The Drumstick Strikes Back

This is an excerpt from the translated speech that was given on 23^rd December at the International Avian Summit Conference by its supreme leader, General Hen Peck (no relation of Gregory Peck of course) in the national capital.

“My dear brothers and sisters of the fowl fraternity. (Tumultuous applause!)

It is here that we meet to make a resolution for the future. Our future. A Better future.

A brighter future, free from the gloomy confines and miserable hygiene that humans provide us in the name of poultry-farming. We have endured brutalities for a few thousand years in the name of service. But our silent subservience has been mistaken for our weakness. Even with the passage of great civilizations our conditions have not improved unlike the price of our flesh. What sold in Hogg Market for less than 60 rupees now costs a hundred. I believe that’s just inflation. But, then nothing seems changed. Human greed and appetite seems infinite. No matter how many of them die of starvation in Sudan or in Mozambique it hardly worries them. They keep gorging on our flesh and bones after facile debates on topics such as 'world poverty' and 'equitable distribution of wealth' get over in the UN Headquarters. This injudicious and biased distribution of our supreme sacrifices, namely our meat and eggs, is in gross violation of That Plateful Accord our great leader Cuckoo-n-Khamen signed in Egypt with his human counterpart. The terms of the accord seem to have been completely forgotten. As if this heinous undermining of our spirit of service and over-pricing of our flesh was not enough, I hear, some Indian diplomat had the audacity to call us hideous names by comparing our headless brothers with their good-for-nothing politicians. I ask you, What can be more dastardly than this? (A big roar goes up. With no sign of this ebbing, the General Secretary pleads to the sea of chickenity to settle down. After a few turbulent moments of thoughtfulness, Hen Peck resumes...)

I believe its time for retribution now. Time for vengeance. And what better way than to make it look imperiously ironic by stealing their plans to wreak havoc on them. Our special cells are being trained in the manner fidayeens in Kashmir and the Middle East train themselves. Only ours will be a more ingenious method. Far more sinister and claiming bigger tolls. Where they cause little damage by blowing themselves up in ostentatious explosions in public-places, ours will be a more deliberate and strategically superior method. The thing I call ‘Covert Catastrophe’. I remember my good friend, Don Meato Cock-eone once saying, “Revenge, unlike chicken, is best served cold.” Ours will be that recipe for revenge. Only this time the flesh will be ours............(pregnant pause).... and the apron too. (Crowds go mad. Females neglect chicks, males forget to brood. Roosters raise hell with their throats working overtime lest they be put to sword anytime now for crowing out of turn.)

And for performing this Her-mule-ean duty I ask of you to come forward and bear the burden of our miserable past. Only you can leave a proud precedent for posterity.

Join the Fowl Brigade. (Now howling like an autumn gale) Infect yourselves with strains of the virulent Avian flu. Look as eternally sumptuous as you and your forefathers have while gracing human buffets, caressing their palates, inviting their appetites. And then (with a cruel cunning showing ominously in his beady eyes...he whispers like the Dimer-Devil (Diabolique-de-Chicken) himself) strike with all you’ve got! The prices will fall. Many of us will be mercilessly culled. But, we must be unwavering in our pursuit, unfailing in our mission. The deceased should pass the baton (the flu i.e) to the next and the plague would proliferate in no time. Remember (thunderously pounds the desk and the podium), it is upon your ability to protect the virus from extinction on which our success hinges. Make the air resonate with billions of human sneezes. Our brothers from the Hawk-and-Vulture Council of Elders have offered volunteers for furthering our just cause. Negotiations are on to rope-in influential members of the Pork-Parliament. Get killed, you will in the process. Only ensure that you are handled with no protective clothing on the humans, and persevere, if possible, to jump out of the cauldron before it reaches that deadly 60-degree Celsius.

Soon, the pandemic will be ours. And panic our cry.

(The crowd is riotous now. The grounds replete with remnants of their excrement....errrr....excitement in the form of heady manure that could sustain oak orchards for the coming millennia reeks of the speech’s success. Peck continues....)

One vision. One motto.

Kill Men!

(rapturous applause and battle cries rend the air)

In Appetite we trust.

More so, in the West Bengal Government.

(Now a solemn shade of satisfaction coming over his violent visage, he whispers...)

Egg Chow-Amen.”

(End of speech to sustained waves of cheers and applause).

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