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Burning Desire galloped all over the Mahalaxmi Race Course after he read the morning newspapers. The other horses tried to calm him down.

“What the hell is horse trading?” he asked. “Who are these people trading in us without our knowledge?” He continued to gallop angrily even as Lady Luck tried to explain that horse trading had nothing to do with their breed and merely meant hard bargaining among human politicians involving a lot of compromises.

“Then why call it horse trading?” snapped Burning Desire. “Why malign our breed?”
The other horses echoed his view. They couldn’t understand why humans were being so mean to horses and equating them to negative aspects in their lives.

“It’s not just dirty politics that they have dragged us into,” pointed out Thundering Typhoon.

“Do you know what the underworld calls country-made weapons Desi Ghoda? And imported guns are known as Videshi Ghoda! Is this what they think of us after centuries of using us as their mode of transport and form of sport? The Mongols even drank horse blood!”

This was all really strange, considering a few years ago the horse was voted the fourth favourite animal on Animal Planet.

“We’ve been taken for a ride,” remarked Lightning Breeze. “It’s now proved that human beings don’t care for us. Have you noticed that when they say someone is horsing around, it’s not very complimentary?”

The horses wondered how the humans could be so mean to them when they were so alike.

“We eat grass and they smoke grass,” said Burning Desire, “We sleep while standing and so do they while standing in crowded local trains! It’s just that horses can’t vomit like humans after overeating at a buffet dinner and hence our digestion problems are often fatal!”

The horses at Mahalaxmi Race Course were worried. The future looked bleak. “All kinds of crooks and convicts are on the verge of hijacking this country as a result of this so-called horse trading in Indian politics,” snapped Burning Desire. “This is going to reflect badly on us! We must do something!”

There weren’t many options. Maybe they could call for a bandh like humans!
“Or we could migrate to China,” concluded Lady Luck. “It has the largest number of horses in the world — eight million! Maybe we could form a political party and return to do some horse-trading ourselves with the Congress or the Left!”
But it was already too late…