Rat rebellion

By M J Aslam

An autocrat, black in complexion & deadliest in character, ruled somewhere in the continent of Asia. He lived in a castle. Feeling greatly angered by his oppression on people, and to bring justice to them, an army of rats of the area started invading fortified walls of his castle.

To safeguard his authoritarian rule from rat-rebellion, he ordered thickening of the mortar on both sides of the castle-walls. His orders were executed but, the double concrete walls couldn’t, still, prevent the ‘perfidious’ rats from attacking and damaging them. It created, therefore, law and order problem inside the castle. Expressing fury over perfidy of the native rats, he called his henchmen seeking their advice about protection of the castle against the rat-rebellion.

They advised him to have a consultation with a world-infamous intrigant, Ya-Hud, who had notoriety to his name for guiding others, as well, for plotting machinations & stratagems against their opponents, in addition to his having long experience of crushing rat-rebellions in the world.

He told him that the walls of his castle could be insulated & secured against the rats only by raising a wall of human heads outside them and that that would certainly deter the rebels from manoeuring their future attacks. However, he questioned the rouge-adviser:

“that is a wonderful idea, sir. But what about moat? Revolting rats may swim inside through it, although my valiant sepoys (police constables) will shoot them from inside the battlements, if they observe them suspiciously moving outside”.

“For that too, there is a solution in my devilish-head. The moat of the castle will be fed, thence, not with water, but the blood of the humans whose heads will form outer walls of the castle”, said anti-human Ya-Hud.

“But the disloyal rats may still try swim through blood-filled-channel”, apprehended the autocrat.

“No, not all. Rats can’t swim through it”, Ya-Hud rejoined & re-assured him.

The autocrat had a considerable police force for maintaining order inside the castle and the lowest rank of that force was that of the sepoys working on low wages. He orchestrated a disastrous strategy for translating Ya-Hud’s evil idea into action. He incited & offered multi-promotions to the sepoys who accepted to carry out special operations under the plan for getting as many human heads as possible for the urgent outer wall of the castle and hot human blood of theirs for its moat. Among the sepoys, some with good senses of humanity & sanity didn’t show any inclination for higher grades by indulging in human massacres and so, they decided to operate normally for maintaining the order inside the castle. But a group of many among them, enticed by subhuman greed, commenced special operations at the behest of the bloodthirsty and power-hungry autocrat by going on a killing spree of their own people in fields, homes, on roads, wherever found.

In a quick span of time, the wall of human heads was raised outside, around the castle-walls, while moat was filled with their red hot blood that deterred the rats, thenceforth, from launching their attacks for weakening or breaking the castle-walls & creating inside law & order issues for the dictator.

Depending on their performances, the killer-sepoys & their accomplice were elevated by him to higher positions of thanedars (superintendents), faujdars (senior superintendents) & kotwals (chief superintendents) in his realm by grant of multi-promotions, simultaneously. Those who fetched more human heads for fortification of the castle-walls & more blood for its moat were awarded and rewarded in cash & kind, higher ranks apart. The autocrat’s castle was got secured, thus, under a barbaric scheme from the invasion of the rebel rats who were banished forever from the adjoining area to some unknown place.