The story of the moulds

On this fine day, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to tell you a small story....

This story happened years ago, when slavery existed in the world. Many men and women were slaves back then, and their lives would begin and perish in that black, bitter hole of chained misery. Their masters used to enjoy every sort of amenities the rich, high class people would. The masters used to make the slaves believe that their only purpose of life was to serve them. They had their own ways of making them believe so. They made their lives so hard by making them work all day and sometimes even all night that they never had a minute to spare to realize that they were slaves. According to the slaves, their masters were the lords who fed them and gave them food, water, shelter and clothes. They were so engrossed in their respective jobs that they got so used to it like clockwork and made it their way of life... a habit. Clever ancestors of the rich, who lived even centuries ago had written books (so that their children would enjoy as much as they did) that made the slaves believe that God wanted the slaves to be born as they were, live to serve and die as slaves. And the poor wretched beings never even had a second to think how unfair all this was. Once in a while, one or two slaves turned up asking questions and they were never heard from later...

I said the slaves were fed, didn't I? Yes. They were. They were fed the bread that were the left overs from the dinner table of the rich. And by left overs, I do not mean those fresh broken crumbs. For pure spite, the rich used to eat the best loaves and leave the broken pieces in a damp place outside their kitchen. You all know what happens when bread is left in a damp place- moulds grow on them. Now, there were three kinds of moulds- Black, green and yellow. The servants of the house (who were above the slaves) were appointed to collect the bread and then store them in three seperate baskets everyday according to the colour of the mould. Ah yes... This was the food for the slaves, my people. The slaves used to eat this bread and get three sorts of diseases. The black one gave them dysentery, the green one- high fever and the yellow one used to make them vomit. And the poor slaves never realised that it was the food that gave them the diseases. They would then have to go to the local doctor for medicines and in return, work for him as a price.

The tricky part comes next. The masters used to feed the slaves different kind of moulds for a specific time of the year. For the first four months, they would feed them the bread with the black mould, the next four would be the green and the rest would be yellow. That way, the slaves always had a new taste every four months, and that kept them from getting bored about it. Strangely, by the end of every period, the slaves used to wait for the next change in taste and aroma, hoping that their illness would be lost and they have a different flavored food.

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Such was the story of the slaves and the mould-covered bread they were fed, my friends. I do not know how the story ended. Truthfully I haven't figured that out yet. But I will tell you this- those slaves are US... ME and YOU. The three different moulds are the different political parties that come into power one after the other in a periodic cycle. I leave the rest to you to figure out. If you have eyes, see...

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