Fata's fate

THIS story is about a brother of little Ata's, whom we encountered in the previous tale. This brother was a couple of years older than Ata, and while Mummy and Daddy loved him every bit as much as they did Ata (which was a whole lot), one should be pardoned for sometimes believing that there's no accounting for tastes. For if you saw the little fellow (and assuming you weren't his parents or a saint), you would acquire an intimate understanding of why Lewis Caroll called all boys toads. The little chap was both overweight and pudgy, and worse still, had an egregious charm rendered the more unbearable by his obvious cleverness. He had a despised unemployed uncle with a degree in philosophy and plenty of time on his hands (like all good families this one too had its own Black Sheep). The uncle, who had a passion for symmetry, and was a frequent victim of the boy's chronic bouts of noisy indigestion, always called the two children Ata and Far-no, no not a naughty word will you get me to spell out in these chronicles! Well then, let's just call him Fata, shall we?

Just as Mummy and Daddy wanted the best for Ata, so did they want the best for Fata. At the time this story opens, what this meant was two things. First, Fata had to win a Junior Science Talent Scholarship. Second, he had to win the First Prize in a short story competition organised by TheHindu's Young World publication. In the cause of the first goal, Fata was required, for his own good, to nightly sway back and forth, the while reciting (for if he had a weakness, it was astronomy): "The sun is a red ball of fire. The sun is a red ball of fire. The sun ...". Mummy and Daddy were committed parents, and they kept the vigil with Fata. Every time Fata lapsed, Daddy was to hand with a well-directed cuff, and if Daddy should occasionally doze off, Mummy was always there to administer her sharp little pinches.

As far as the second goal was concerned, Thatha had already taken care of it: in order that Fata may grow up to be a manly little fellow, Thatha had fed the boy tirelessly with the books of Captain W.E. Jaunts. With all that literature sloshing around inside his system, it was a simple enough matter for Fata to turn out the following story of high adventure.

Caught in a dog-fight

Squadron-Leader James Squigglesworth whistled tunelessly to himself as he steered his Spitfire homeward. It had been a bad show. They had been caught in a hail of tracer bullets and enemy ack-ack. He was relieved to see that Binger and Calgy had bailed out before their craft went up in flames. But two other companions hadn't been so fortunate, and went west. Tomorrow, Squiggles told himself with a grim smile, they would be back with reinforcements, and teach the Hun a thing or two. Suddenly he stiffened. From out of nowhere, as it seemed, three Heinkels were bearing down on him, screaming in unison with their engines at full throttle. Squiggles' normally placid blue eyes contracted to slits, until all you could see was a pair of steely, menacing points of gimlet. His grim face became grimmer, his mirthless smile mirthlesser and his square jaw rectangular, as he suddenly went into a Himmelmann turn, throwing in, for good measure, a Zimmermann turn and a Heinemann turn as well. Two of the Heinkels, which were converging on Squiggles from his flanks, had no time to react. Thrown off guard, they had no means of recovering, and set as they were on a collision course, they crashed into each other. "Two Jerries down and one to go," muttered Squiggles to himself. He steadied himself as he came out of his tail-spin, and made straight for the third Heinkel. Unwaveringly, and with nerves of steel, he framed the enemy's cockpit on his cross-hairs and pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. He pressed again. Still nothing happened. "Blast!" ejaculated Squiggles. He had run out of ammo! There was only one thing for it, now. Even as he came under a storm of tracers, he unflinchingly picked up his petrol can, took careful aim, and flung it with all his strength at the enemy's fuselage. The petrol can found its target! He heard a deafening roar as the fuselage erupted, and could feel the flames singeing his hair, as he careened out of the way of the plummeting wreckage, just in time. The last thing he saw was the pilot ejecting, and as the parachute billowed open he caught a glimpse of a face contorted with fury and hatred. It was Erich von Schtrongmein! "Strewth!" muttered Squiggles to himself, as he made for British lines.

That night Fata went to sleep muttering to himself: "The sun is a red ball of fire. Strewth!" The following morning, his class-mate Navyudh dropped in at Fata's, and offered to mail Fata's short story for him on his way back home. Fata, who had no intention of waddling up to the post office if he could help it, agreed readily enough. Navyudh helpfully mailed the story, but before doing so (and casting a quick look all round), he erased Fata's name from the manuscript in a business-like way and inserted his own in place. That afternoon was the afternoon of the Junior Science Talent Exam. As was their custom, Fata and Navyudh met a few minutes before school at the bushes in the corner, for their daily fag. On this occasion, Navyudh also extracted a small flask he had smuggled into his pocket, and let Fata have a long draught of his (Navyudh's) father's smuggled whisky. Poor Fata became thoroughly disorientated. At the exam, he wrote: "The red is a ball fire of sun." Naturally, he didn't get the Science Talent Prize. As for the short story, it was judged the best in the competition, but for reasons we have already seen, it was Navyudh that got the Prize, a fact that couldn't be changed even though Fata's Mummy nearly gouged out Navyudh's Mummy's eye and Fata's Daddy peached on Navyudh's Daddy to the Income Tax authorities.

As you can imagine, Fata was traumatised. Indeed, he was scarred for life. By Mummy and Daddy. "Here," said Mummy, "is a red" "ball fire of sun", completed Daddy, as, wielding, respectively, the seasoning ladle and the electric iron, they proceeded to brand their loudly squealing offspring on his ample nether quarters (or halves, rather, if you wish to get the notion of hemispheres right). It's such a sad and terrible tale, children. Won't you ever learn, even if your parents are beyond all instruction? Here's the simple moral of this dreadful story. Children, please, please stop being competitive.

Start, instead, being monopolistic. Like Navyudh, learn to eliminate all competition. The easiest way to do that may well be to eliminate all competitors. There's a nice economist Uncle called Kaushik Basu who has written a book on Industrial Organisation which you should all read and in which, I shouldn't be surprised to discover, it has been proved that entry deterrence is a sub-game perfect equilibrium.

S. SUBRAMANIAN

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