am.
The method is as simple as sampling a samosa. I cut, paste
and string together all the spicy printer's, author's, typesetter's
devil, and student mistakes, misspells, misquotes and malapropisms. The
`mixture' makes for wildly unexpected results, as my latest collection
below will show. I call it the ``New History of India''.
The original inhabitants of ancient India were called
Adidases. Who lived in two cities called Hariappa and Mujhe-na-daro.
These cities had the best drain system in the world and so there was
no brain drain from them.
Ancient India was full of myths which have been handed
down from son to father. A myth is a female moth. A collection of myths
is called mythology, which means stories with female caricatures. One
myth says that people in olden times worshipped monkeys because they
were our incestors. In olden times there were two big families in India.
One was called the Panda and the other was called the Kaurava. They
fought amongst themselves in a battle called Mahabharat, after which
India came to be known as Mera Bharat Mahan.
In midevil times India was ruled by the Slave Dienasty. So
named because they all died a nasty death. Then came the Tughlaqs who
shifted their capital from Delhi because of its pollution. They were
followed by the Mowglis. The greatest Mowgli was Akbar because he
extinguished himself on the battlefield of Panipat which is in
Hurryana.
But his son Jehangir was peace loving; he married one Hindu wife and kept
300 porcupines. Then came Shahajahan who had 14 sons. Family planning
had not been invented at that time. He also built the Taj Mahal hotel for
his wife who now sleeps there. The king sent all his sons away to
distant parts of India because they started quarrelling. Dara Seiko was
sent to UP, Shake Bhakhtiyar was sent to J & K, while Orangezip came to
Bombay to fight Shivaji. However, after that they changed its name to
Mumbai because Shivaji's sena did not like it. They also do not like New
Delhi, so they are calling it Door Darshan.
After the Mowglis came Vasco the Gama. He was an exploder
who was circumcising India with a 100 foot clipper. Then came the
British. They brought with them many inventions such as cricket,
tramtarts and steamed railways. They were followed by the French who
brought in French fries, pizzazz and laundry. But Robert Clive drove them
out when he deafened Duplex who was out membered since the British had
the queen on their side. Eventually, the British came to overrule India
because there was too much diversity in our unity.
The British overruled India for a long period. They were
great expotents and impotents. They started expoting salt from India and
impoting cloth. This was not liked by Mahatma Gandhi who wanted to
produce his own salt. This was called the swedish moment. During this
moment, many people burnt their lion cloths in the street and refused to
wear anything else. The British became very angry at this and stopped
the production of Indian testiles. In 1920, Mahatma Gandhi was married to
one wife. Soon after he became the father of the nation. In 1942 he
started the Quiet India moment, so named because the British were quietly
lootoing our country. In 1947, India became free and its people became
freely loving. This increased our population. Its government became a
limited mockery, which means people are allowed to take the law in their
own hands with the help of the police.
Our constipation is the best in the world because it says
that no man can be hanged twice for the same crime. It also says you
cannot be put in prison if you have not paid your taxis. Another
important thing about our constipation is that it can be changed. This
is not possible with the British constipation because it is not written
on paper.
The Indian parlemint consists of two houses which are
called lower and higher. This is because one Mr Honest Abe said that two
houses divided against itself cannot withstand. So Pandit Nehru asked the
British for freedom at midnight since the British were afraid of the
dark. At midnight, on August 15, there was a tryst in parlemint in which
many participated by wearing khaki and hosting the flag.
Recently in India, there have been a large number of scams
and a plaque. it can be dangerous because many people died of this
plaque in Surat. Scams are all over India. One of these was in Bihar
where holy cows were not given anything to eat by their elected leader.
The other scam was in Bofor which is a small town in Switzerland. In
this, a lot of Indian money was given to buy a gun which can shoot a coot.
Presently India has a coalishun government made up of many
parties, left, right and centre. It has started to library the economy.
This means that there is now no need for a licence as the economy will be
driven by itself. India is also trying to become an Asian tiger because
its own tigers are being poached. Another important event this year was
the Shark meeting at Malas Dive. At this place, shark leaders agreed to
share their poverty, pollution and population.
(
geocities.com/vummintala)