The Story of Ant & Grasshopper

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

Indian Version of the Story….

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter. The Grasshopper thinks the Ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this

poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant’s house.

Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding

that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Unite Nations criticizes the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) .

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for ‘Bharat Bandh’ in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.

CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the ‘Grasshopper Rath’.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ‘Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act’ [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes ‘Special Reservation ‘ for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in Government Services. The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing

left to pay his retroactive taxes, it’s home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it ‘A Triumph of Justice’. Lalu calls it ‘Socialistic Justice ‘. CPM calls it the ‘ Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden’ The United Nations invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly….

Many years later…

The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley ..

100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ..

American Version of the Story….

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America’s stunned by the sharp contrast.

Later that night, undercover operatives that are still safely under cover, apprehend the Grasshopper and whisk him off to Guantanimo Bay, where he is held indefinitely as an enemy combatant.

Since the writ of Habeus Corpus has been suspended, the Grasshopper stays at Gitmo without any opportunity to defend himself. When he refuses to recant his statement concerning the ant, he is waterboarded and sent back to his cell, which he shares with a computer programmer from Nebraska named Kareem.

Senator John McCain co-authors a bill with Joe Lieberman to grant equal rights to grasshoppers, then votes against it on the Senate floor.

Later in the week, Justice Scalia issues a statement saying the Grasshopper just needs to get over it.

The Ant digs a new wing in his colony using illegal immigrant carpenter ants from Tijuana. Several of the carpenter ants are tragically electrocuted while taking showers installed by KBR in the new wing. When an ultra-liberal website tries to break the story, the ant and all the surviving carpenter ants go on a team-building hunting trip with VP Cheney.

Moral of the story: Go back to sleep, everything’s just hunky-dory!