Once upon a time, in a country that consisted of two big islands, located in the Tethys Sea, a fight broke out between the rulers of the two islands over the ultimate right to rule the nation.
The bigger of the two islands was ruled by a very able and valiant General Bhondu Pappu and his clairvoyant mother. It was the wisdom and the clout that his mother wielded that guided the General in difficult times and at times protected him and scared off his challengers. The General's mother had a very able adviser in a man called AP, who, in the past, had bailed the rulers out from many a rough waters. AP kept a very low profile and no one knew what AP really stood for. Over the years, many times, when the water started reaching for the plimsoll line, the General and his mother, supported by AP, jettisoned unwanted personnel out in the sea to keep their ship afloat. This island was called Congress, after the name of the highest body of the General's court that consisted of the most seasoned warriors of the island. Despite the hoary problem of the island, that often raised its ugly head, being ruled by a patrimonial regime, the General's subjects bowed down in respect to be in conformity with the established customs. The General's warriors carried out the commands of their master out of sheer personal loyalty and a pious regard for his time honoured status.
The smaller of the two islands, unlike the patrimony that characterised island Congress, was one where the Generals did not belong to a particular ruling family and instead their leader was the most charismatic and demagogic of a particular set of popular warriors. The contemporary of General Bhondu Pappu was General Phenku, a courageous man, who was known for his good governance. Notwithstanding the accusations of a riot that he fanned in the yesteryears and the adversaries he culled on his way to the top, he was a very able administrator and the hope of the smaller island, which by the way, was called BJP for reasons unknown to this writer.
The rulers of both the islands were bitter enemies and spared no opportunity of pelting stones at each other. The rivalry of these two adversaries soon reached epic proportions and the fight for the sovereignty of the whole country soon involved the people of both the islands. The people of these two warring islands started throwing stones at each other and the war assumed epic proportions. The fighting continued for months. With the piling up of pelted stones of the two adversaries that missed their targets, a new island started coming up and the people who were tired of the war started migrating to the new island which they called AAP. The reasons for this name are again beyond the scope of this poor old writer and his banal article.
With this ensued a three way struggle for power with island AAP trying to defeat the well trained, well equipped and powerful forces of the other two islands that geologically preceded it. The young island made an impressive start by making deep inroads into the older island's power bases by running a propagandist campaign that promised to give the rule into the hands of the common man. The common man, who was so commonly embroiled in his common existential commanalities gave in to the 'power to the common man' propaganda. But with the stone pelting still going on and the fight becoming three way, the danger of more islands coming up and the fight intensifying became a realistic one.
This writer, a common man, could not, during his lifetime, witness either the end in stone pelting or coming to power of the common man and died an absolutely common death.
