The Tale of A-Merry-go land

Selected as the winner of ‘Make Rostra Great Again!’, a political satire writing competition in Rostra ’18.



This is the tale of A merry-go woodland, that lay somewhere beyond the valley of balance and Highlands of sanity. The usually mutually indifferent, self-consumed denizens dwelling the merry-go woodland, would huddle together on every fourth equinox of the fall, to select one from themselves, amerrygans as they fondly christened themselves, as a tradition, to elevate to the status of the “nutcase”, the supreme commander-in-charge of all the “nuts” of the forest.

It so happened that the Berserk Elephant, nicknamed the sandfoxhead, who had to his credit, several towering gilded oaks, and a weird pastime routine of grabbing pussycats by the tails, and a penchant for awkwardly trumpeting about his daughter’s constitution, announced his will for contending the Quadrennial. Just like his other boorish, myriad, random, incoherent trumpetings, the wildfolk of the woodland, ignored him initially. But, a shocking number of red necked white hawks, amongst other raptors, rallied behind him, talons outstretched, who believed, they of all birds, should’ve the sky solely to themselves. Before anyone could realise, the sandfoxhead had amassed an entire armada of white wolves, fangs bared, howling in his wake, that the black and resultant grey ones had contaminated their blood.

Meanwhile, the most likely contender for the Nutcase Quadrennial, the Hill Eric Lynn Don-key, the most public of the many mates of Bill C Lynn Don-key, a former Nutcase, was ceaselessly repeatedly braying about making all breeds of horses equal, as the donkeys.
Meanwhile, rumors had it that their respective daughter Chill C Lynn Don-key and E van kaa Trunk elephant had struck a friendship.

Amongst the traditional strongholds of the C Lynn Don-key family, the equine sachslands and the far-go wells, an octagenarian wise serpent, Burn E Sandvipers, rose by burrowing beneath the oil plantations of Berserk Elephant’s symbiote, T. Rex Diggerson, and exposing how the innocent seeming Donkeys, asking to make horses donkeys, had found special grazing mates in Arabian Horses from far off lands, who as a queer habit, unanimously neighed in chorus, “Saw-Thee Oil Fields”.

At the rather abrupt conclusion of the tale, and surprising turn of events, due to the Berserk Elephant breaking down the fourth wall and revealing that the word limit of the entry was finite, the Don-keys tricked the serpent by depositing dung on his senile heat sensing pits, making him feel the oil was gone, and the Berserk “sandfoxhead” Elephant, with some help Put-in by Vlad E Deer and a cunning namesake storyteller fox new Z, emerged victorious, despite most animals of the forest hating him for a variety of reasons. The red necked white hawks circled ominously driving out the doves and fellow redhawks, and ruled supreme, watching over the merry-go woodland, besides the ancestral forest spirits of fellow Rip-up-lickans Ape Lincoln, Buzzard Nickson, Ron Ant Rig-an-election and John, Fitz, Gerald, Ken & Eddy, wondering how their glorious feats could’ve possibly been emulated by a drunkard of such notoriety.

– Pitamber Kaushik

Picture Credits: Patrick LaMontagne