The Garden of Eden

Jesustan, I learn, has reconstructed the Garden of Eden. A convenient two-hour drive from Dallas, Texas, you can find Barasingha and Russian boar, Giraffe and Guar, Wildebeest and White-tailed Deer, Ibex and Oryx, Aoudad and Zebra. According to an article in The Washington Post’s Sunday magazine, there are 200,000 especially-reared exotic animals spread out over 1,000-odd facilities in Texas, Maine and Florida. The exotic-animal safari park industry is believed to generate annual revenues of US$ 120 million a year.

In these Gardens of Eden, though, the lion does not cohabit with the lamb. The lion doth slay the lamb, which is the proper Jesustani way, and as it should be. You visit these zoos, you see, armed with a hunting rifle, not a camera.

Now, this may upset Ms. Maneka Gandhi, and I am sorry for that, but I cannot help but admire the sheer ingenuity of the enterprise. You no longer have to travel to darkest Africa or Asia to hunt down big game. Moreover, given the state of the third-world environment, you would be most unlikely to find such big game even if you went somewhere where the water is dodgy and the toilet paper, indignity of indignities, is rough. Then, by doing away with rapacious airline operators and blood-sucking hotel owners, the until-now elitist pursuit of big-game hunting has been rendered totally egalitarian.

Best of all, the damn animals can’t run away – or not too far, anyway.

What sense do we make of this? You see, there are two kinds of Jesustanis. There are the internationalists, who believe it is their duty to travel to exotic places, see exotic people, and shoot them. Then, there are the Jesustan Kicks Ass! types, who do not want to travel beyond Wal-Mart TM and most certainly do not want to see exotic people (although they do not mind the exotic people being shot). The internationalists believe the world is their backyard; the America-First wallahs believe their backyard is the world (there are also some Jesustanis who think their backsides are the world, but more on that subject anon).

Both visions of the world, some liberal reading this despatch is certain to bleat, are imperialist. Yes, but so what? Many Hindustanis, I learn, are only too happy to be colonised. My friend D, a.k.a. The Goddess, recently sent me news of a shoe store in New Delhi which has a voice-activated dispensing system rather than salespersons. If you call out “Black, Size 7”, for example, shoes of that colour and size will appear. If only the world, she sighed, could be rebuilt in this fashion. Well, thanks to Jesustani imperialism, it soon will be.

Me, I have no desire to live in the Garden of Eden. You see, I have a grudge:

Jithe Adam Noon Dhake Mare,
Mein Nahin Janaan Us Diware;
Bund Vich Le Le Kanak Da Daana
Mein Nahin Teri Jannat Janan

I don’t want to go to the gates
Through which Adam was cast out;
Stick that grain of wheat up your arse,
I don’t want to go to your paradise!

[Thanks to MS, the Foreign Minister of Sindh;
or Bhaluchistan; or anywhere else that will have him]