Insignificant Victories

Dung-Dung had just gone out to deliver a pizza when the end of days began.

It started with a small tremor, barely noticeable at first. Then it started to grow, accompanied with a citywide sound rattling glass (The story is set in a city, genius! Of course in the villages there was no such sound ). Cracks then appeared on the ground, through which the forms of unknown horrors below could be glimpsed (The horrors remain unknown, because everyone died that day). As the first drops of a red rain started tippering on the stranded cars, the sun went out.

Dung-Dung found himself on the highway to hell, still astride his pizza delivery moped. There was a huge traffic jam at the entrance to the netherworld. Apparently the hellspawn were staging a protest march against the sudden increase in work (They were actually singing The Internationale, accompanied by posters which read 'Demons of Hell, Unite! You losers have lost everything already and wont be getting anything in return, but wtf!') . Dung-Dung suddenly realized that something was wriggling in his pocket. He felt inside and saw that his delivery address had changed to "13/2012 Beelzebub Avenue, 9th Circle"

"Hey, thats the boss himself!" A hoarse voice croaked behind him. A small demon had perched on the Pizza Box, and was trying his best hide a pizza slice behind his wings (It had a potbelly. Not that it matters anything to our story, or for that matter to anyone).

"Give that back, freeloader!" Dung-Dung cried indigantly. Then he sighed desolately, "Naah eat it. Whats the point now?"

"Thanks man!" the demon beamed at him, showing his stained and broken teeth. "Its not everyday we get to eat some cooked food you know. You wouldnt be having some ketchup would you?" he added hopefully.

Dung-Dung tossed him a sachet of ketchup (and some chilly flakes and oregano, because he was basically a nice guy), and then helped himself to a slice of pizza (one with lots of pepperoni).

He was chomping thoughtfully when suddenly there was a bright bang (Notice how the rules of grammar start breaking down with the advent of apocalypse). Lucifer appeared before him, in blazing red and wielding fireballs, looking mightily pissed off.

"Whats the big idea, Dung-Dung?" he boomed, freezing the small demon (My sources tell me that its name was Mr. Anderson, once again an unverifiable, and completely useless fact) as it tried to scamper off on Dung-Dung's moped." I wanted this pizza for myself, and you two are guzzling it down here. There is only one slice left! Nice going, I must say."

"Err.. Umm.. Sir.. I think.. "

"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU THINK!" roared the Morningstar. "I want my Pizza now, or else you will be spending the rest of eternity wandering in the Serbonian Bog (Go on, look it up on the wiki.. go on). I will personally give you a tour of the nine circles, and will oversee a Cain Category welcoming committee at each of them.  Irresponsible idiot, no wonder your species got doomed."

Then Dung-Dung did something he had never done before. Very slowly he picked up the remaining slice of Pizza, and proceeded to devour it with ghoulish relish, all the while giving the devil the one-fingered salute.Lucifer looked at Dung-Dung with a surprised scowl, and then flew off without a word.

Dung_Dung started his moped, and moved on, feeling a strange sense of accomplishment.

The demons kept on singing The Internationale.

The devil ordered a pizza from the shop opposite to Dung-Dung's (Maybe his order went into the voice mail. What do I know?).

And the world kept on burning.

An ode to sleep (A lazy man's rationale)

There are many ways in which people can waste their time. Sleeping is NOT one of them. I strongly believe that if people slept for more hours every day, the world would be a much better place. In fact, an ideal world would be something where people do nothing but sleep. In short, something like this -

Now I know what everybody is thinking right now! "What a lazy bum! What price to human knowledge and progress? What about staying fit and working? What, if we might add, about enjoying life?"

And I say to you all, what about them? All human endeavors, throughout history, have been essentially been directed towards improving the human condition, selectively or globally. From Edison's bulb to the Wright Brother's  planes, from Pax Americana to the quest for Lebensraum, the ultimate aim for any project has been to improve the quality of life for certain individuals. And it has brought the world to the brink of destruction. It seems that our society cannot exist in a stable equilibrium with the rest of the planet, and ours is a race destined to be a disruptor. The only decent thing to do, if we really love our beautiful blue planet, is to get ourselves extinct before we do anymore harm. The most enjoyable way of doing that is to sleep indefinitely. Let me elaborate on that.


Sleeping is the state where the human body expends the least amount of energy. By spending less energy, we shall be in turn consuming lesser overall energy, and thus killing our planet lesser.


While sleeping (and by that I mean sleeping only, naughty), we cannot reproduce. Thus this will solve our population problems. 

While sleeping, we can not offend each other. Also we can not indulge in the pastimes typical to our species, like  invade, kill, steal and rape. Thus peace process will not be a process anymore, and become a reality.


While sleeping, we cannot see other people. This will cause the fall of all racial and social divides across the human society.


Also the need to sleep more can induce the more brilliant leaps of logic the human brain can aspire to. I understood this during my engineering days, when every morning I used to convince myself about why I needed to bunk the lecture and sleep a couple of hours more. Unfortunately, this benefit is not so helpful, since as per my suggestion we should be sleeping all the time, and not needing brainwork at all.

Finally, its an observed fact that death during sleep is the most peaceful of all. This is primarily because while sleeping, people don't fear death! Thus, in one swoop, all religions will cease to exist, if we just sleep all the time.

Hmm.. now that I have expended so much energy into writing this post, let me go back to my ground state, and balance my energy expenditure :)