Sanctimonia Binocs, Bhubaneswar, 7 August 2025
Hark, ye long-suffering and utterly parched citizens of Sanctimonia! The kingdom, it seems, has run out of the most fundamental of resources: water. Not just for drinking, but for dousing the flames of despair. Our king, a man whose every expression now screams “helpless,” finds himself utterly unable to respond to the relentless string of self-immolations that have become a grim and depressingly regular feature of our land. The royal water hose, once a symbol of his power, has dried up completely. All that emerges from its once-mighty spout are a few pathetic droplets, a fitting metaphor for the king’s dwindling authority.
The administration, in a move of typical Sanctimonian logic, has decided to hold the police responsible for “abetting” these suicides. Officers, once the symbols of law and order (however flawed), are now being suspended or exiled to the farthest, most infrastructure-devoid corners of the kingdom, a fate worse than any prison. In a particularly baffling act of injustice, the very police officer who had the courage to arrest the student leaders who had abetted the FM College self-immolation has been ordered to go on leave. A great and terrible question hangs in the air for the netizens: what hope is there for law and order when those who uphold it are punished for doing so?
Meanwhile, the political stage is a maelstrom of fear and self-preservation. Our lady Deputy CM, that figure of once-unflinching determination, has gone into hiding. The Super King, it seems, is not happy with her, and the fate of her position dangles by a thread thinner than a spider’s silk. The other Deputy CM, ever the opportunist, is playing a different game. He has gone and offered the “prasad” of the Holy Triad to the Super King, a blatant act of political pilgrimage designed to consolidate his position. The netizens, with a collective snigger, wonder if this man, this purveyor of holy sweets, is in fact the real Brutus.
In this vortex of chaos, our Law Minister, though unseen, has not been idle. He has issued a decree so grand, so utterly irrelevant to the kingdom’s pressing issues, that it can only be a masterstroke of Sanctimonian governance. All new and renovated government buildings must now be painted in the official colour of saffron! He has even, in a moment of pure bureaucratic brilliance, contacted “Pantone” to get the exact hue. The cost of this grand re-colouring? A fortune, of course, a sum the netizens know the treasury can ill afford.
The very place of the Holy Triad is not immune to this madness. The temple authorities are in a tizzy, their heads spinning with a new policy. Prasad sellers, those venerable merchants of divine sweets, are to be given new uniforms with a colour code and, most importantly, the price written on the back. A triumph for market transparency, perhaps, but a logistical nightmare for a system that thrives on chaos.
Oh, my beloved kingdom, where are we heading? The Jester, our last bastion of sanity and mirth, has finally succumbed to the madness. He is in a state of deep depression, his laughter silenced by the sheer, unadulterated stupidity of it all. The netizens can only cry out, “Ooh!” as they look up to the Holy Triad, their final hope resting on a miracle that seems more and more remote with each passing day.
