Sanctimonia Binocs, Bhubaneswar, 6 November 2025
Hark, ye perpetually gridlocked and aesthetically wounded citizens of Sanctimonia!
The air of our kingdom is thick, not with the sweet scent of sacred prasad, but with the acrid fumes of a political slugfest, a truly theatrical drama that has all the subtlety of a chariot stampede. On one side, the Kingsmen, thumping their chests (and their rival’s heads, occasionally), bellow about the glorious “new era”, all while discreetly tripping over the ever-present potholes. On the other, the Jester’s faithful, roaring in righteous indignation, point fingers at the King’s incompetence, even as they conveniently forget their own glorious term of gridlock. It’s a marvelous exhibition: a battle fought entirely with sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing for the common netizen4.
Meanwhile, the candidates in the upcoming, utterly baffling Nuapada by-election – a contest still reeling from an inconclusive bloodline test – have decided the best way forward is to blame everyone else. They accuse both the King and the Jester of a masterful, bipartisan backstabbing, claiming that while the royal rivals brawled, the situation in Nuapada itself, far from improving, has instead been deteriorating faster than the King’s public approval ratings. It seems the only thing uniting the kingdom is a collective disappointment in its leaders, a tragic consensus arrived at with remarkable speed.
Divine Disorder and Dagger Sharpening
In the holy town of Puri, a wave of profound, administrative relief has washed over our dynamic duo. The perpetually sulking Law Minister and his conspiratorial cohort, Brutus (the Temple Administrator is one of the Law Minister’s conspirators), are reportedly a relieved lot as the frantic, devotion-punishing month of Kartik finally whimpers to a close. They are ecstatic that despite their engineered chaos—the corruption of the process that turned piety into a painful ordeal – nothing so catastrophic as a stampede (again) occurred.
But tranquility is the enemy of a true conspirator. Even as the Law Minister enjoys his momentary respite, Brutus, ever the meticulous plotter, remains fixated on his true calling: the pursuit of the perfect weapon. The grapevine whispers that he is still on the relentless lookout for the best stone to sharpen his dagger, presumably in preparation for a new act of betrayal that will be as sharp as it is politically expedient.
The Urban Minister’s Colourful Calamity & The Road Congress Farce
The beleaguered Urban Minister – a man known for his panic over forty thousand stray dogs – has found a new, monumental task: sprucing up the capital for the grand, high-stakes Road Congress. High-ranking dignitaries from the Super King’s capital are descending, and our Minister is in a frenzy of forced beautification.
However, the result is a grotesque masterpiece of bad taste. The “sprucing up,” meant to convey regal order, instead looks utterly disdainful, particularly due to a haywire colour combination that clashes with the sobriety of a government that pretends to care about efficiency. This frantic application of paint and polish is concentrated solely on the royal parade route: a desperate run from the Governor’s house to the Janata Maidan.
The ensuing chaos will be truly legendary. The authorities, recognizing that the roads, already struggling with perpetual waterlogging, will descend into an impassable Gordian Knot, are now seriously planning to give mass holidays. This, dear citizens, is peak Sanctimonia: rather than fixing the roads for the guests, we will simply force the entire populace to stay home, turning an international event into a city-wide, traffic-induced quarantine.
The Road Congress itself promises to be a legendary farce, a summit of surface-level absurdity. The esteemed International Delegates, having successfully navigated the freshly painted, yet functionally disastrous roads, will find their key sessions dedicated not to discussing asphalt quality, but to the more pressing issue of Saffron Pantone Matching – the Minister’s chief obsession being whether the “Emergency Road Repair Orange” clashes with the “Royal Public Works Saffron.” The delegates will be further bewildered by the mandatory inclusion of the Urban Minister’s Stray Dog Manifesto, now titled ‘Canine Consequence: A Pothole to Paw-Print Policy,’ which will be presented with much fervor despite having nothing to do with road engineering. And finally, the entire concluding session will be abandoned early when the newly-painted podium collapses under the weight of the Deputy CM’s ego and the sheer volume of “inconclusive” Nuapada bloodline tests accidentally piled on it. The visitors will leave not with new road policy, but with a lingering memory of haywire colours, stray dogs, and the profound realization that in Sanctimonia, a road is less a means of transport and more a medium for performance art.
The King, of course, continues to muse about dogs and his own identity, utterly oblivious to the administrative and chromatic disaster his underlings are brewing. The citizenry, confused, battered, and perpetually broke, can only look to the horizon, where the Jester is recovering well. His booming, glorious laughter is needed more than ever to slice through the saffron-tinted absurdity of it all.
