The earth’s equator is the tropics, hot, rain-drenched and vulnerable. It’s where the Madagascar High school is located, and in next few minutes, we will spend exploring this wild and unusual realm of absurdity. More than half the world’s ignorant but talented species live in these conditions. It’s a vertical landscape that pushes the very limits of human engineering.
And when humans, so brilliantly equipped, come in contact with the opposite gender, some of nature’s remarkable events unfold – inflated balls, the size of a fat human head, pass through the ring and drop in the net tied to it. Dark, tall and built humans do air flips defying gravity upon the success of such a score. A man in a hat, with the unsurpassed strength of a silverback guerrilla, dunks over five other people with his nuts flying over their heads.
These are the moments of wonder. Incredible, ingenious and entirely real. Often these boys are too fast, too tall or too dark to notice. But if we can capture them, what it takes to survive in these conditions with super remarkable skills, the truth can finally be revealed.
In the same tropical lands – the soft, timid and shy girls, looking like sparkly butterflies, often stay hidden in the shadows of the dark cemented buildings. Occasionally, they will venture into sunny clearings to catch a glimpse of these boys in the canopy above. But in the playground, the danger lies in wait.
A desperate and lustful lizard looking teenager has caught a sight of their shiny legs. And that bastard lizard is most uniquely equipped in capturing its prey. The lizard boy’s airflips, defy the very laws of physics. A moment so surprising, in order to understand it, we need to unpack the critical steps that get this predator to its prey.
It all starts with the chirping of the butterfly girls at a distance in the playground. And it’s with these voices, the butterfly girls call for attention. First and foremost, they can escape by running back into their dorm, but they can also stage a whole act of chastity, which, in all probability will startle the predator. In fact, their laughter isn’t really genuine.
The high pitch giggle is a trick to catch the attention of the guerrilla boys. Overtly loud and before the punchline – this isn’t a genuine laughter that has ever been agreed upon in the animal civilization. What’s more is when these butterfly girls come out of their cocooned homes back in their small towns, they take the fakeness as their birthright. Fake bras can make their breasts look larger and too much makeup is only used to attract the lizard-like boys.
Near the Dean’s office, it should be safer for these butterflies to stop and check out guerrilla boys. With the guard in the way, most lizard boys wouldn’t stand a chance. But this isn’t an ordinary lizard. For years, the faculties have tried to capture its moves with very less success. On a given day, he is someone who can walk on water like Jesus and turn guava Tropicana juice into vodka.
But let’s take a step back to see, why this lizard boy is so famous and why he is often referred to his friends as the Jesus lizard.
It all starts with the biomechanics in this lizard boy’s feet. And every time, he taps into the ground, it turns anything that’s wet or dry into a firm footing. And when his foot plunges down, it creates a pocket of air and a magnanimous force for support, that pushes the Lizard boy into creating the most astounding somersaults all across its gene pool. And there is another trick at work here, the backflips. Each of his legs is pushing forward like he is about to ride a bicycle on a vertical wall. And each of his legs is counterbalanced and of course, if he stops peddling his legs like a contortionist, he will fall on his head and will be ridiculed all throughout his summer school.
But he has started that epic run towards the butterfly girls. And at the moment of his basilisk approach, the fake giggles at distance become louder and more frequent at the anticipation of a freefall and also as a mechanism to take away a portion of the lizard boy’s full attention. But against all odds, the boy has made a remarkable backflip and is hooted by the guerrilla boys at a distance. Just one small act of survival but a hint of the internal engineering that allows these boys to set benchmarks of insane aerodynamic acts of contemporary survival. While the butterfly girls exhale a loud “aww” by witnessing the phenomenal set of the events.
While all this happens yards away from the Dean’s reception area where much of the action is prohibited, up in the basketball court, the high school’s miraculous tricks are a thing to behold. A large portion, almost above 50 percent of the school’s teenage boys live here during most part of day. And it’s a fine area to witness some remarkable air flip specialists.
The long-limbed, spider-like monkey boy is highly suited to spend most of his life in these courts. Jumping close to above 5 feet up in the air, with no signs of fear is a risky act, requiring a body that is customized to be a monkey but blessed with the genes of an athlete. In the intraschool basketball tournaments, Spider monkey boys are a force to be reckoned with. They turn the basketball court into a Disney circus with their amazing tricks. Post which, they gobble bananas, staying true to their genes.
These spider monkeys are known to spend hours in the court as a medium to impress the opposite gender. Their astounding powers of locomotion make the prettiest of the butterfly girls week in their knee wings, yards away from their high rise habitat.
However, not every creature living in this canopy has taken up this Tarazan act. But even if they don’t backflip, somersault or dunk on other monkeys, they garner respect from their peers for their survival acts. With such a respect, one of the most standout boy is a slick moving Spider monkey boy, who calls out all the butterflies from the woods, to witness the magnanimous and most unreal tricks of the evening.
The butterfly girls at first hesitate, but soon out of fear and excitement, they feel butterflies in their butterfly bellies. And a gamut of them come buzzing near the basketball yard. It has everyone, the ones with no dressing sense, the others with too much makeup and then some, out of shape unnoticeable blobs of fat wings.
Upon arriving at the court, the spider monkey boys, begin with their tricks, dunking one on top of another they go. And while most of the butterfly girls hoot and sigh. One of them steps forward.
This one, looks nothing like a butterfly. It’s more like a flash of feathers, in fact, it is hunching forward 90 miles an hour, then it dives, with its slight curves bouncing off under its jersey and skipping the puddle of water. It seems nature has combined an aerialist and aquanaut, with a body that moves seamlessly between two earthly domains – air and water.
Now, the question remains, is this a bird or a fish. Coz it is no damn butterfly!
The spider monkey boys, in a distance, are biting their tongues and swallowing the pride along with their bananas.
And one of them, comes forward and in way salutes the bird cum fish and asks out on a date.
But as the whole species in this self-contained habitat wait for its answer in anticipation. She goes back to her own flock of birds and says she doesn’t swing that way.
And thus, we end this documentary on Madagascar high school with a conclusion that, not all butterfly girls are weaker than the spider monkey boys. And neither are they interested in their aerodynamic tricks, coz they can very much do these themselves.
Peterosophy 