F.U.C.G.

(Warning : Please read further only if you have a sense of humour and a high tolerance to irreverence. :P)

In the long distant past (possibly when the Ages were Dark and dismal to boot) in the empire where the sun allegedly never set (but has, luckily for its colonies, since set) it is rumoured that a consent had to be procured from the monarch in order to pursue the activity of making babies. Once said consent had been obtained, a sign had to then be put up on the front door proclaiming ‘F0rnication Under the Consent of the King’ (F.U.C.K.). It is hard to tell why this extreme amount of control by the state was imposed. Maybe the king was a control freak and got his kicks by looking at the ledgers and saying ‘Oh! 350 people want to f0rnicate, let me give consent to 50 and let the others stew in their juices. Ha Ha Ha!’ And then giving himself the royal consent, off he would go to tickle his fourth queen. Or maybe, it was a means to control the population, just in case they multiplied too much and thought about revolting against the revolting conditions they lived in, in which case, a revolting peasant would find the royal neck and give it a not-so-royal slit and the kick-desiring royal would be forced to kick the bucket. Quite smart they were, eh, the ‘mai-baap’ of yore.

Well, actually that got me thinking … what if such a policy could be put to work in India as an anti-proliferation measure. That train of thought got me quite excited, I mean, in the mental sense. And I started to think of its consequences. For starters, even if such a policy was formulated, since we have managed to kick out all our raja-log, both desi and videsi, and now have a apunich chunela sarkar firmly entrenched, it would have to be called ‘F0rnication Under the Consent of the Government’ or F.U.C.G. Ughhh! I must say, just introducing the word ‘government’ just made the hitherto highly pleasure-inciting activity suddenly lose all its desirability and become almost as dull and unexciting as a bureaucratic babu. Imagine you and your significant other lying in bed and saying, ‘let’s get this thingamajig from the government.’ ‘Hmmmm…?’ ‘Ummm, let’s get the latest plasma installed in the bedroom instead’. See, that would straight away put off a lot of people from even thinking of trying to make babies. Part of our pesky proliferation problem solved there itself.

Well, let’s say some people refuse to get sidetracked by trashy TV shows even if they are in HD and 3D and are still wanting to steam up a sweat between the sheets. The next step, then would be to register all the applications from these testosterone-junkies. Out of the total of 1.2 billion (and rising) people, let’s say, there are 20 million eagerly waiting couples, and as luck would have it, you are one of those in whose chart Shani was casting a malevolent eye at the house of kiddos, then your application would be lost in the corridors of babudom for the next 30 years by which time your baby-making hormones would have gone into retirement, packed its bags and left, last heard of holidaying in Hawaii, leaving you, shall we say, cold in the extremities and, errr, hot in the middle. Hmmm … halat kharab, upar se kismet bhi kharaab, magar kya karen, such is life, just belt up and bear it, man. And look at the bright side, you complaining fella. So what if you couldn’t save your lineage from dying out, you have just saved the world from the population bomb. Come here and line up for the Bharat Ratna behind all these other nice senior citizens. And wipe that grimace off your face and smile for the camera please …

But what about all those people who after making trips to various holy places, fasting on Saturdays and feasting the holy men, manage to chum up with Shani and get him to move their applications to the front of the line, you ask? Well, you really are having an anxiety-attack, aren’t you? Let me assure you that you can safely put your worries together with all the other ill-fated applications down there in the dungeons, for the Indian babu will always remain a fly-swatting, file-pushing, long lunch-taking, personal errand-running flag-bearer of absentee incompetence. And no amount of Shani-appeasement is going to change that. But what is beginning to worry me is the thought that they might be able to side-step the babu-road-block if they took the help of the lissome Laxmi and shared some of their bootlegged bounty with the babu. Some of the missus’ ill-gotten diamonds packed into a mithai dabba and pressed upon the drooling babu or a creaking peti full of crinkly crores left at the bureaucratic door and the babu might give them the consent even before you finish saying ‘take off your clothes’.

In which case Darwin will rise from the ashes and kick up a big ruckus because we will have changed his theory to ‘survival of the filthiest richest’ and Amnesty International are not going to be too tickled either with the ensuing demographic disaster of proliferating smugglers, extortionists and liquor kings. But Darwin does not need a F.U.C.G. and neither does AI. In their lands it is consent-free, or rather, it’s a free-for-all, so they should count themselves lucky and go and proliferate in their own countries and not try to be the ‘foreign hand’ who is always trying to halt India’s progress. These firangs, I tell you, always interfering.

I know, I know, it’s not fair to the aam janta, who cannot afford to part with mildewed millions. The milling middle class, who is forever trying to add zeros to their paltry savings, trying hard from being hazarpatis, to become lakhpatis to crorepatis. When have they ever allowed boiled and pasty babus get in the way of accomplishing their ends, let me ask? To them what are babus anyway? Mere law-makers! Cogs in the wheel of the great lumbering, slumbering bureaucracy. Who is going to enforce the law? Not these stuffed shirts, with their starched collars and starchier smiles. Bah! The MCs are street smart. Whenever the hormones hit them below the belt, all they will do is pass a few Gandhijis to the hawaldars, the low on salary but high on self-importance law-enforcers and all will be happy. The babu, happy that he is not disturbed in reducing the number of flies in the over-populated fly kingdom, the hawaldar who can now go and buy that silk sari to keep his wife happy in anticipation of you-know-what, and the MC who can now indulge in the most pleasurable exercise ever known. Such a wonderful invention it is - this happiness-circulation device called corruption. I wonder why Anna Hazare was making such a big fuss over it, even trying to kick the bucket in protest, maybe his hormones were on vacation. Or did a Wall Street on him, you know, took a high-dive into nothingness.

But I hate to think of all that matrimonial ads that will surface. Like - ‘Boy: 10th fail, but with F.U.C.G. degree. Of no known employment other than putting degree to good, far and wide use. Seeks beautiful, fair pativrata girl with light eyes, expert in cooking and house management, willing to bring in at least 100 tolas of gold and 10 crores in cash ’. Or ‘Girl : 5th fail, getting close to 40, has rudimentary cooking skills, and most importantly F.U.C.G. Please reply only if you are a doctor, Air Force pilot or CEO or earning a seven figure salary and willing to employ a cook and housemaid. All other applications will be rejected.’ This is not looking too good, is it? And the fellow who was quite happy printing fake 1000 rupee notes will now be able to move from lakhpati to crorepati in a jiffy just by changing the typeface on his printing machine. This is looking downright depressing.

Ok, ok, ok, I know when I’m beaten. I know this idea of mine has as much chance of surviving as a rain-drop in the Saharan desert doing the belly-dance and surviving. So, I guess I’ll have to give it a fair and fitting funeral right here. But I do and most unabashedly hope that it does NOT RIP. I hope its seething, unfulfilled ghost rises to haunt the Indian psyche until they buy enough ‘What an IDEA Sirji’s and indulge in their orgasmic adventures only in virtual 3D. In which case Abhishek Bachan will get all the credit for having stopped India’s monumental baby production activities.

What the @#$%^, a woman’s brain is grossly under-rated, I tell you ...

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