BUUUURRRUUUMMMMMMM

My way of explaining recession, unemployment, rice shortage and the general state of madness prevailing on this planet!!

New York City is a beautiful place. In summers you can escape the searing heat by taking refuge in its many parks...more than 1700, says the city government web-site. Well so it happened that when I finally understood the gravity of recession , one sunny bright NY afternoon, I happened to be sitting under a tree , in a park close to school...and was very intently following a squirrel...when suddenly the squirrel turned around started talking to about rising prices... more specifically rising food
prices. It should be noted that rising food prices can be of great interest to a poor graduate student -10 pounds basmati rice cost 23 bucks. Anyway, so the squirrel asked me how I felt about rising pricing and thus began a conversation about how the cost of rice and nuts was just ...well nuts!!

After a while, the squirrel told me that it needed a buck more to buy the required amount of nuts needed to feed his family ( we need to establish the gender of the squirrel here, it is pivotal to rest of the story) and asked if I could give him that one buck. Now I am a very reasonable and poor person and so I told the squirrel - "Listen pal...you are not handicapped, why don't you learn some skills that will aid you in earning the money required to feed your family?" Mr. Squirrel then divulged that he was actually a trained singer and dancer ... and used to do this whole routine in a squirrel club called "NUT CLUB"...the gig included a strip routine and the squirrel was a big hit with the ladies...but then recession hit and the club owner had to cut down on spending and started sacking squirrels left right and center and our little squirrel here also got the red envelope. To add to his woes his wife left him and their kids and went off with another stripper squirrel who had not been sacked. So here I was on a bright and sunny New York afternoon feeling really sad for the squirrel but still did not want to encourage begging. So I said to the squirrel " why don't you do your song and dance routine for me , minus the stripping, and if at the end of your performance i feel entertained enough, I will give you not one but ten dollars". So the unfortunate squirrel, his life stripped naked by the cruelty of the capitalist society, sang and danced for the sake of his kids...and he sang "burrrruuummm, burruuuummmm, buurrruum, burrumm, burruuuuumm."


Footnote: Thank you S for encouraging me to write this on my blog and thank you V for reminding me it's called a footnote.