Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

“Wasn’t there a meet here?”, MIB (Mr. Indian Bond) asked.

“There is a meet here everyday”, snapped Black Mamba

“But there is no one here!”

“And your point would be?”

“There can’t be meet with just like two people, one of whom was not even supposed to be there”

“Says who?”

“I mean… heck this is pathetic”

“lol”, said Black Mamba as she walked off leaving Mr. Bond to wonder more.

Okay, that was just fictional. The Asylum missed its date with fame by a very thin margin. If only it had advertised in advance about its virtual meets, then things would have been different. But then fame is better left out of the common room.

++++++

There were rumors at first, that McMurphy had lost his insanity which got stronger when the Gazette disappeared without a trace. Soon the rumor mills turned into boos, and then even they fell silent – no melody, no cacophony. But Gazette is used to rumors, and McMurphy more so (do we hear a “hell he must, he creates them”? We’ll let that pass).

Since Gazette was missing from circulation for months, we decided to chip in with a special edition: the anniversary edition of the Gazette!!!

Yeah so what if the anniversary was two months back? Was Gazette ever on time (or for that matter, on the mark)? What’s important is that we have an anniversary edition, and as a part of that we’d do a roundup of the missed action.

First, Gazette would like to welcome all the new inmates, and boy, we have tons of them (we’re NOT alluding to their individual or combined weight, it’s a figure of speech [1]). Welcome all of you. Things have changed around here [2], in the asylum. Our official welcomer rarely sings the welcome song these days. And Gazette, which used to take notice of the new inmates and honor them with badges isn’t doing it either. What you get, instead, is a pamphlet that starts with a gospel and ends with refreshments. How so very refreshing. But then, as Dunbar would say, such is life (or Sach is life, depending upon whether Doc Daneeka is around or not. Mostly he isn’t). So, get used to it. And remember, you don’t get onto the third-page by smiling all the time.

++++++

“Where is the clown?”, the Mad Queen asked, trying to reassemble her durbar.

“He’s under cover”, the ever helpful Marvin informed.

“So dis-cover him!”, snapped the Queen, “and where’s March Hare?”

“They caught him copying, he never learnt his lessons”

“Well he’s learning them now!”, Dunbar whined.

“Do they at least leave him on parole?”, the Queen wondered.

“Yes they do. And he’s a changed man, now”, Marvin observed.

“And when the band you’re in starts playing different tunes I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon”

McMurphy walked in into the Durbar to the utter astonishment of Dunbar who was singing the same song. Dunbar was, understandably, alarmed. Who the hell wants to be in tune with McMurphy? But the song soon died down because both of them were startled by something that resembled, err.. actually nothing that they’d ever heard. It was Mad Queen’s singing. Someone apparently needs to tell her that just because she is sing-a-paar, she doesn’t have to sing aar-paar people’s ears. Only Orr, we contend, has the guts to tell that – and that’s because he appears to be smiling when he says anything due to those crab apples. But if Mad Queen listened, she wouldn’t be, err… Mad Queen.

++++++

The dysfunctional family never had it worse. Daisy, who banged a door onto herself (yes, the family had lots of hidden talents) was not seen in the common room for a while and her alleged twin went sister-shopping, just stopping short of buying one, due to a linguistic error on her part, proving the maxim that those who fight with words would lose to words, their wordly credentials notwithstanding. Anyways, Daisy was understandably hurt and her twin blamed the fiasco on poor Dunbar, the estranged brother who is an easy target after his break with his old employer (the talk of filial relationship among them is completely scandalous in nature and the kind of stuff McMurphy and The Gazette has to live with on a day to day basis, due to their immense popularity).

Mother Rhea has abandoned her twin daughters, and it shows in the way they behave in front of strangers, driving them away with their wild, ill-mannered ways. And even the Captain, who doesn’t serve wine, ran away without playing a single jazzy note. The Gazette, as a rule, doesn’t like to make personal observations, but we would like to appeal to Mother Rhea, through these papers, to reunite the family and err make it a little functional.

On a side(y) note, if that happens, The Gazette would have to be closed. But then it’s used to being closed and reopened all the time. Anyways, this chapter is closed for now.

Ed’s Notes:

[1]: McMurphy has gone paranoid about the interpretations of his meaningless babble. When we tried telling him that he was being paranoid, we got in return this: “Just because you’re a paranoid does not mean they’re not out to get you”. We tried telling him that wasn’t too original, he replied, “Truth is never original. Only fiction is”. Since that was original enough, we let it go at that. We advise our readers to do the same, too.

[2]: Now that’s a meaningless statement. For newcomers, things are different, not changed! And for old timers, they know things have changed. But let’s let this go too. Absence makes the sense go out of even sensible people, and here we’re talking about McMurphy]