Once upon a time in xanadu, there lived a great artist of renown. Flashing eyes he possessed, floating hair he had in abundance, honeydew was his staple and he had had more than his fair share of the milk of paradise. Walking taller than the great men of his time on the national stage he had already said all what Lennon had to say much much later, when Lennon was not even a faint gleam in anyone’s eye.
International recognition brought with it a gong made of gold and a citation that he was deemed to be one of a kind in his chosen field of endeavour. This great artist had a pet cow which he had brought in as a calf and nurtured with a lot of attention and care. He hung the gong around the cow’s neck as a token of his affection.
Realising that there would be no one to look after the cow after him, he asked the rulers of the land to please look after the cow to the best of their abilities. The great artist left for his abode of peace after being assured that his cow would be well looked after.
The rulers immediately fell to and put together a system whereby a chief cowherd and various assistant cowherds would be employed to look after the well being of the cow. The chief cowherd would be selected from a cross section of good men who would be expected to be compassionate to the needs of the cow. The chief cowherd would have tenure of 5 years. Some of them were very good while some got high on the pelf and power akin to a fiefdom. And it was so for a fair while.
The assistant cowherds and their assistants were slowly getting bored out of their wits watching the cow graze away placidly ensuring that the cud was being thoroughly chewed. Their lives seemed consigned to ennui with no remarkable prospects for advancement. Despondently they were resigning themselves to their fate when the cow tossed its head at a swarm of flies and the bright sunlight caught the gong in full in an apocalyptic moment.
The next day brought the shocking news that the gong had gone! Vanished! without a trace. All the king’s horses and all of its men could not find the gong ever again. Committees of wise men gathered around, tut tutt-ed and were prevailed upon to approve a plan for heightened security arrangements for the cow, lest she too be whisked away by the unscrupulous.
The wise men said demarcate the boundaries of xanadu, the assistants said we will do that and then wall up xanadu so nothing can escape nor can anything new come in. Thus xanadu built on the lines of the great artist’s vision of the universal brotherhood of man commenced its descent to that of a provincial ghetto of numbing ugliness.
Oh! And the name of the river is kopai….
