GENRE-HUMOR, A SATIRE WRITTEN ON KESTHO, OUR TEA SHOP OWNER, IN NIT ROURKELA, (CIRCA- 25 LONG YEARS AGO)

KESHTHO, THE ORIGINAL FATHER OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, HUMAN SUSTENANCE, SECULARISM, AND SCIENTIFIC TEMPER.

. If there was any one person who fascinated me during my entire four years stay in the college, it was Keshtho, our tea shop owner. (You might have thought that it was some pretty girl or some lovely looking lady faculty. No, certainly not.) 

When I saw Keshtho for the first time in my life, I was somehow reminded of a story that was told to me by my late and sorely missed father. (May the Almighty Bless his noble soul), where he had recounted to me as to how he had chosen the ugliest and the grossest and the crudest and most hideously deformed young man in the entire village as his best man, when he had come to my mother’s village to see my mother, during that great Indian matrimonial ceremony of “boy seeing girl”, in order to obtain the girl’s approval before the betrothal is finalized and the nuptials sealed. Needless to say, my mom fell for my dad, and the rest, as they say, is history. His story gave some inspiration and hope to his chronically and congenitally stupid, deformed, malformed, thick, dense and otherwise obviously challenged in every possible way son, i.e. yours truly. Surely there was some respite, some hope, in desperation too for yours truly, and our good old Kestho made even someone as insipid, gross, and ungainly as yours truly, look really good, by comparison. I am always very pleased and delighted whenever I meet someone, who in my own perception, is uglier, fatter, shorter, more gross, cruder, more uncouth, more insipid, more bland and uninspiring, stupider etc. than yours truly. Naturally, his very sight warmed up the cockles of my heart. Had he been fatter and more obtuse than me, that would have been the icing on the cake for me, but unfortunately, that was not to be.

But all said and done, the badly scarred and pockmarked from smallpox, Keshtho, was also a visionary who was far ahead of his times, when it came to sustainable growth and management of resources that are getting increasingly meager. He was painfully aware of the limits to which we could exploit the scarce and limited resources of Mother Earth with impunity, and with scant regard for future generations, and in this way, he was ahead of his times and I believe that he was also the inspiration of many of the environmentalists of today. (We came to know about the need for resource conservation and the need for recycling of scant supplies of nature’s bounties only very long after we had left our college). And as a result of this strong conviction and his grim determination to recycle in order to save our Planet Earth, Keshtho used to recycle everything, starting from today’s used tea leaves, yesterday’s used tea leaves, used tea leaves from one week back, yesterday’s milk, yesterday’s tea leftovers, yesterday’s other leftovers, and also those of the day before yesterday, and what not. Our environmentalist and sustainable growth champion ensured that absolutely nothing went waste in his tea shop. Absolutely everything was recycled to their full potential, and into extinction.

His tea was also an apt antidote for any species of bigoted kind of people of all denominations, particularly religious extremists and caste chauvinists and other jingoists. The knowledge about the fact that the tea that they just drank contained remnants of the tea that had been drunk by Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, other religions, different castes, even people from other nationalities, and also both the sexes on yesterday, the day before, and maybe one full week back, would certainly be very cathartic and humbling experience for them. Hopefully, by this time, our champion of national integration, cross-cultural assimilation, religious tolerance, and unity in diversity, the inimitable Keshtho, would have taught them a lesson that they are not going to forget in their entire lifetimes. Keshtho is the inspiration and the cause, and also the father of the religious tolerance and cross-cultural fraternity that is exhibited by the quintessential Rengcollian, in this manner.  (Kestho is going on a fathering spree here!!!)

Keshtho’s unswerving commitment towards the causes of the environment and its conversation also had a few quirky aspects to it. His deep sense of obligation to recycling of resources, sometimes led to some very compulsive behavior by him, albeit with very lofty and noble intentions. He had this fetish for recycling even yesterday’s dishwater, for some strange reason. The dishwater in which he washed the glasses and plates appeared to be an eternal pool into which make up water was added continuously, but none was taken out. I have never ever seen him changing the dishwater even once during my entire stay in REC, Rourkela. This kind of strange behavior was not necessitated due to any water shortage. Rourkela, with four rivers running through it, has never witnessed a water crisis in its entire history. But the prophetic and clairvoyant master environment champion in Keshtho knew that in the future, even water was going to be a scarce commodity, and he could anticipate and foresee the water rationing in Cape Town, South Africa, as seen today, way back in the nineteen nineties. He had a message for everybody in his niggardly use of this precious resource of water. But unfortunately, the message was lost on most of the students, except for the highly intuitive and receptive students like yours truly.  

Now, we all know that there are more water and air on our planet, than there is land, i.e. there are more liquids and gases available than solids. And so did Keshtho. But when taken from his perspective as a messiah for the entire humanity, his conclusion was that food shortages, particularly of the foods in the solid state like cereals, vegetables, pulses, eggs etc. are imminent in the future, and they are going to progressively become more scarce and even more difficult to procure. But liquids and gases are relatively more abundant on earth. A few experiments were conducted in this area by the scientifically oriented Keshtho, with the able assistance of the willing students of REC, Rourkela, with a view to ensuring the survival of entire humanity in times that were going to get progressively tougher. Keshtho, the scientifically oriented one, had already keenly observed that liquids and gases are more abundant in this universe than solids. The clairvoyant futurologist in Keshtho could foresee a world where there are only liquids and gases to consume, and very few solid food items for the burgeoning population, a something that even we cannot imagine about even now. So our champion scientist conducted one grand experiment after another, where the students survived for hours, days, and sometimes even months, on just Chai   (tea, liquid) and Sutta   (cigarette, gas). And in an apparent contravention of all known medical information and knowledge, most of us are still alive and kicking, once again proving the inimitable and multifaceted and multitalented Kestho, right on one more occasion. One more feather up the cap of the great man and noble soul.   

What more do I need to say here friends, except to conclude by saying three cheers for the one and only Keshtho !!!

IF U ARE LOOKING FOR A RADICALLY DIFFERENT AND ROLLICKINGLY HUMOROUS KIND OF READ, PL. DO DROP DOWN AT 
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