Insoluble Problem

The President of the nation sat back in his chair and looked askance at his general. “You mean you haven’t yet found a solution?” he asked.

The general shifted his uniform cap back on his head and wiped his sweating forehead. “Not so far, sir,” he answered. “That great black dragon just sits there across the main highway out of town, and eats whoever tries to go past it. So far we have

bombed it from aeroplanes

shelled it with artillery

rocketed it from launchers

and still it lies there like a log, with its mouth open, and gobbles up anything and anyone who tries to get past.”

“I want,” said the President, “a solution found, within seventy two hours.”

The general called his aide de camp. “The President wants our problem solved within forty eight hours,” he said.

The adjutant went and did his best, and then he went to the scientists at the university and told them, “That great black dragon just sits there across the main highway out of town, and eats whoever tries to go past it. So far we have

bombed it from aeroplanes

shelled it with artillery

rocketed it from launchers

tried to burn it with flame throwers

sent a full division of soldiers to charge it with fixed bayonets

and still it lies there like a log, with its mouth open, and gobbles up anything and anyone who tries to get past.”

The scientists did their best. And then the Chief Scientist went, shamefacedly, to the High Shaman of the National Temple and told him, “That great black dragon just sits there across the main highway out of town, and eats whoever tries to go past it. So far we have

bombed it from aeroplanes

shelled it with artillery

rocketed it from launchers

tried to burn it with flame throwers

sent a full division of soldiers to charge it with fixed bayonets

hosed it down with sulphuric acid

bombarded it with ultrasonic vibrations

tried to drop it into a wormhole into the fifteenth dimension

and still it lies there like a log, with its mouth open, and gobbles up anything and anyone who tries to get past.”

And the High Shaman of the National Temple came out into the street and wailed: “That great black dragon just sits there across the main highway out of town, and eats whoever tries to go past it. So far we have

bombed it from aeroplanes

shelled it with artillery

rocketed it from launchers

tried to burn it with flame throwers

sent a full division of soldiers to charge it with fixed bayonets

hosed it down with sulphuric acid

bombarded it with ultrasonic vibrations

tried to drop it into a wormhole into the fifteenth dimension

prayed to it

worshipped it

asked god to intercede with it

asked the devil to curse it

sacrificed virgins to it until there are no more virgins left in the land

and still it lies there like a log, with its mouth open, and gobbles up anything and anyone who tries to get past.”

The people in the street heard and were silent, thinking who knows what thoughts. And there was a great fear in the land.

But then Jack the blind beggar got up from his heap of rags in the corner, looked around him and said, “But there’s no problem here.”

“Foolish man,” snarled the High Shaman, “hast thou not heard what I have just said? The president wants that dragon problem solved, yea, within twenty four hours.”

“Why don’t you,” said Jack the blind beggar, looking wonderingly at all the frightened faces, “simply go round the dragon’s back end instead of past his face?”

The High Shaman and the burghers heard but ignored him, because he was only Jack the beggar, and he was blind, as was known to all men. 

Copyright B Purkayastha 2008