Jungle 3

The Hippo

Hi!

I am back again with the Jungle series giving now a turnaround version after one residence visa term is over. Here we start with the Hippo.  Actually the full name is Hippopotamus. Yeah, I know what Shakespeare would have said about "whats in a name" but then actually his name is so long drawn: literally! The

The Hippo, if you have seen one in the Zoo (as that's the only place I have had the privilege of his audience) is always half submerged in sludge with eyes half open/ shut. It looks around with a gaze of half wonder and half indifference at the world and again vanishes into the same sludge: He shuts his already heavy eyelids and purses his enormous nostrils.

And my loving neighbour the Hippo is quite like that. He is half awake in office. He gazes around, looks up and let a shred of work (read files, mails etc.) reach him he will submerge: close his eyes & nostrils (For sake of decency I prefer not to comment on the other orifices in the anatomy!) so as to avoid doing anything.

The sludge comprises of the lot of papers, stationery, files and paraphernalia amassed over the years to camouflage  his idleness. He is so akin to the animal very common in Indian Government Departments but to find someone like him here was a learning.