Sanctimonia Binocs, Bhubaneswar, 5 June 2025
Sanctimonia’s Royal Roadblock: Environment Day Delivers the King a Dose of Reality
Hark, ye citizens of Sanctimonia! Our king, having dutifully (and no doubt, ceremoniously) concluded his Environment Day celebrations, found himself in a peculiar predicament. As he prepared to depart for his official residence, a royal confusion descended upon him. “Which road, pray tell, shall we navigate today?” he pondered, gazing out at the familiar yet suddenly perplexing cityscape.
Ever the pragmatist, His Majesty turned to his chauffeur, instructing him to take the “shortcuts” through the capital’s charming, albeit less-trodden, by-lanes. A splendid idea, one might think, to bypass the usual traffic and bask in the quaint authenticity of local life.
Alas, little did our king know that these very by-lanes, once charming shortcuts, had become the personal dumping grounds of Sanctimonia’s notorious building mafia. Piles of sand rose like miniature mountains, stacks of bricks formed impromptu barricades, and stray construction debris littered the asphalt, turning what should have been a smooth royal passage into an obstacle course worthy of an ancient chariot race.
When the royal conveyance inevitably ground to a halt amidst a particularly impressive mound of gravel, the king, his regal brow furrowed with bewilderment, summoned his Revenue Minister and Urban Planning Minister. “What is this?” he demanded, gesturing imperiously at the chaotic scene. “Which city roads are these? Why is this material here?”
The two ministers, masters of the straight face and the non-committal shrug, looked at each other with an air of profound ignorance. They gave the king a blank stare, as if he were speaking in a forgotten dialect. Clearly, the intricate tapestry of Sanctimonia’s by-lanes, especially those subtly claimed by the building mafia, was beyond their ministerial purview. One could almost hear the crickets chirping in the awkward silence.
The netizens, ever the watchful eyes of Sanctimonia, wasted no time in reminding the king of his past promises. “Where is the promise of encroachment to be shifted out, Your Majesty?” their digital shouts echoed through the city’s virtual public squares. The collective memory of the populace, it seems, is far sharper than that of the royal cabinet.
At the end of this rather eventful Environment Day, it was the building mafia who were undoubtedly the happiest lot. Their illicit dumping grounds remained unchallenged, their operations unrecorded, and their influence seemingly invisible to the highest echelons of power. The king, now back in his officially accessible residence, was left to sulk, pondering the perplexing predicament of his high-ranking ministers, particularly those in charge of Revenue and Urban Planning.
One can almost hear the gears grinding in his royal mind: Is he thinking of recalling the Law Minister, despite his recent woes, for some stern, perhaps even traffic-light-uprooting, action? For in Sanctimonia, when faced with an insurmountable pile of literal and metaphorical debris, sometimes the only solution is to throw a forgotten minister at the problem and hope for a miracle. God save Sanctimonia, indeed, from its own administrative maze.
