Jun A. Alindogan gives an account of how an overgrowth of water hyacinth affects aquatic life and upsets the local food chain while giving us a flavourful account of local food. Clickhereto read.
A pig, a waffle, a box, a chump, a resentment, a caterpillar, a gift, a loom, a cuttlefish, an aurora borealis, a duvet, a chair, a sunken continent, a cup that runneth over, an ancient paradox, a snivel, a bone, a toothless cog, a piecrust, a passionate kiss, an aching thigh, a broken window, a phantom, a cat, a bathtub, a chimney clogged with twigs, a forced laugh, a chewed pencil, a beetroot stain, a vague feeling, a hovercraft, an argument, a dog, an example of jargon, a butterfly, a solecism, a grotesque fiend, a coconut shy, a confident papaya and a thousand other things had gathered together in a restaurant for a celebratory meal.
The waiter came over to their table and shook his head.
“It’s off, I’m afraid,” he told them.
“But that’s nonsense! We haven’t ordered yet!”
The waiter smiled and said, “I didn’t mean the food, I meant the moral. There’s no way you’ll make a decent fable out of this situation. There are far too many characters in the story.”
THE IMPROBABLE VELOCIPEDE
A rich and powerful madman clapped his hands and said, “See that tall mountain over there? I want you to remove it from its base and set it on two wheels; then I want you to connect the back wheel to a system of gears and pedals, so that a climber sitting on the summit of the peak can make the whole thing trundle along.”
“That’s a really big job,” people warned him.
“So what? I’m rich and powerful and I can easily afford it. Do what I say with minimal delay!”
Six months later it was ready. As the madman pedalled the mass of rock and ice along, sounding his alpenhorn at pedestrians, he chuckled to himself. “I’ve always wanted a mountain bike.”
THE SEA SERPENT AND THE ROWING BOAT
A sea serpent fell in love with a rowing boat. “I love you. Do you love me in return?” asked the sea serpent.
“Yes, I think so,” replied the rowing boat.
“Despite the enormous age difference? I mean, I’m a living fossil from the Jurassic period but you were constructed in 1959; and the trees from which you are made aren’t older than a hundred years. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a younger monster?”
The rowing boat dismissed her anxieties.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “It’s my design that matters, not my building materials. And that dates back several thousand years at least. So put your mind at rest and let’s get smoochy!”
The sea serpent was happy to be formally courted by the rowing boat. Every day he brought her a little gift, usually a human being that she was able to devour in one tasty gulp.
One afternoon the rowing boat turned up with a man dressed in a frock coat and top hat. This man struggled with the oars but he wasn’t in control and had to go where the rowing boat wanted. Then the rowing boat cried out, “Look honey! A saint for you!”
The sea serpent surfaced at that point. “A saint?”
“I thought it was time we got properly engaged. That is how much I love you! It occurred to me that a saint’s halo could be used as a ring. It’s up to you whether you accept or not…”
The sea serpent examined the occupant of the boat.
“It’s a very sweet idea,” she said, “and of course I would accept. But I don’t think this fellow is a saint. He looks more like an industrialist. And he doesn’t have a halo, just a top hat.”
“He’s in disguise. His halo is beneath the hat!”
“So it is! How odd! Yum!”
THE LOST FABLE
A fable that was lost burst into tears. “I don’t belong in this collection of postmodern fripperies. I’m a decent fable, not a facile whimsy, and I was originally part of a traditional collection with real morals and everything. This Rhysop fellow has debased the form with his travesties and I want no part of his despicable project.”
A passing crow asked, “What’s the issue?”
The fable told him and the crow replied that he knew a clever earwig who could easily solve his problem.
So the fable set off on a long journey and eventually reached the cave where the earwig lived. When the earwig asked him what the matter was, the fable said, “Can you take me out of this set of facile fables and put me into Aesop’s collection instead?”
“Are you sure about that?” the earwig asked.
The fable nodded, so the earwig went to consult one of his books of magic and then he waved his legs in a special way and the fable vanished from sight. “What a strange request!” muttered the earwig to himself, as he went back to playing scales on the zither; he was learning the zither in his spare time. Why the devil not?
Aesop’s fables were passed on in the oral tradition and were written down only many centuries after the real Aesop (lived between 620 and 564 BCE) died in Greece. He was a slave
The fable opened its eyes and found itself wedged among dozens of used napkins and handkerchiefs. “This isn’t the middle of Aesop’s Fables! Where are the hare and the tortoise and all the other favourites? All I can see are snot rags and stained bibs!”
Across time and space floated the voice of the earwig. “The historical Aesop was a slave. He didn’t actually write down his fables. And he didn’t have enough money or opportunity to indulge any normal hobbies, so he made do with collecting bits of discarded cloth. This is the only collection Aesop ever had in his lifetime…”
“Now he tells me!” groaned the fable.
THE SCARED GHOST
There was a ghost who was scared of life. “But you’re already dead and the danger is over,” pointed out a skeleton.
“D-d-d-d-don’t tempt fate!” shivered the ghost.
“What is it exactly about life that alarms you so much?” the skeleton asked. The ghost turned elap and began…
“One moment!” cried the skeleton. “What is ‘elap’?”
“The opposite of pale,” answered the ghost. “Living men and women turn pale when they are scared; so it follows that a frightened ghost will turn elap. That’s logical, isn’t it?”
The skeleton waved a bony hand. “Fair enough. Continue.”
“I’ve forgotten what I was going to say…”
“It can’t have been important, in that case,” said the skeleton.
The ghost shrugged. “Maybe not.”
“What are you doing tonight?” asked the skeleton.
“Are you hitting on me?”
“Yes, I am. I’ve fancied you for ages.”
“As it happens, I’m free. What did you have in mind?”
“How about the cinema?”
“I don’t know. What are they showing?”
“A romance. It’s all about a man and a woman who meet on a train and fall in love and kiss each other with lips. Then they get married and dwell happily ever after in a nice house.”
The ghost recoiled. “No! I hate horror films!”
GHOST IN THE MACHINE
A ghost once used its entire deathtime’s savings to purchase a mainframe computer, to make possible the calculation of some of the parameters of the afterlife, I don’t know which ones. But after operating for many hours at a frantic pace, the device froze.
“Bother!” exclaimed the ghost. “It must be jammed on the inside. I had better find out what the trouble is.”
The ghost was the romantic partner of a skeleton and didn’t want to be the victim of sarcasm when it became obvious what a waste of money the machine had been. “I ought to try and fix it before ‘Bones’ gets back,” the ghost said to itself in desperation.
So it floated through the computer and ended up on the inside, but one of its wisps got snagged on a diode and it couldn’t get back out. When the skeleton returned from work and heard the cries for help emanating from within the mainframe, it was astonished and thought there was some deep symbolic meaning in this incident.
“I didn’t know computers had souls!” it gasped.
DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY
An antibody met a germ and said, “How do you do? I am very happy to make your acquaintance. Would you like a cup of tea? May I fetch you a small cake? If you require anything to improve your comfort, please let me know and I’ll do my best to provide it. I like your colour, shape and other physical characteristics. You are cool. You are grand. What a fine germ you are! I admire you so much.”
“Well, that reaction wasn’t what I was expecting!” cried the germ. “I came here to infect this bloodstream, but I don’t think I’ll do that now. I am too charmed by your kind words.”
“It’s a new style of resistance and I’m glad it seems to work. It’s called diplomatic immunity,” said the antibody.
TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK
A monkey that had more than two cheeks on its face was sprawled on the ground when a clever sage who knew everything there is to know about religion, philosophy and ethics happened to pass by. “Why do you look so sad and angry?” the sage enquired.
“I imagine it’s because I keep getting insulted,” said the monkey, “on account of my utterly freakish visage.”
“And that’s why you are lying in the dirt, is it?”
“Yes, I’m prone with hairy despair.”
The sage snorted and answered, “Whenever someone hurts you, turn the other cheek. That’s all you need to do. Try it and you’ll go far, believe me. I’m a sage and full of wisdom.”
The monkey considered his advice.
“Fair enough, I will,” he said.
And because he needed the practice, he started turning the other cheek immediately; but because he had so many of them, and because they went right around his head, he began rolling along the ground. He went faster and faster as he kept turning them, accelerating like a horizontal tornado that stank of banana juice and peanuts.
Soon he had vanished over the horizon. The sage smiled.
“I said he’d go far, didn’t I?”
GOOSE WRITING ADVICE
“Hey, what are you doing?” cried a goose as it waddled past a man who was brushing tar all over the manuscript of an unpublished book. “Why are you coating that tome with the sticky thick residue of the petroleum industry? That is peculiar behaviour!”
“I’m pitching my new novel,” came the answer.
“You fool!” cackled the goose. “You’re supposed to proofread it, not waterproof it. But the real issue is that you’re supposed to pitch the idea to a publisher first, not the actual book.”
“Pitch the idea?” frowned the man.
“That’s the way it is usually done,” confirmed the goose.
“But the idea is contained in the manuscript, embodied by the prose I have employed to tell the story that occurs, so by pitching the book I am also pitching the idea within, aren’t I?”
“You employed prose? What wages did you pay it?”
“Don’t try to be hilarious, bird!”
The goose said, “Well, pitching a novel is no use if the idea is smeared over and thus can’t be appreciated.”
The man considered this. “I see your point. Luckily the idea still exists in my head. I keep a copy there. So if I pitch my head, but leave a gap so the idea can still be viewed from outside, I’ll stand a better chance of my novel being published. Is that right?”
“Yes. It works for me,” replied the goose.
So the man began coating his head with tar and eventually only one of his ears jutted out from the black mess.
THE GLOVE
“I wish I could fly!” sighed a glove. “It’s true that I enjoy surfing waves; but waves only occur when the person who waves me lifts their hand and makes a gesture meaning hello or goodbye. Flying is surely superior to surfing or any other activity. I wish I knew the secret of rising into the air and staying there.”
“I’ll teach you to fly,” offered a hot-air balloon who happened to be drifting past. And he did exactly that. He showed the glove how to fill itself with hydrogen gas and seal itself at the wrist. Away flew the glove and thanks to a bizarre meteorological phenomenon involving the lower atmosphere acting like a magnifying lens, the flying item of handy fashion appeared much bigger than it really was, dominating the whole sky. You know what they say:
¶ Glove is in the air: everywhere you look around.
EDUCATED SHAPES
A myopic triangle that had gone to university to study economics became friendly with a segment and one day said, “Will you come dancing with me tonight? Then maybe we could go for a walk in the moonlight. I like you very much, to be perfectly candid.”
The segment blushed. “I must reject your amorous proposal for the simple reason that we’re not compatible.”
“What do you mean? We are both young triangles.”
The segment shook its head. “I’m not. You must be very shortsighted indeed. One of my sides is curved. I’m a segment, part of a circle. In fact I came to university in the first place to graduate as a complete circle, but it’s taking a very long time, I’m afraid.”
“Pardon my mistake!” cried the mortified triangle.
“I have been at this university for a hundred years already,” sighed the segment, “and I probably won’t leave for another century or two. I have studied so many subjects I feel sick!”
“But why can’t you graduate sooner than that?”
The segment answered sadly, “Because to become a proper accredited circle I require exactly 360 degrees.”
From Public Domain
Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
The tussle between the neoclassical economist [that stubborn, unyielding breed] and the ecological economist [the rebellious change-seeking breed] has been going on for several decades now, and now has reached a climax. As per the former – Robert Solow, Joseph Stiglitz and John Hartwick[1] among them –capital has to be interpreted as an aggregate of the natural and manmade varieties and as long as this sum total is constant, we are good. A decrease in the former can be made up for, by an increase in the latter – it is as simple as that, according to the neo-classicists.
Stress-free thinking? Just move on doing what you will, and the Universe will keep caring for you and protecting you. In fact, that is how a large majority of Homo Sapiens have been conducting their lives and livelihoods over the years, short-changing the conscientious ones in the process. Now this presents a disintegrated view – the adjective being important here. Disintegrated, ironically, even though the neo-classicists claim that what was not created by man can be balanced out by anthropogenic[2] assets, and one could claim that the total utility and happiness and welfare will remain unchanged.
Let me tell you a story – fiction, yes, but may well have happened somewhere in the world, or maybe in many places in the world, on several occasions. Say there was a forest yonder a few kilometres out of the city. A forest my grandpa used to take me to, for a stroll on weekends, when I was a school-goer. Communion with Mother Nature. Feet on the soil. Glimpses of songbirds, rabbits, squirrels, gurgling streams. Shady trees under which, I and my grandpa would sit and play Ludo. He would tell me stories from the Aesop Fables and I would visualise those animals in that very forest. He would sing for me in his mellifluous singing voice and I would be enthralled and that would develop in me an interest for singing and expressing my locked-up emotions in my adulthood to vent out my grief. We would sit there, and he would teach me how to sketch the elements of Nature. I would grow up to develop an abiding interest in drawing, sketching and painting. Grandpa is no more. But thanks to those strolls, I now think I am a well-diversified individual with multiple tastes and abilities, and also a leaning towards industrial ecology, ecological economics and the like.
That was then. Now, I am a city planner in the very same city I grew up in. I have forgotten those lessons from childhood, even though I retain the said abilities – sing, sketch etc. Grandpa watching from the astral plane is surely sad. But I decide not to care. I veer towards the neoclassical, as I come under pressure from the others I am working with. I cannot stand my ground like Howard Roark did in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943). I give my consent to the idea that miners be allowed to prospect for gold in the same forest I used to go for strolls with my grandpa in the past. I visualise a stream of royalties and taxes for the city, which could be used to set up many parks. As the neoclassical theory goes, I would be convincing city-dwellers that I am creating easily-accessible capital for them right at their doorsteps!
The city parks styled as mini-forests, come up in due course of time [money loaned out by banks, which will be repaid thanks to the said royalties and taxes which are anticipated, as the miners have struck gold, literally]. I take my sons out to the park, and while telling them about how they came about and boasting about my planning skills, I slip into memories of the past and tell them how I enjoyed my strolls with their great grandfather long ago in those natural forests yonder. My younger son looks up at me and asks, “Why have not you taken us there? We wish to see where you used to go with your grandpa.” I am dumbfounded. An epiphany!
I have stolen from them what I enjoyed as a little boy. I have deprived them of what Mother Nature had bestowed upon all of us. Surely, people of my grandpa’s generation also used to visit the forest when they were young? And possibly their own ancestors too? Obviously, that is how grandpa knew of the value of the forest for holistic development? My sons have since joined the Greta Thunberg gang and they do not spare me in their criticism. I am proud of them while I am ashamed of myself, if at all these two feelings can arise in the human heart at the very same time. But what I have done, cannot be undone.
Well, the parks and the forests can surely co-exist, so that the aggregated capital can increase a bit and then saturate, instead of having to remain constant. After all, a conscientious city planner should realise that every inhabitant in the city may not have the time, energy or the wherewithal to go to the forest a few kilometres away [especially if he/she does not own a car and there is no public transportation out to the forest]. For such people [who may perhaps account for a sizable percentage of the city population], the city parks are indeed worthwhile investments the municipality can make. A poor substitute, yes, but something good better than nothing.
We came from the forests, right? Those of you who believe that God created Adam and Eve and we all trace our lineage back to a ‘poisoned apple in the Garden of Eden’ (now was that a park or a forest?) may take a hard left. But when you have already read through the article, maybe you have no choice but to pause and ponder. Then, head to the park for a quiet walk, or if there is a forest nearby, you could go there as well for some introspection.
[1] Robert Solow, Joseph Stiglitz and John Hartwick are economists known for their theory on economic growth
[2] of, relating to, or resulting from the influence of human beings on nature
G Venkatesh is a ‘global citizen’, currently serving at The Energy and Resources Institute’s School of Advanced Studies (New Delhi, India). Prior to this, he was Associate Professor at the Karlstad University in Sweden. has published a memoir, four volumes of poetry, four e-textbooks, numerous scientific publications, crosswords, and magazine articles over time. He is a ‘sustainabilist’ who sketches in his spare time, likes singing, and is a sports enthusiast, cricket in particular.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Borderless 