Jilpasura drops his heavy school bag on his bed and picks up his Nintendo DS to play Metroid Prime.
“Not before you’ve had your lunch, young asura”, says Jalsa Rakshasi
“I won’t eat unless you tell me a story”
“Ah well. Ok. I’ll tell you the tale of the obsessive compulsive Prahlada who had his father served as lunch to a hungry lion”
“No. That’s for bedtime. This is lunchtime. I want another story”
“Ah. So you have put up the new Ravana poster your uncle bought for you on Ghatothkatchmas.
Shall I tell you the tale of this legendary Electric Veena rockstar who got into trouble for trying to help a lady who had an abusive husband and a paranoid brother-in-law?”
“Yes. yes. Tell me that story”
“Not before you eat your meat”
“Yeah yeah. How can I get any pudding if I don’t eat my meat, right?”
“Yes. That’s a good asura. Now, hear the tale of the legendary Electric Veena rockstar. He was a brilliant musician, so musically gifted that legend has it that during a concert in Yaazhpaanam, a critic exclaimed that Ravana did not just have a head for music, he had 9 of them. Such was his mastery.”
“Oh. So that was the legend about the multiple heads. I actually used to think that they were real heads. But wait, weren’t there 10 of them?”
“Don’t be silly. Even if he had to have more than a single head, it had to be an odd number so that he could balance all of them on his neck. 10 heads will make it 5 on one side of the neck and 4 on the other. Anyway, let me continue. One day, he learnt of this fair maiden, Sita, who was in exile, suffering a tall, strapping egomaniac of a husband and a paranoid brother-in-law who kept drawing rekhas around her to prevent her from leaving her hut to enjoy the beauty of the sylvan forest outside.”
“How cruel! So what did our rockstar do?”
“Well. what do you think great instrumentalists do when they start liking someone else’s wife? They compose a special song for the lady in distress and do a live gig in the forest”.
“But wait. What about the deer?”
“That’s a lie. Think about it. If you were a handsome electric veena player with a huge fan following, would you send a deer to entice a lady in distress from her hut? That would be ridiculous.”
“So what did Ravana do”
“Ah. He composed a song for Sita”
What will you do when you get lonely
And nobody’s waiting by your side?
You’ve been running and hiding much too long
You know, it’s his foolish pride
Si….ta, you got me on my knees
Sita, I’m begging darling, please Sita
Darling, won’t you cross Lakshman’s line
“Oh boy, beautiful. And did she fall for it?”
“Yes, she did. Who wouldn’t, and she accepted his invitation to spend some time at his sea side mansion in Sri Lanka.”
“Ooh. That must have annoyed her husband and brother-in-law”
“Oh yes it did, despite the fact that Sita was only there as an honoured guest, enjoying the pleasures of his mansion with several handmaidens at her beck and call. Not once did our rockstar make any advances towards her.”
“So what did the angry husband do”
“He did what all angry amit_123 husbands do. He declared war”
“But did he not bother to find out the facts before embarking on a path of violence”
“Oh yes he did. He sent a mosk (Messenger Of the Simian Kind) over to our Ravana’s mansion, and instead of patiently listening to Sita’s side of the story, the mosk was more interested in using his flame-thrower tail to burn the place to the ground”
“Sad. Did our rockstar retaliate?”
“Of course he did. Like all rockstars, he composed another song to commemorate the event”
We all came to Lanka
On the Palk straits shoreline
To make friends with Sita
we hadn’t much time
Big Rama and his brother
were angry all around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground
Smo…ke on the water. Fire in the sky.
“You should listen to the veena lead on this one. Absolutely brilliant”
“What happened next”
“Sigh. Things were headed towards a confrontation of massive proportions. Except that Ravana expected this to be a Guitar Hero face off. He wasn’t quite expecting nukes.”
“What? Nukes? This is crazy.”
“It always is, when amit_123 and blind rage cozy up at the jealousy drive-in”
“So what happened in the war? Surely a Fender Veenacaster is no match for a nuke”
“The legendary rockstar lost, and Rama took Sita back, not before he had her clinically irradiated to check for any impurities, and then dumped her in the forest when an Ariel Salesman spread vile rumours about her.”
“Sad. Paati. Aren’t there any happy endings in our stories?”
Doing Jalsa & Showing Jilpa 
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