This story is a work of
fiction. Any resemblance to any real IAS officers, corrupt shepherds, or wolves
is purely coincidental.
Once upon a time, in a dusty
village on the outskirts of Bihar – let’s call it Gaonpur, because every satire
needs a generic yet plausible name – there lived a boy named Bunty. Bunty
wasn’t just any boy; he was the son of Shri Vikram Singh Yadav, a mid-tier IAS
officer who’d spent his career perfecting the art of sanctioned corruption
while maintaining a spotless cream kurta. Gaonpur was a place where the cows
outnumbered the people, the people outnumbered the jobs, and the red tape
outnumbered everything else.
Bunty’s job was simple: watch
the village’s flock of sheep and yell “Wolf!”
if a predator came sniffing around. The villagers had devised this system after
losing half their livestock in 2022 to a particularly crafty jackal who kept
changing political alliances skins.
“We need a reliable alarm!” the people of Gaonpur had declared,
pooling their meagre savings to hire a shepherd boy. Bunty got the gig – not
because he was qualified (he once lost a
goat to a nap-induced oversight), but because his father’s signature graced
every land deed and ration card in Gaonpur. Nepotism, after all, was the
village’s unofficial currency.
Bunty took to the role with the
enthusiasm of a government clerk on a Monday morning. He’d lounge on a charpoy
under a peepal tree, scrolling Instagram on his father’s old iPhone,
occasionally glancing at the sheep grazing in the patchy fields. The flock was
Gaonpur’s pride – 200 woolly beasts that fuelled their dreams of a cooperative
wool empire. But Bunty had other priorities. “Oi, Ramesh bhai,” he’d call to a passing farmer, “slip me 50 rupees, and I’ll make sure the wolf
stays away today.” Ramesh, grumbling about inflation, would comply, because
who wants to risk an IAS officer’s wrath?
The first time Bunty cried “Wolf!” was on a Tuesday, mid-afternoon,
when the sun was frying the earth like a roadside omelette. “Wolf! Wolf!” he shrieked. The villagers
dropped their sickles, chai cups, and dignity, sprinting to the field with
sticks and stones. They found Bunty pointing at… a stray dog chewing on a
discarded roti. “Mock drill, heh,”
Bunty grinned, pocketing the 100-rupee note he’d just extorted from a panicked
shepherd. The villagers muttered but returned to their chores. After all, he
was Vikram Singh Yadav’s son. What could they do?
The second time came a week
later. “Wolf! Wolf!” Bunty hollered,
this time waving his arms like a Bollywood hero in a rain song. The villagers,
slower to react but still dutiful, trudged out again. This time, it was a cow
with a limp, looking mildly offended by the accusation. “Close enough,” Bunty shrugged, counting the 200 rupees he’d
collected from three gullible aunties who’d rushed over with rolling pins. The
grumbling grew louder, but nobody dared confront the boy. “His father controls the water pump permits,” they whispered. “Better safe than thirsty.”
The third time, Bunty didn’t
even bother with creativity. “Wolf! Wolf!”
he yelled, barely looking up from a TikTok dance tutorial. The villagers peeked
out of their homes, saw him lounging with a lassi, and went back to their
soaps. “Fool us thrice, shame on us,”
said old Lallan Chacha, who’d once lost a toe to a real jackal and considered
himself the village’s resident cynic. “That
boy’s a walking scam, but what can we do? His papa’s got the stamp.”
Here’s where the tale takes its
unfortunate twist. The villagers, fed up with Bunty’s false alarms, didn’t sack
him. No, that would’ve been too logical, too efficient, too… un-Indian.
Instead, they formed a committee. The Gaonpur Observance Board Against Ruckus
(GOBAR) was born in a haze of chai fumes and self-importance, chaired by Lallan
Chacha because he owned the loudest voice and the only functional chair. “We’ll investigate the boy’s reliability,”
Lallan declared, banging a ladle on a tin plate. “No hasty decisions! Process is king!”
GOBAR met thrice weekly under
the peepal tree, debating Bunty’s performance with the intensity of a Lok Sabha
session. “He’s young, give him time!”
argued Shanti Devi, who secretly hoped Bunty would marry her daughter. “He’s a crook!” countered Ramesh, still
sore about the 50 rupees. Minutes were scribbled on the back of a fertilizer
bill, and sub-committees sprouted like weeds: the Wolf Observation and Logging
Forum, the Surveillance of Human Errors and Egregious Practices, and the Rural
Untruths and Fabrications Forum. Each meeting ended with a resolution to form
another meeting, and the sheep grazed on, oblivious.
Meanwhile, Bunty upped his
game. He started charging “protection fees” per sheep – 10 rupees a head, or 20
if you wanted “premium wolf defense”. The villagers paid, because refusing
meant risking a surprise visit from Vikram Singh Yadav’s peon, who had once
“inspected” a dissenter’s house until it mysteriously lost its electricity
connection. Bunty’s wallet fattened, his charpoy got a cushion, and the wolf – yes,
a real one this time – watched from the bushes, licking its chops.
The wolf struck on a moonless
night, while GOBAR was deep in its 17th meeting, debating whether to allocate
funds for a “Bunty Motivation Workshop.” Bunty, half-asleep and dreaming of a
new i-phone, didn’t notice the shadow slinking toward the flock. When he
finally did, he leapt up, screaming, “Wolf!
Wolf! For real this time!” His voice cracked with genuine panic, but the
village was silent. Lallan Chacha snorted from his chair. “Another scam,” he muttered. Shanti Devi turned up her TV. Ramesh
locked his door, muttering about karma.
The wolf, unburdened by
bureaucracy, had a field day. It ate sheep like a politician eats promises – methodically,
voraciously, and with zero remorse. By morning, Gaonpur’s flock was down to
three bleating survivors, hiding behind the optimism of the villagers. Bunty
stood amid the carnage, still clutching his phone, looking less like a shepherd
and more like a start-up founder who’d just tanked his Series A funding.
The villagers emerged at dawn,
bleary-eyed and furious, only to find the GOBAR already reconvening. “We need an inquiry!” Lallan Chacha
bellowed, waving a stick. “Who’s to
blame? The boy? The wolf? The system?” A new committee – the Sheep Loss
Accountability Panel – was formed on the spot, with a mandate to report
findings by next monsoon. Sub-committees multiplied: one to count the
carcasses, another to draft a condolence letter to the sheep, and a third to
investigate whether the wolf was an infiltrate from Bangladesh.
Bunty, unscathed, sauntered off
to his father’s office in the district headquarters, where Vikram Singh Yadav
was busy signing off on a flyover that would never be built. “Papa, the sheep are gone,” Bunty whined.
Vikram didn’t look up from his files. “Good.
Now we can sell the land to a builder. Say it was a wolf attack – force
majeure, no liability.” Bunty grinned, already mentally upgrading to a
OnePlus.
The villagers, meanwhile,
mourned their losses but not their choices. “We should’ve replaced him,” Ramesh sighed, kicking a pebble. “Too late now,” Shanti Devi replied,
adjusting her dupatta. “Committees take
time.” Lallan Chacha nodded sagely. “Process
is process. At least we have minutes to show the tehsildar.”
And so, Gaonpur’s sheep empire
crumbled, devoured by a wolf and digested by red tape. The wolf moved on to
richer pastures, Bunty got his new phone, and the villagers got a 47-page SLAP
report concluding that concluded: “further investigation is required.” The
moral? In a land where alarms are ignored and committees reign supreme, the
only winners are the wolves – and the ones who bribe them.
As for Gaonpur, it carried on,
holding meetings about meetings, dreaming of sheep that no longer grazed, and
wondering why replacing one boy was harder than rebuilding a nation – one chai
at a time.
