Phase 1:

Who shoved Humpty Dumpty?

The advocate cleared his horribly reputed frills in his throat, and unhurriedly chased them down with a glass of water. As he caressed his historically responsible bloated belly that narrated all his eventful nights of inebriation, his mind kept on betting on chances of ever winning the case. ‘When will they ever put a human on the bench?’ enquired so pointlessly his heart. The closest that the powers ever came to satisfying them was with the promise to put on the bench an egg judge with a human face.
‘An egg with a human face? An egg with a human face? There’s no such,’ fumed and fretted the advocate’s thoughts.
For the lady that is justice to be earnestly blind, they had asked for the bench to truly mirror mankind. The eggs had ruled for so long, for too long. The brutal fact, though, was that although mankind had broken to shrapnels of shells the Egg Regime, the yolk of unease insisted on plastering itself all over the vertical and the horizontal that added up to their blood-won Mankind Regime. Although mankind had overthrown the Egg Regime, the eggs somehow remained in power.
Though he could be counted as a breath living in the Mankind Regime, the advocate was shocked that he hadn’t lost his second-nature habit of forking out an egg from a human. That is a vice he had picked up and honed as a statistic surviving in the Egg Regime. He had vowed by his eldest sister to drop the attitude once mankind fried the eggs.
Second nature, this, his vice, had become. He had vowed not to be so concerned about ‘this’ species and the ‘other’ species. ‘Aren’t we all species?’ He soothed his rage with a pinch of political correctness. He had sworn to abandon the horrible attitude of speciesm. ‘But then...,’ ran the crippled thoughts of the advocate. The same faces were seated together on the same spots. Nothing to write home about had changed. The judge was an egg. Lining the walls were paintings of judges that had warmed the same bench years back, in their meticulously placed line of succession. They were all eggs. The bailiff was an egg. All the authoritative law books were written by eggs. The eggs were seated on their rows, and the humans on their own, save with some liberal and bohemian sprinkling of eggs and humans who found that they acquired no virus in mixing up together.

The advocate fingered down what little hair was left on his head as he shuffled the papers on his desk. He gave a glance at the audience. Mrs. Dumpty sat in front with the rest of the Dumpty dynasty, ceaselessly wiping her tears. He looked down at the table as he shuffled his papers, and finally picked one up. He cleared his throat.
“Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.”
He took off his glasses as he opened his closing statement. With an eye glazed with pity, yet smothered with the passion of longing for the truth, he gazed at the defendants. ‘How pitiful,’ he thought as he looked at them. ‘How could revolutionaries be deemed murderers? Well, I suppose that’s egg justice for you.’ His thoughts laced his mind. All three of them, Mr. Msindo, Mr. Pillay and Mr. Bosman, looked away as they waited for their fates.

“Your Honour, herein before us, the defendants, Mr. Msindo, Mr. Pillay and Mr. Bosman, have been charged with murder in the first degree. They have been accused of pushing the plaintiff, Humpty Dumpty, off the wall. That resulted to his breaking and, subsequently, his death. The bloody egg!” yelled the advocate.
“Counsel! Counsel! I’ll throw you out for contempt of court. Now, please proceed,” warned the eggy judge. The advocate had lost count of the number of times he had been kicked out for contempt of court. Once he had tried to count, but only came up to umpteen.
“Your Honour, the plaintiff, the deceased Humpty Dumpty, the swine...,” an inevitable slip of a tongue.
“Counsel! Counsel! For the last time,” banged the judge.
“Go on, be biased. Aren’t you an egg as well. An egg for another fellow egg,” cried the advocate.
“Counsel!” fumed the judge.
“I saw you, Your Honour. You were in the scene of the incident as well, frantically trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again.”
“Counsel! Try me again, and you will make your way for the exit,” quietened down the judge.
As he shuffled his papers, the advocate hummed a toyi-toyi song in a whisper.

Old McDonald had a farm,
Eeya! Eeya! Hoo!
And on his farm he broke some eggs,
Eeya! Eeya! Hoo!         
With an egg shell here,
And an egg shell there.
Here an egg,
There an egg.
Everywhere an egg shell.
Old McDonald had a farm,
Eeya! Eeya! Hoo!

“Come again, counsel. Would you mind sharing that with the rest of us?” Asked the judge.
“That was nothing, Your Honour. It was just my clan’s traditional good luck chant.” So conned the advocate.
“Please, do proceed then counsel.”

He shoved one hand in his trousers and cleared his throat again.
“Who shoved Humpty Dumpty? Your Honour, who shoved Humpty Dumpty? Mr. Msindo, Mr. Pillay and Mr. Bosman pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall. They killed him. Indeed, they broke and murdered the egg, and they have pleaded guilty for that.” He took his white handkerchief and wiped off the ever-present shine on his forehead.
“But I bet you, Your Honour, that is not the question. Your Honour knows as well as I know that we should not strain our nerves with obvious questions and answers. No one should get away by stating the obvious.” He poured himself another glass of water, and nonchalantly gulped it down his throat. He then paused for a minute as he visually caressed the egg and human contents of the courtroom.

“Why did they shove Humpty Dumpty off the wall? Whose wall was he seated on in the first place? On whose land was the wall built? Who built the wall? Who was justifiably supposed to sit on the wall? Who paid for the construction of the wall? Why have we never seen anyone besides Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall? Why did all the king’s horses and all the king’s men try to put Humpty Dumpty together again? How did they benefit from Humpty Dumpty? Was Humpty Dumpty such an important egg? Why did they shove Humpty Dumpty off the wall? Why?“ He looked at the judge as egg hell in the audience was breaking loose.

Unsurpassed passion pierced Mr. Msindo’s mouth to an unbearably sweet smile. ‘He beat me on my mouth. The advocate beat me on my mouth!’ His thoughts broke out in a human language directly translated to the egg language. It was a proverb that all humans understood very well. ‘Indeed, he said what I would have said. He beat me on my mouth.’ He eyed the floor, as if giving thanks to his ancestors. ‘If only I had some beer brewed by my eldest sister to pour on the floor and give thanks to my ancestors,’ Mr. Msindo’s heart yelled in excitement. No-one ever dared to see his side of the story. Glaringly beastly. His side of the story.

His was bliss and fat and pure and beautiful. Until the eggs came. Mr. Msindo’s life was blissful and fat and pure and beautiful. Until the man with an oval face and fragile body filled with yellow and white stuff arrived. His finger seemed not long enough in outlining his land to his sons. He had given up on using his knobkerrie for stroking his sons’ pride for the land they would in yonder times call their own. He beat his chest and waved his hand at the grazing area of his livestock. That was how far his pride went in pointing out his wealth and himself to his sons. Everyone knew him in his village. Msindo’s name spelt prosperity. He showed it in every manner and hue possible. His rotund belly displayed the contented man Msindo was. In the virgil dances, his arms were the only ones pulled away from each other the most amongst common men. Pulled far away from each other in the shape of horns, because his herd of livestock was the largest in his village.

Now, all that disappeared to nothingness with the coming of Sir Humpty Dumpty. The minute Sir Humpty Dumpty landed on Msindo’s land, all the king’s men and all their horses were prodding all over the place as if they had been there for a century. Yelling and poking and hoofing all over Msindo’s nerves and land, they bulldozed him around. Soon, they started demanding all sorts of taxes, for even good old Rex, Msindo’s favourite dog. Then, all sorts of laws landed. Before Msindo could know it, he was left with only a barren and useless strip of land, and the rest of his ancestors’ land had given way to the building of Sir Humpty Dumpty’s long and high wall.

‘Where did all my strength and people go? Alas! They all had to go to putting up Humpty Dumpty’s wall. Dammit! That egg! He sure deserved his long-awaited great fall,’ broke Mr. Bosman’s thoughts amid the hell that had just broken loose among the eggs in the courtroom. His neighbourhood that bore all his people’s past and pride had to contend with being bulldozed down, just for the sake of putting up Sir Humpty Dumpty’s long and high wall.
Such a long wall stretched from Msindo’s land, past Bosman’s neighbourhood, conquering all the space that harboured the shopping complex proudly owned by Pillay and his family. The Dumpty dynasty crossed their fingers and vowed on some piece of paper that Mr. Bosman and his family, if they worked very hard in building the wall, they would as well get the opportunity to sit alongside Humpty Dumpty. And all that was in vain, as even now they have never had their bottoms seated on it.

‘And to think of it... Just to think of it! My family had owned these shops ever since my great-great grandfather from Bombay saved his last pennies to build them. And now they are all gone, for the sake of putting up some lousy wall,’ thought Mr. Pillay, as the judge was trying his utter best to quieten down the brouhaha in the courtroom. The Pillay Shopping Complex was everyone’s soul-holder in the neighbourhood. He was always open seven days a week, sometimes closing at 11 in the evening on Sundays. And all that had gone down.

“Quiet! Quiet in my courtroom! Quiet!” yelled the judge, as he banged his hammer on his high table.
“There’s one question that does not stop to bother me. Now that Sir Humpty Dumpty is deceased, and the wall remains vacant, why don’t any of you sit on the wall, then?” questioned the judge, as his eyes focused on Mr. Msindo for a reply.
“Your Honour, we cannot sit on the wall, because Bumpty Dumpty is now occupying it. He doesn’t want any of us to sit alongside him, although we all contributed to Humpty Dumpty’s great fall,” said Mr. Msindo, as his eyes piercingly searched for Sir Bumpty Dumpty, seated right at the back of the courtroom.

Suddenly, Bumpty Dumpty’s body shook with nervousness. His huge oval and fat face rippled with shock. He was human enough, but sure was changing to bear an impeccable resemblance to an egg. To Humpty Dumpty, to be precise. On his ivory chair, Bumpty Dumpty, then a human, orchestrated “The Revolution of the Great Fall.” Now, everything had changed. Not only was this human being beginning to change, bearing a spitting image to an egg, he was also beginning to behave like an egg. All of a sudden, he was talking exactly like an egg, and behaving like an egg. To top it all, rumours had it that he was engaged to some pretty egg as well.

“Away with Bumpty Dumpty, away! Down with Bumpty Dumpty, down! The wall belongs to us all. Let all the human beings and all the well-meaning eggs sit on the wall!” yelled one human in the middle row of the courtroom, with a clenched fist held aloft.
“Phantsi ngo Bumpty Dumpty, phantsi.”
Soon after that, hullabaloo broke loose, as all the humans and some sensible and sympathetic eggs broke out in a toyi-toyi, slowly heading for Sir Bumpty Dumpty, who was now hurriedly heading for the door. Bumpty Dumpty’s security guards castled him around, lest the crowd get into him and cause another Great Fall.

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