A STORY ABOUT ZERO INVENTORIES AND JUNGLE MANAGEMENT
Once upon a time, there lived a sorceress and her son. They
lived in a very fertile jungle by accident and ruled over its inhabitants consisting
of peaceful birds and animals like wild bears, elephants, rabbits, squirrels,
tortoises and peacocks, beavers, flamingos, parrots and nightingales etc. Sorceress had a sheepish tiger, few wolves and
jackals and some cunning foxes as a coterie of her cronies to help her to rule
over the animals and birds that were very hard working and spent most of their
time to collect the produce of jungle and deposit it in the treasury and warehouses of the
sorceress and ate what was allowed by the sorceress to consume. All the produce
of the jungle first used to be carried to sorceress and then she used to
distribute it from the treasury according to her whims and fancies without
bothering for future to stock. She ruled over them with a policy of divide and
rule. She created discrimination between brown animals and black animals or
white birds and colored birds and succeeded in keeping them divided based on
their color.
Sheepish tiger that was made king by the sorceress was very
obliged to her and loved to remain loyal and faithful and transferred all his powers to
the sorceress. Sorceress was cunning and she too usurped all the powers of king
and chose personally all the courtiers of the king. Sheepish King tiger was stupid and did not
mind it. He had a reputation of being
honest but he was very timid and spineless. As Sorceress was not directly
involved and ruled from behind, she used the sheepish lion as her shield. The knave king that he was , took all the
blame on himself arising because of nepotism and corruption practiced by
sorceress. All the king’s couriers colluded with the sorceress indirectly and
looted the treasury. Sheepish tiger had become almost as a punching bag in his
kingdom and slowly animals and birds started hating him. In-spite of all the
blame put on him for the misdeeds of his courtiers and sorceress, He worshiped the invisible sorceress as he was very scared from her spells and treated her
like a goddess and often prostrated before her. In true sense he was merely a
puppet in the hands of family of the sorceress.
He was only for name
sake a king but still enjoyed the un-elected post given to him. Jackals and
foxes knew the weakness of their king and took full advantage of it and kept a
direct contact with sorceress and her son. This helped them to curry extra
favors from the sorceress and sorceress too enjoyed their sycophancy and
allowed them to keep part of the produce for themselves adding to the huge
corruption in the system. None of the
creatures of jungles had seen the sorceress and she used to keep an extremely
low profile and rarely came out of her fortress and very few were allowed to
meet her in person.
In the jungle lived
also a huge python who was lazy but he acted as an arbiter of justice as agreed
by all the inhabitants and sorceress too because he had divine powers given by
God Almighty. But for most of the time he slept for months or even for years. But once awake it used to settle disputes and
tried to maintain some semblance of justice but again used to get lost in deep
slumber sometimes for years together that too without announcement.
Inhabitants of the
jungle had no option but they waited and prayed to God so that python could
wake up again accidently to solve their problems. They cursed their fate and
many of them died with justice denied. Sorceress took full advantage of the
interim period and her coterie looted the treasury and sometimes threw part of
the leftover to the hungry animals and birds to pacify them and remain in power
without inviting any revolution from the ill-fated miserable inhabitants of the
jungle.
Python had appointed a falcon to investigate
the corruption carried out by the coterie of sorceress and as the python had
huge faith in the investigatory power of the falcon, he often slept soundly.
Sorceress had lot of tricks up her sleeves. She clipped the
talons of the falcon and tied its feathers and bounded it in a cage. Then she
turned the falcon into a parrot because she knew parrot would speak what it was
trained to speak by her cronies and parrot did really what it was told whenever
it was called by the python to report on investigation on corruption . Python
had lot of faith on the falcon nay the parrot and whatever parrot spoke, python
believed even without opening its eyes.
This went on for long because this time python really slept undisturbed
believing that falcon would keep a check on the nefarious designs of the
coterie of sorceress.
Over the years as fate would have wanted, talons of the
falcon and feathers started growing again as a natural process. But falcon
believed that he was still a parrot as he was after all under the influence of
the spell cast by sorceress.
In the meantime corruption had reached its nadir and jackals
and foxes were openly filling their coffers for their kith and kin and there
was huge hue and cry all around in the jungle and everybody protested and
heaved with pain due to hunger arising because of the onslaughts of corruption.
This disturbed the python’s sleep and he woke up from his deep slumber. He
called the falcon but was quite dismayed to see the miserable condition of
falcon and was quite amused. He got a further shock of his life when python
questioned about its investigation on corruption only spoke like a parrot as
trained by the coterie of sorceress.
Python rebuked the falcon telling him that he was nothing but
a parrot and had too many masters. As
python had divine powers, he converted the falcon back to his original shape giving
him his new talons and a sharp beak and asked him to reinvestigate the
corruption. Falcon realized his mistake and it too acknowledged that he really
behaved during all this time like a caged parrot as dictated by its numerous
masters. Then python again slept as it was summer holidays to fall and it loved
sleeping.
Falcon went
back soaring up in the sky and it wheeled and dived in the free air under the
azure sky and bright sunshine. His eyes were sharp as ever and he looked in
every nook and corner of the jungle. He soon found out his prey and really caught few jackals red handed deeply
immersed in corruption with their pants down. Falcon was amazed at its speed
and alacrity and thoroughly enjoyed catching the culprits. This alerted the
sorceress and her son and they decided to do something and somehow put the
blame once again on the timid king.
The jackals
who were caught complained to sheepish lion that why should they be punished
when they were only trying to protect their holy king. Sheepish lion too
thought that it was none of his fault and neither of jackals because the real beneficiaries
were sorceress and her son.
Sorceress
and her son ordered the sheepish lion king to remove the so called corrupt
jackals immediately as their reputation was dwindling rapidly. Sheepish lion that
was timid could not protect his comrades and had to issue the order to remove the
few jackals that were found culprit by the investigating falcon.
Sorceress
was convinced that sheepish lion was proving to be a liability and decided that
it was high time that she replaced the sheepish lion with her son as king .But the son was reluctant and was not as
sharp as his mother and continued to evade the responsibility. He in fact had a
dull mind. This enraged the sorceress however she reminded her son not to worry
and she will take care of all the perils and shall depute wolves around him.
Wolves were
shrewd and they advised sorcerer that there could be a revolution as there was
lot of discontent among poor and weak animals and birds of the jungle because of exposure
of corruption and they would one day attack her fortress.
She was
ready with the solution and declared that all the poor and weak animals shall
be given free food and they need not work. This emptied the treasury once again
and there were zero inventories of the eatables in the warehouses and nothing
was left for future to survive especially during floods and famines which were
frequent in the jungle.
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ABOUT LOGISTICS OF THIS JUNGLE MANAGEMENT
