Chapter 5- Kashass
It was dawn. And PC sat at his verandah drinking some coffee and listening to the Nightingale of Gargantua, the great Karanta Ngale. This was his routine. He loved her voice and its surefooted climb to the higher reaches of the highest octave. He loved his coffee too. He had it specially flown in from Bromisa, that home of coffee and had it specially ground by his Bromisa men that he kept in his home. The sun was lazily making its way up the beautiful night sky and the stars were, one after the other, twinkling their way away.
But all this was lost on PC. He drew a deep breath and let out a sigh. It was such an uproarious sigh that the pages of his newspaper almost flew out of the parapet of the verandah. Obviously what he read in the papers disturbed him. He read
The AGM succeeds in taking over Kashass for a day
In a decisive gesture of victory, the AGM, today, planted its own flag on the hill that is at the centre of Kashass. People woke up this morning to find that the Gargantuan government had been dismantled and the ferocious militant government of the AGM was instated in its place. There were eerie cries all over the region as men and women slapped their chest to signify what a loss they have suffered in being disconnected so brutally from the mother nation. A mother wept as she recalled how her son, all of 20, had given up his life so that Kashass could be part of Gargantua. Another child, without losing hope, raised his fist in a gesture of resistance; he says resisting AGM would be his life’s mission.
Kashass has been the centre of much of Gargantua-AGM rivalry. For years anti-nationals, traitors have helped organize the AGM to overthrow Gargantua from Kashass. The Kashassian people themselves want peace and prosperity. Both of which is assured in the state of Gargantua. The people have been nothing but supportive of the Gargantuan Humanitarian-cum-military aid. As is evidenced by stories like that of Shakana, a young 12 year old girl, who lost her limbs to landmines in the area and told press reporters, her limbs were nothing compared to freedom from AGM. Such is the courage and ferocity of the Kashass people against the AGM and the AGM’s mandate to create an independent Kashass Land.
Let the world hear the pleas of the Kashass people as they suffer submission once again and fight for their own survival.
PC’s sigh, however, did not come from a concern for the people of Kashass who were paying with their lives in this conflict, but from the fact that once again Gargantuan troops would have to be deployed to wrest control of Kashass from the invading AGM. His sigh came from the little tremor-like disturbance that his military strategy had been exposed to through these slightly unforeseen developments. It meant a relook at the strategy and it meant that the Interlandmass Conference of the World Association of Oar Makers will have to wait. And everybody knew how important the ICWAOM was to Gargantuan show of prowess. “Sigh!” he said again, as he flicked a fly off the newspaper page.
