Saddam Hussein was sitting in his
office wondering whom to invade next when his telephone rang.
"Hallo, Mr. Hussein!" a
heavily accented voice said, "This is Gurmukh from Banga, District
Hoshiarpur. I am ringing to inform you that we are officially declaring the war
on you!"
"Well, Gurmukh," Saddam
replied, "This is indeed important news!
How big is your army"
"Right now," said
Gurmukh, after a moment's calculation, "there is myself, my cousin
Sukhdev, my next door neighbour Bhagat, and the entire kabaddi team from the
gurudwara. That makes eight"
Saddam paused. "I must tell you,
Gurmukh that I have one million men in my army waiting to move on my
command."
"Arrey O! Main kya.. " said
Gurmukh. "I'll have to ring you back!"
Sure enough, the next day, Gurmukh
called again.
"Mr. Hussein, it is Gurmukh, I'm
call ing from Banga STD, the war is still on! We have managed to acquire some
infantry equipment!"
"And what equipment would that
be, Gurmukh" Saddam asked.
"Well, we have two combines, a
donkey and Amrik's tractor."
Saddam sighed. "I must tell you,
Gurmukh, that I have 16,000 tanks and 14,000 armoured personnel carriers. Also,
I've increased my army to 1-1/2 million since we last spoke."
"Oh teri ....." said
Gurmukh. "I'll have to get back to you."
Sure enough, Gurmukh rang again the
next day.
"Mr. Hussein, the war is still
on! We have managed to get ourselves airborne...... We've modified Amrik's
tractor by adding a couple of shotguns, sticking on some wings and the pind's
generator. Four school pass boys from Malpur have joined us as well!"
Saddam was silent for a minute and
then cleared his throat. "I must tell you, Gurmukh, that I have 10,000
bombers and 20,000 fighter planes. My military complex is surro unded by
laser-guided, surface-to-air missile sites. And since we last spoke, I've
increased my army to TWO MILLION!"
"Tera pala hove...." said
Gurmuk, "I'll have to ring you back."
Sure enough, Gurmukh called again the
next day. "Kiddan, Mr. Hussein! I am sorry to tell you that we have had to
call off the war."
"I'm sorry to hear that,"
said Saddam. "Why the sudden change of heart"
"Well," said Gurmukh,
"we've all had a long chat over a couple of lassi's, and decided there's
no way we can feed two million prisoners of wars!"