This was a wonderful email going around. Just had to put it up.
CLASSIC VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies in the cold.
MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.BBC, CNN, NDTV show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.The world is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration outside the ant's house. Amnesty International and Kofi Annan criticise the government for not upholding the fundamental rigths of the grasshopper.The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support for the grasshopper. Opposition MPs stage a walkout from Parliament.Left parties call for a Bharat Bandh in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a judicial enquiry. Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act (POTAGA) with effect from the beginning of winter.The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA, and having nothing to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by BBC, CNN and NDTV.Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice".
POSTSCRIPT
The ant dies of starvation, and the grasshopper dances away the winter and summer. Come next winter the grasshopper knows nothing about building or maintaining a home. He searches for the ant, but there are not ants anymore. So the grassshopper dies too.Arundhati Roy comes back to claim an award for predicting the environmental collapse that contributed to the extinction of the ant, and then the grasshopper. She donates the money to build a centre for environmental justice.
1 comment:
Hi Rajasree, Dave from Buddhainthebeerglass here. Thanks for your lovely comments on my blog.
I followed the link to your blog and enjoyed reading it very much. It seems like you are more in contact with your chi than me (unintentional poetry!). Keep up the great work, I'll add you to my links. Take care Dave.
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