• NBC News: Monkeypox chiefly transmitted through sex between men, suggests CDC update.

All the heavens were celebrating, God in his heaven, Allah on his throne in the seventh heaven, Yahweh in his Shamayim. All except Hindu Gods who do not live in heaven because that is too sterilized. Only Indra and his cohorts live there. Indra was once the Supreme God but he became too given to luxury, fun and Apsaras and was kicked up to heaven much as a troublesome worker is kicked up in a company, eliminating his capability to be trouble anymore.

Hindu Gods take the trouble of being born as ordinary mortals as these are “people’s Gods”, not the elites who live far away. They exhibit the strengths and failings of us humans and set the do’s and don’ts during their human sojourn on earth instead of transmitting their injunctions second-hand through putative angels who transmit it third hand to putative prophets who transmit it fourth hand to people. Since good scribes are always too busy to attend such injunction-transmission sessions, people have to memorise and then transmit “fifth-hand” to a scribe who writes it all down. In a court of law, evidence based even on second-hand transmission is not admissible. The fifth-hand evidence will not be accepted even by a Kangaroo court.

But we digress. Why were non-Hindu (and mostly anti-Hindu) Gods celebrating in their respective highest heavens with their minions beating a zillion drums in the numerous lower heavens. New arrivals in the afterworlds were reporting a new disease. They originally called it monkeypox. Monkeys protested and there were reports of increased monkey thefts from orchards. Research, particularly involving monkeys not imprisoned in tiny cages in research labs, involves a lot of people, time and money. Thus, establishing a correlation between increased disappearance of fruit from branches, the monkeys disappearing in the fruit tree branches and the name of the infection took a long time. It might have taken for ever but for a happenstance, rather unhappy for the scientist involved who won an award but paid with eardrum perforation and his phone for the recognition. The young scientist was observing with scientific detachment a monkey plucking a ripe papaya for its afternoon snack. The scientist was speaking on phone to his colleague and happened to say “monkeypox”. The monkey rushed, gave the scientist a tight slap, snatched the phone and disappeared in the foliage. The new name proposed by the WHO has no mention of monkeys.

Coming back to Heavens of various Gods, the writings by the fifth-hand knowledge scribes speak of the serious aversion of these Gods towards gay sex. The Gods had been increasingly angry that not only such individuals have all tumbled out of their suffocating closets, they have been given legal and even constitutional protection. They are now happy couples and some have children. Happiness of humans coming at the cost of disobedience to fifth-hand writings is the ultimate unhappiness, thundered one God. We shall condemn the violators of our injunctions to permanent disfigurement, bellowed another. We shall expose them for the evil that they are and they will have nowhere to hide, said the third shaking with rage.

The attendants saw the Gods’ agitated condition and promptly summoned the chief scientist of the heavens, the one who in his earthly life worked at the Wuhan Lab. Can you stop this increasing contempt of our injunctions, asked the Gods. The scientist humbly nodded and started on the witches’ brew, displaying his mastery of imparting “gain of function” to viruses. Gain of the virus is peril of its victims and soon the deadly monkeypox was presented before Gods to be inflicted on humans.

Yet, why were the Gods so ecstatic? The stooping scientist told them that it will be transmitted mainly through gay sex, much like the HIV virus. The followers of the Gods’ injunctions will remain safe if they remain at a a safe distance, physically and morally, from the gays. This will re-establish the scriptural morality and rule of ancient Gods, benevolent to their followers, retributive to the detractors and cruel to the opponents. After all, divine cruelty is more important a weapon than divine benevolence to show to mortals the omnipotent divine power.

The Hindu Gods looked on with amusement. What about the divine will and its omnipotence that determines all human desires, they seemed to be asking. The noise of celebrations drowned their voice. Hindu Gods can be heard only in silence.

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