Sweet & sour

COMMON MAN

- ‘Hello mister, I will sit near the window seat. I have already kept my luggage on the seat.’

- ‘But sir, I got in to the compartment first to occupy this seat. I just had gone out to have a cup of tea”

-‘So, what? Does this seat belong to your forefathers?’

-‘Look sir, don’t call names’

-‘You don’t know me. I am a famous writer and I want to study looking beyond the windows for my next article’.

-Sir, you may be a great writer, but I am the ‘common man’ of your articles’. So saying, the common man pushed aside the writer’s luggage and sat near the window puffing ‘Beedi’.

PENSIONER

There was a long queue at the Pension counter. Old and infirm were waiting for the counter to open. When the clerk arrived, he announced that only those will be paid the pension who have brought the ‘Life Certificate’ duly attested by a banker or gazetted officer.

Suddenly a young man appeared at counter, winked at the clerk and handed over the life certificate. The clerk stamped it as ‘verified’ and paid the money to him. No one in the queue knew that the life certificate produced by the young man was that of his father who died, 5 years ago.

ANTI SOCIAL ELEMENT

It was an election time and the leader was giving a fiery speech. Suddenly he saw a jeep approaching the dais with few people sitting atop shouting slogans. In a panic state, the leader pointing towards the jeep started shouting over the mike-

‘Look, these people are coming to disrupt the meeting; they don’t want a fair and peaceful election. They are anti social elements,  they are goondas……..’ suddenly the fiery leader became speechless. The occupants of the jeep were his own party men!

.(All the three short satires were translated from my own Hindi satires  published in 1979-80)