I think I might know where the missing ex- tourism minister is. I’m referring here to the recent hit-and-run who goes by the pseudonym of Mickey (the rat) Placebo that our police force (Motto: “We Do Have A Motto, But We Don’t Know Where It Is”) has apparently misplaced.
Given the excitement of the ongoing census, you might have missed all the news stories of this Ratol Runaway, which is getting a whole lot of media attention (as difficult as this is to believe) it has nothing to do with Ajmal Kasab.
The background is; Mickey was sweet on a girl, whom we shall call Dania Dorado. One day Dania “by accident” ate a whole tube of Ratol while brushing her teeth. She over-brushed to the point that she was overcome with the resultant euphoria, slipped on the wet floor, ricocheted off the door jamb, (causing multiple contusions to her body), and went comatose.
Mickey meanwhile was busy playing the Casino tables. His sleight-of-hand had just won him a bundle of cash, and he called Dania to give her the good news. But hearing the bad news instead he rushed to her side. Being the Boy Scout that he is, he decided to do his good deed for the day and spend some of his ill-gotten gain trying to revive the lady, so that she would be eternally grateful, fall into his manly arms and have meaningless sex. He flew her here, he flew her there, he flew her everywhere; but alack and alas she succumbed to the charms of the grim reaper instead.
However this interfered with the census taking, after all having people die AFTER having put in all their details defeats the very purpose of a census. It also means a lot of tedious paperwork. So the government ordered an investigation to set out to prove that said Dania was still alive.
This seemed like a good idea, since the Goa government- which is the fourth-largest financial entity in India after the Ambani Brothers, Mayavati and your local paanwala- had not conducted a reliable census with live people since the first Vasco Da Gama landing.
As you can imagine, the census is a huge job.
The enumerators spent thousands and thousands of hours, going from door to door, and producing reams of paper to be kept in a government record room in a 150 metre long bread box containing billions of other pieces of paper and what are believed to be Dr. Jack de Sequeira original spectacles along with the original recipe for Chicken Xacuti.
The reason the government did not get around to ordering a census any sooner is that it has been extremely busy with it’s primary functions, which are (1)spending money; (2)publishing souvenirs on it’s fantasy accomplishments in the last 49 years (3) increasing prices.
When the enumerators finally finished, they released the census report which also contains these alarming findings:
- It turns out that both “Mickey” and “Francisco” is actually the same person, and he used to be a tailor.
- Although according to the Indian Constitution there are supposed to be thirty sitting judges along with the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court, an exhaustive search of the premises, including under all the desks, turned up only a dozen.
- In the last 6 months, the Task Force on Unique Identification Document, headed by Nilesh Nilekani, spent 200 crores, without any authorization or supporting documentation to rescue a monitor lizard and buy Congress party flags. In contrast the Goa government spent only 2 crores to get a feasibility study on the Vasco–Dona Paula sea link.
- Morjim in North Goa is missing. “We think Russia took it,” stated the enumerators, “but every time we called up St.Petersburg to ask about it, they just laughed and hung up.”
Now I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I made up the above census findings. The bad news is the real census findings are worse. I do not refer to the findings that the administration has no idea what happened to 24 kilos of “weed” missing from the police locker. That is totally understandable. Why else would so many foreign tourists stroll around garbage ridden streets, stay in overpriced hotel rooms, eat unpalatable restaurant food served by surly waiters, and hire rip-off taxis with negligent, ill-mannered drivers to drive on dangerous, narrow, ill-maintained roads, if not for the lure of good ganja.
Nor I am referring to the fact that the Chief Minister is off busily inaugurating public toilets and breaking coconuts on road-rollers, such that it leaves little time to attend to routine matters of law and order.
I’m sure if the police took some time out from their highway activities of ripping off unsuspecting tourists on the southern ends of the Mandovi and Zuari bridges, they’d quickly find Mickey and a lot of this so-called “lost” weed.
FIRST POLICEMAN: Ok I’ll just check behind the cushions of this politicos lounge sofa and…. Hey, here’s some! Looks like a total of, let me see, two, three, four….Wow! That’s six whole kilos of weed!
SECOND POLICEMAN: So THAT’S what happened to it! Hey! Is that a Supreme Court justice ?
So I’m confident that both Mickey and the weed are around somewhere. What has me concerned is the government might wake up one day and find fighter aircraft, battle tanks and naval ships missing, and what if we have a defense emergency and we need these missing items? Are our fighter pilots going to sit on the runway and make fighter plane noises with their mouths? After all if the government doesn’t know where it’s own tourism minister is, what ELSE doesn’t it know? For example I heard a tourist guide in Panaji pointing out a huge building to his group calling it “The Secretariat”, and after a while I saw another tourist guide point out a boob-shaped structure in Porvorim informing them that this was “The Secretariat”. This has to be a mistake. Why do we need TWO Secretariats when we have only the one useless government! Unless we’ve lost THAT, too.
So methinx that the Goan government should stop whatever it’s doing and concentrate on finding all the stuff it’s missing. I think a good place would be to start looking in the River Princess.
There’s a lot of stuff in there; it would not surprise me one bit if there was a fighter jet in there somewhere. So I say to the government: Go and get it! And while you’re there please remove Mickey Placebo, because he’s starting to smell.
