SO YOU DON'T BELIEVE IT?

Once upon a time, in Not-So-Far-Away Land there lived a nurse who used to train dragons. Well, it’s not what you would say falls under the general repertoire/job qualification of nurses. They mainly limit themselves to nursing sick people and prescribing antacids for all ailments. Then what was Nurse Cuckoo, for that was her name, doing training dragons?

You see, Nurse Cuckoo had enough spare time on her hands. Her only patients were the boys from the nearby boarding school. And one does get tired of treating bruises, runny noses, projectile vomiting and what-have-you. So, to save herself from boredom, she used to moonlight as a dragon-trainer. But she did not teach the usual burn-destroy-and-pulverise type of things, which, more or less, were what the dragon-training curriculum included. No, she taught them to sing. You are probably scratching your chin in confusion by now, so I feel a little explanation is needed.

As you know, dragons are usually rich. True, they are only guardians of treasures, but a few nuggets more or less from a heap doesn’t really bring in charges of appropriation of funds from their bosses. So they do just fine for themselves. But this particular branch of dragons had tried to pull off a major embezzlement of their master’s wealth. Consequently, they were banished from their kingdom until they could refund the amount of money stolen. Reimbursing the money would not have been such a problem if there was not such a dearth in the demand for dragon-labour in the market. I mean, who, except maybe the fire-proof Hellboy, would willingly engage in their services? So they were in a bit of a soup.

Now, there was an open-for-all talent show in Not-So-Far-Away Land with a prize money of 5000 gold nuggets, which happened to be just a little more than what the dragons owed to their master, with compound interest. They were pretty hopeful about winning too because they could do what nobody else could – blow fire as they sing! But they knew only a gimmick wouldn’t win them the show, they needed vocal training. And so they enlisted the help of Nurse Cuckoo who was the niece of the brother of the uncle of the great-grandson of Cinderella, to train them as a choir. The dragons had too much pride to take her services for free. They promised her the fuss-free disappearance of a particularly annoying neighbour if she helped them win the competition.
Anyway, everything was going picture-perfect until, as you must be expecting by now, there arose a problem. The children of the boarding school were also participating in the talent show. And when they heard how good the dragons were, especially Fireball Timberlake, Sparky Jackson and Lady Kindle-Light Gaga, they were really tensed. But no one got their goat (metaphorically of course, goats give dragon indigestion!) more than the new dragon-kid on the block, Combusting Bieber. He could even blow fire-raspberries while he sang!

The children realised that to win the competition they must remove Combusting from the scene. So they sent their snake, Mr. Lucifer, in the guise of a doctor, to mix poison in the antacid Nurse Cuckoo made every dragon take before rehearsing. His job became easier when Nurse Cuckoo fell head over doctor’s scholls in love with him. She adored his snake eyes and forked tongue, and what he could do with both of them. It was the perfect situation for Mr. Lucifer to carry out his task. But he couldn’t. Or rather he didn’t. He was really a nice soul, having lured into doing the job in exchange of life-long supply of raw porcupine eggs. So, on the day of the competition, instead of wholly poisoning Combusting, he just gave him enough to make his voice crack.
When Combusting realised what the children had done to him, he was really pissed. But he had an ace up his sleeve which even his dragon-cronies did not know about. He could dance the best tango in the whole of Not-So-Far-Away Land! He never publicised the fact because, well, you know, it is not a dragony type of thing to do, unlike singing, which all dragons give in to occasionally when sad. Anyway, the talent show that day saw the best tango ever danced in the world, accompanied by a dragon-version of Dancing Queen!

Unfortunately, all that dancing was too much for Combusting’s poisoned body to take. He succumbed to his death on the stage himself, but not before he had won the competition for his friends and singed the eyebrows and hair of every boarding-school children to the skin. The dragons won the prize-money and could go back to their kingdom.

Nurse Cuckoo proposed to Mr. Lucifer, but he confessed to her that he has lost his heart to an Oriental dragon. ‘Snakes and dragons do not usually make a pretty pair,’ he admitted to Nurse Cuckoo, ‘there’s much power-struggle. But we are too much in love to care about statistics. I am going to the dragon-land,’ he said with a shy smile to Nurse Cuckoo, ‘to meet the parents of my soul-mate Mr. Lappi Bahiri.’

BARSHA SAHA

UG III Roll No. 42