A Few Thoughts on Independence Day: Behram Contractor (Busybee) Style

Here are a few thoughts on Independence Day, all my own work, as Behram Contractor (a.k.a. Busybee) used to write in his colum “Round and About”. I am going to use his style for this post. Let me know if I am any match for him.

Like I can’t understand why the government and the media is creating such a scare about Swine Flu when they first of all don’t have the facts. Turns out most of the people who died had previous respiratory illnesses.

Like I can’t understand why newspapers have to devote their cover page, their city pages, the editorial, and, in some cases, their sports pages to Swine Flu.

Like with Swine Flu other issues like global warming, HIV, measles, TB, etc., which are claiming many more lives have been ignored, as if they are poor cousins.

I see people frantically holding hankies to their noses, covering it with their palm, looking around suspiciously at me (as I am neither wearing a mask nor a hanky around my nose), and making sputtering and choking sounds, which sound like, “Stay away from me, you idiot, where’s your mask?” Like I don’t see their point. Does the virus enter only through their noses?

Like the present crisis has made a few “mask-millionaires” out of mask manufacturers like my friend Anthonybhai. He says, “What you know men? I pay them hacks thousands of bucks to write about this flu-blue thing, and my maks (he can’t say “masks”) sell like bloody hot cakes, men.”

Like it’s Independence Day and I am supposed to feel free, but with all these difficult thoughts in my mind, I am not feeling free at all. What to do? Can someone with a perpetually jolly good disposition like former-President A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, or Bollywood villain Shakti Kapoor come and cheer me up, puhleeezeee! Even Bappi Lahiri-da would do, he too likes to act funny on camera, I heard.