Rohan Banerjee
On the morning the town decided Arjun Mishra was qualified to run a municipality, he overslept, which, in his defense, was how he responded to most major events including India matches, family weddings, and gas cylinder deliveries, and when his phone alarm blared “RISE, MAYOR,” not because he was prophetic but because his roommate Pintu had changed the label after watching a motivational reel, Arjun groaned, flung a pillow at the ceiling fan like the fan could negotiate with Monday, stumbled into a bath that was more an apology to water than hygiene, zipped into his faded red delivery jacket, kicked his scooter until it forgave him, and zoomed toward the first order of the day—paneer tikka pizza to “Election Office, Back Gate”—an address that promised a small tip and a long argument about change, and by the time he coughed his way up the flyover on that scooter which sounded like an asthmatic dragon, parked beside white Ambassadors lined up like retired elephants, and pushed inside past a banner shouting BHARAVGANJ MUNICIPAL POLLS—FREE AND FAIR, the receptionist who looked like she stapled seventeen governments together with her eyebrows pointed him toward a room labeled CANDIDATE FORMS, where a clerk chewing paan typed like the keyboard owed him rent and demanded “Name,” to which Arjun replied “Arjun,” balancing the pizza box, then “Full name,” to which he sighed “Arjun Shankar Mishra, paneer tikka, extra olives,” and before he realized the mix-up the clerk had already stamped a form, declared “Independent,” and shoved papers at him to sign while Arjun, too used to bureaucracies where nodding is the only survival strategy, obediently signed and walked out with a pink slip he mistook for a receipt, delivered the pizza to an accountant in a Nehru jacket, pocketed eleven rupees in coins, and promptly forgot the slip until later when Pintu rang five times to scream, “Bro, your face is on Facebook next to a broom, a lotus, and a pressure cooker, which one are you,” and Arjun fished out the pink slip under a gulmohar tree only to find neat, terrifying words: ACKNOWLEDGEMENT—NOMINATION RECEIVED, Candidate Name: ARJUN SHANKAR MISHRA, Party: INDEPENDENT, Symbol: SANDAL, which made him laugh so hard a passing cow judged him, and although he returned in the afternoon hoping to undo the error, the receptionist declared “Window Three closed,” the clerk muttered “Process initiated,” and a slick politician tried to adopt him like a puppy into their party if he promised loyalty, which sounded like the sort of movie where he died in the first act and his mother lit incense in the second, so Arjun gave up and went back to deliveries, hoping the storm would pass, but Bhairavganj WhatsApp groups had already turned him into “New Blood” and “Fresh Headache,” memes circulated of his scooter photoshopped on Parliament steps, and by Election Day he found himself persuaded by Pintu and by his scooter’s refusal to start that he might as well go vote for himself, walking to the school-turned-booth in his only buttoned shirt, greeted by a peon like a celebrity’s driver, and inside the EVM glowing like a baby spaceship he found his name, slightly misspelled but unmistakable, next to the sandal, and pressed it just for the joke, except the beep seemed to echo inside him like possibility, and by evening, after delivering twenty-six pizzas and collecting a lecture from Chachi of the tea stall about responsibility being as inevitable as mirchi in pakora, Arjun trudged home only to find his lane clogged with neighbors, fairy lights, marigold garlands, and a flower seller who had failed math but never festivals, Pintu standing on a plastic chair shouting “Mayor saab,” reporters thrusting mics, politicians arriving with smiles like landmines, and a clerk shoving a file at him with instructions for oath-taking, PAN, Aadhaar, bank passbook, birth certificate, and proof he was not a minor celebrity, and though Arjun wanted to run, the crowd demanded a speech, so he began with “I was delivering pizza when I became a candidate and kheer when I apparently became mayor, so if I bring anything, it is delivery,” and hearing his own words transform potholes into lived experience and chai queues into civic philosophy, he stumbled into comedy that sounded dangerously like leadership, promising smooth roads, strong tea, and government lines that move like gossip, which exploded into applause, and though he tried to brush it off, when Chachi placed two steaming cups into his hands and asked “First order, Mayor saab?” he surprised even himself by declaring free pizza that night for hospital staff, depot workers, power station guards, and police on night duty, and as coins clinked into a cap and neighbors passed notes like confetti, Arjun, still dizzy under the garlands, mounted his scooter and rode into midnight delivering boxes not as a joke but as a promise, ending at the power station where a guard whispered, “This is the first time someone remembered us,” and with cheeks warm in a way unrelated to summer Arjun returned through streets alive with possibility, scooter sighing like it had finally accepted its destiny, and as Pintu rehearsed salutes and the stars pretended indifference, Arjun looked at Bhairavganj staring back at him amused, terrified, expectant, and muttered to the streetlights, the banners, and the skeptical fan at home, “Fine, let’s see how badly I can accidentally do good.”
The first day at Town Hall looked less like a historic oath-taking and more like a badly organized wedding reception, because someone had borrowed plastic chairs from the nearby banquet, the banner still read “Happy Anniversary, Anju & Manoj,” and the microphone screeched like a goat each time the clerk attempted formality, but Arjun Mishra walked in wearing his delivery jacket anyway because he hadn’t bought a blazer, escorted by Pintu who insisted on carrying a folder though it only contained Maggi coupons, and the crowd erupted into equal parts laughter, applause, and disbelief, which was Bhairavganj’s default mood, while the professional politicians sat in the front row like vultures in kurta pajamas waiting for him to faint, but Arjun climbed the stage, raised his right hand, and repeated the oath as if ordering toppings—“I swear to serve Bhairavganj, thin crust, extra cheese, no corruption”—earning giggles from the schoolchildren at the back and a faint smile from the old judge administering the oath, who muttered “At least he’s original.” Afterward he was ushered into a dusty room labeled MAYOR’S OFFICE where a desk sagged under thirty years of files and one dying plant, portraits of long-forgotten leaders glared from the walls, and a secretary in a beige sari handed him a calendar already marked with twenty-seven meetings, six inaugurations, and three flag hoistings, all of which sounded less like governance and more like punishment, and Arjun, staring at the mountain of paper, asked the only question he knew: “Where’s the Wi-Fi?” The secretary blinked, the clerk shrugged, and Pintu whispered, “Bro, maybe order Jio Fiber under government expenses?” which Arjun, in a moment of delivery-boy wisdom, declared as his first policy—FREE WI-FI FOR ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICES—arguing that if employees could waste time faster online, they might actually finish work quicker, and though the officers groaned about budget, the idea went viral, making headlines in the local paper with the absurd caption: MAYOR ORDERS INTERNET TO FIGHT CORRUPTION. The next challenge arrived in the form of the municipal council, fifty sweaty men in white shouting about drainage, garbage, taxes, and honorifics, pounding the table until a leg cracked, and the senior leader thundered, “Mr. Mishra, do you even understand the sewage crisis?” to which Arjun replied, “Sir, I’ve delivered biryani through knee-deep water in the monsoon, I understand sewage better than Google Maps,” which silenced the hall long enough for laughter to sneak in, and by the end of the session, when he promised that every pothole would be mapped on a new “Fix It Fast” app built by his engineering cousin, the council realized they couldn’t bully him into silence because his weapon was shameless practicality. Outside, crowds swelled, people begging for jobs, licenses, and favors, and Arjun, exhausted, did what he always did when overwhelmed—opened a notepad and started writing delivery routes, except this time each route was a priority: streetlights for Old Bazaar, water filter for school canteen, benches near bus stop. By evening he had a plan not of grand reforms but small errands, and the town, starved of basic attention, began to buzz that the new mayor was “strangely useful.” Still, enemies brewed in air-conditioned offices where the defeated candidate, a man with a mustache so sharp it could slice cucumbers, swore vengeance, calling Arjun a circus, while senior leaders plotted to trap him in red tape, but Arjun remained blissfully ignorant, mostly because he spent his nights back on the scooter delivering pizzas he refused to quit, insisting, “Mayor by day, mozzarella by night,” which the town adored because their mayor still smelled of oregano. The turning point came during his first inspection round: escorted by a jeep that stalled twice, reporters trailing like mosquitoes, he stopped at the overflowing garbage dump of Ward 12, where residents had been complaining for decades, and while politicians usually promised committees, Arjun rolled up his sleeves, picked up a broken broom, and started sweeping, a gesture half comic, half insane, fully photographed, and within hours the picture of Bhairavganj’s mayor sweeping trash in sneakers went viral, captioned MAYOR CLEANS UP, literally, causing panic among senior officers who suddenly scrambled to actually send trucks lest they be exposed. Back in office, he announced a quirky rule that every government meeting must end within the time it takes to drink two cups of chai, enforced by serving tea at the start and declaring adjournment once cups were empty, which miraculously cut three-hour debates into twenty-minute bursts, baffling bureaucrats but thrilling the public. That night, over samosas at Chachi’s stall, he mused aloud that governance was basically like delivery—people order, you bring, no excuses, only difference is tips—an idea Pintu declared profound enough for TEDx if Bhairavganj ever hosted one. By the end of the week, though still mocked as “Pizza Mayor,” Arjun had unknowingly ignited a strange hope: potholes patched, streetlights repaired, garbage cleared—not everywhere, not perfectly, but enough to shock the cynical town. And yet as he leaned on his scooter under the dim glow of the Town Hall lamp post, staring at the sandal symbol painted on the wall, he couldn’t shake the feeling that comedy had begun to turn into responsibility, and for the first time in his life, the boy who once dodged every alarm wondered whether maybe, just maybe, he was awake.
By the time Bhairavganj started calling him “our pizza mayor with Wi-Fi brains,” the vultures had already begun circling because no political fairy tale is allowed to go uninterrupted, and the first crack came disguised as generosity when Councillor Gupta, a rival so polished his hair gleamed like shoe polish, arrived at Arjun’s office with a smile sharp enough to slice papaya and a suitcase of “project files” that smelled faintly of aftershave and corruption, insisting the mayor sign a contract granting his cousin’s company exclusive rights to supply streetlights, which would apparently cost more than the moon landing. Arjun, who had just eaten two samosas too quickly, stared at the mountain of documents as though they were a bad menu, and quipped, “Do you accept Paytm?” The room chuckled, reporters scribbled, and Gupta, cornered, slid the suitcase under the desk as if it were a secret pet, muttering that it was merely a gesture of goodwill. Unfortunately for him, Arjun’s reflexes as a delivery boy kicked in, and without thinking he pulled the suitcase out and opened it, expecting pamphlets, but out spilled bundles of notes like Diwali sweets, and the cameras flashed so brightly the portrait of Nehru on the wall looked embarrassed. Within hours the video of Bhairavganj’s mayor laughing over a suitcase of bribe money was everywhere, captions twisting it into scandal—MAYOR’S FIRST DELIVERY: CASH, hashtags screaming corruption, opposition leaders shouting on local TV, and Gupta’s allies whispering that the fool would soon collapse. Arjun, however, refused to panic. “If they say I took bribes, let’s show them how little I can afford,” he told Pintu, dragging reporters into his rented one-room house where the only treasures were a cracked helmet, three sauce sachets, and a scooter that refused to start unless bribed itself with kicks. The absurd honesty of his poverty turned the tide: instead of shame, the town erupted into laughter and sympathy, memes flooding social media—his scooter carrying a suitcase captioned “Corruption Level: Scooty Pep+,” his face photoshopped onto Robin Hood posters, and Chachi’s tea stall selling special “Bribe-Proof Chai” in his honor. To double down, Arjun called a press conference not in Town Hall but at the very dump he had once swept, declaring, “If I wanted money, I’d have joined Gupta’s catering company; at least their pulao is edible,” and promising to auction the suitcase publicly and use the money to fix school toilets. The stunt stunned even his critics; the auction drew half the town, and when the suitcase fetched an absurd sum from a businessman who wanted bragging rights, Arjun marched with the cash straight to the school and ordered repairs on the spot, live-streamed by giggling children. Overnight, the so-called scandal mutated into legend—THE MAYOR WHO TURNED BRIBES INTO BATHROOMS. Yet behind the humor, darker shadows lengthened. Gupta fumed in hidden meetings, declaring the boy too slippery, while veteran politicians warned that Arjun’s clownish transparency was more dangerous than corruption because it left no handles to control him. The bureaucracy retaliated in small ways: files misplaced, approvals delayed, officers “forgetting” meetings, trying to drown him in paperwork, but Arjun countered with delivery logic—he divided tasks into routes, assigning each officer specific jobs with deadlines written on a giant blackboard outside his office for the public to see, turning shame into enforcement. Crowds gathered daily to watch officials squirm under chalk marks, cheering when a line was ticked as complete. Slowly, Bhairavganj discovered a strange efficiency powered less by policy than by spectacle, and Arjun, though exhausted, found himself strangely exhilarated, as if life had finally upgraded from survival mode. Still, the weight pressed at night when he sat by the scooter, staring at the sandal symbol painted everywhere, wondering if his jokes were enough to hold against enemies with deeper pockets and sharper teeth. But each time doubt crept in, the city whispered back—Chachi handing him tea with a grin, children saluting him with sandals drawn on notebooks, delivery customers tipping a few extra coins saying “For the mayor fund”—and though he still cracked jokes, deep down Arjun Mishra began to realize he was no longer just an accident; he was Bhairavganj’s favorite mistake, and perhaps its only hope.
By the time the scandal suitcase had been converted into a row of sparkling school toilets complete with colorful doors and graffiti that read “Clean India, Clean Minds,” Arjun Mishra had developed a dangerous level of confidence, the kind that only arrives when the world underestimates you long enough for you to stop underestimating yourself, and so he announced his next experiment at Chachi’s tea stall, flanked by reporters, mechanics, and a goat that refused to move from the bench: “Delivery Democracy,” he declared, in which every citizen’s complaint would be treated like a food order, tracked, timed, and delivered, complete with an SMS update. Pintu cheered like a cricket crowd, the crowd laughed, but within a week Arjun had roped in his cousin from Bengaluru to design a crude app called Bhairavganj Express where residents could select issues—Potholes, Garbage, Water, Streetlights—just as easily as choosing pizza toppings, and behind the scenes Arjun scribbled delivery slips, assigning councilors and officers like riders, complete with deadlines measured in hours not months. At first it was chaos: the drainage officer almost fainted at being given a “thirty-minute window,” the water engineer complained he was not a Swiggy boy, and Gupta thundered in council that governance was not a tiffin service, but when the first few issues were resolved in record time—the broken lamp at Old Bazaar glowing before midnight, the garbage heap in Ward 7 cleared before breakfast—the town erupted in applause and disbelief, downloading the app so quickly the servers crashed. By the second week, Bhairavganj was addicted: complaints poured in like monsoon rain, people timing officials with stopwatches, memes comparing the mayor to Zomato, while Arjun, though exhausted, strutted through town with the swagger of a man who had turned government into a pizza tracker. But success bred resentment: bureaucrats muttered that he was humiliating them, Gupta’s allies plotted sabotage, and one evening an officer deliberately marked a complaint “delivered” without action, sparking fury online. Arjun responded by personally visiting the spot, finding the garbage still rotting, and dragging the officer along to pick trash, live-streaming the punishment with the caption “Late delivery = no tip.” The video went viral beyond Bhairavganj, reaching national news where anchors giggled over “India’s Pizza Mayor,” and soon journalists descended on the dusty town to witness the circus, amplifying his fame but also painting a giant target on his back. Amidst the frenzy, Arjun continued his nightly scooter rounds, inspecting delivery routes like they were pizzas, and though the scooter groaned under the pressure, he refused to upgrade, claiming “Scooter is symbol, symbol is sandal, sandal is people.” At night, though, under the dim glow of the single bulb in his room, he felt the weight of thousands of expectations pressing harder than any delivery bag, scribbling lists until his hands cramped, haunted by the thought that one failure could unravel the fragile trust. The inevitable storm came in the form of a water crisis: Ward 11’s taps ran dry for three days, the app flooded with complaints, and mobs gathered outside Town Hall demanding action. Arjun dashed into the council meeting, where engineers claimed pipes would take weeks to repair, Gupta smirked that the mayor’s thirty-minute fantasy had finally collapsed, and cameras swarmed to capture his humiliation. But Arjun, chest pounding, cracked a smile and announced a bizarre solution: emergency tankers dispatched not in days but within an hour, tracked live on the app like food deliveries. He commandeered trucks, bullied contractors, even climbed one himself with a megaphone shouting “Order confirmed, arriving in ten minutes,” and by midnight water was flowing again in Ward 11, not perfectly but enough to calm fury. The stunt nearly broke him—he collapsed back home drenched in sweat and mud—but the town roared his name, memes hailed him as “Delivery King,” and Gupta, grinding his teeth, realized mockery had failed because the boy turned every fiasco into performance. Still, cracks widened: funds strained, officials rebelled, and threats began to arrive—anonymous notes slipped under his door warning him to resign or risk more than mockery. Arjun laughed them off aloud but tucked them under his pillow at night, whispering to himself that accidents, too, had destinies. And as he looked out at Bhairavganj glowing with repaired lamps and restless hope, he wondered not whether he could keep delivering but whether the town, addicted to miracles, could survive the crash when his scooter finally ran out of fuel.
The accident was meant to be simple, the kind that newspapers would file away in two columns under “Tragic Scooter Mishap,” but nothing about Arjun Mishra had ever obeyed simplicity, not since he’d walked into the Election Office with a pizza box and walked out a mayor, so when the black SUV came screeching out of nowhere on the deserted ring road one late night, headlights glaring like interrogation lamps, aiming squarely at his sputtering scooter, fate intervened in the form of Bhairavganj’s worst pothole, a crater so deep it had its own postal code, which flung Arjun sideways at the exact moment the SUV lunged, sending him tumbling into a ditch full of muddy rainwater and discarded paan packets, while the scooter bounced into a hay cart and exploded in sparks that startled half the village’s goats. The SUV roared away unseen, leaving silence broken only by the cries of the goats and Arjun’s own groan as he sat up soaked, bruised, and absurdly alive, muttering “Delivery failed but customer still breathing.” By morning the story had spread like monsoon fever—MAYOR TARGETED, SCOOTER MARTYRED—and the ditch where he fell became a shrine where locals lit incense sticks, calling it “The Miracle Pothole.” Pintu stormed into the hospital where Arjun lay with bandages, waving his fists, vowing vengeance, while reporters shoved mics at the bed demanding who was behind it. Arjun, voice hoarse but eyes glittering with stubborn mischief, quipped, “If potholes can save lives, maybe we shouldn’t fill them after all,” a line that turned into headlines by evening, both comic and defiant. But under the humor simmered real danger: Gupta’s allies denied involvement, police registered a “hit-and-run,” and anonymous calls began arriving at midnight with laughter that was not friendly. Chachi smuggled in samosas, whispering that the town was terrified he’d be silenced like every honest man before, and for the first time Arjun felt the shadow of mortality pressing heavier than garlands. Yet even lying in bed he refused to pause; from his phone he dictated new orders, launching an initiative called “Safe Streets” to repair the very pothole that had saved him, while also demanding reflective paint on every road, because if he was going to be hunted, at least the hunters would have to drive past neon slogans. His comeback rally, held barely a week later despite doctors’ protests, drew thousands—rickshaw pullers, school kids, shopkeepers—all chanting his name not as a joke but as protection, and when Arjun limped onto the stage with one arm in a sling and declared, “They tried to deliver me six feet under, but I returned to sender,” the crowd erupted into a roar so fierce it shook the microphones. Gupta, watching from afar, realized the boy had once again turned catastrophe into comedy, and worse, comedy into loyalty. Still, threats mounted: his scooter, repaired with duct tape, now carried posters calling it “Freedom Rider,” and every ride through town felt like tempting fate, yet Arjun refused bodyguards, insisting he’d rather be reachable than safe, because a mayor who hides is just another politician. Nights grew restless—shadows at windows, footsteps in alleys—but each dawn brought new laughter from the town, citizens delivering complaints like jokes, officers scurrying under chalk deadlines, Bhairavganj somehow more alive in chaos than it had ever been in order. Alone, though, Arjun sometimes touched the scar on his forehead and whispered to himself that accidents weren’t always funny, that maybe destiny had a price, but when dawn light spilled across the battered scooter and chants of “Pizza Mayor Zindabad” echoed through the lanes, he swung his leg over the seat, turned the key, and muttered the only prayer he knew: “One more delivery.” And with that, Bhairavganj’s accidental leader rode once again into the absurd theater of governance, both joke and shield, both clown and hope, the boy who had turned mishap into mandate and somehow survived the punchline.
If Bhairavganj had become a circus, then the state capital was a full-blown carnival, and Arjun Mishra entered it like a street magician accidentally booked for a Las Vegas headline act, limping slightly from the pothole incident, his scooter transported on a truck like a relic, while Pintu strutted beside him carrying a folder labeled “State-Level Strategies” that in reality contained three packets of chips and a pen without ink. The invitation had come disguised as flattery—state leaders eager to showcase “young blood” paraded him into the Assembly, reporters snapping pictures of the Pizza Mayor under the grand dome, commentators chuckling about whether he would install Wi-Fi in the legislature too. Arjun, who had never stood in a room so polished it reflected his sneakers, gawked at chandeliers the size of Bhairavganj’s water tank, then promptly tripped on the red carpet, earning laughter from MLAs who underestimated how quickly mockery could turn into momentum. During his first session, when a senior minister droned for forty minutes about infrastructure, Arjun yawned into the mic and muttered, “Sir, even my scooter runs faster than this speech,” and the chamber burst into chaos, half jeers, half applause, the Speaker banging his gavel like a tabla player. Overnight he was a sensation again, TV panels debating whether his antics were refreshing honesty or dangerous buffoonery, while Bhairavganj beamed with pride at seeing their accidental mayor shaking up the capital. The ruling party tried to recruit him, offering positions, perks, even a red beacon car, but Arjun replied that his scooter was more loyal than any party, which became another viral line. Meanwhile the opposition dangled promises of power if he turned against the state government, but he shrugged them off, declaring at a press meet, “I already betrayed my scooter once by forgetting to refuel, never again,” leaving journalists both confused and delighted. Yet the deeper he waded into state politics, the sharper the knives became: dossiers of “scandals” fabricated overnight, doctored videos showing him dancing with wads of cash, late-night raids on his tiny office under pretext of checking “illegal Wi-Fi routers.” Each attack only fueled his legend because Arjun leaned into the absurdity—he staged a counter press conference outside a broken public toilet, pointing at the leaking roof and declaring, “This is the only place politicians truly connect with the people,” sending anchors into hysterics. Behind the laughter, though, he sensed the machinery grinding, forces far beyond Bhairavganj plotting to drown his noise under their money and muscle. Even Pintu, usually reckless, whispered at night that maybe they were punching too high, but Arjun, staring at the sandal symbol spray-painted on walls back home, knew retreat was impossible; the accident had become movement, and movements don’t run on fuel, they run on faith. His greatest test came when the state budget was tabled, and he stood in the Assembly armed with nothing but sarcasm, ripping through inflated figures with metaphors about pizzas—“You can’t call it a full pizza if you give us only crust and keep the cheese”—forcing chuckles even from hostile benches. By the end, reporters declared his five-minute quip more impactful than hours of speeches, the common people sharing clips with captions like OUR MAYOR, THEIR HEADACHE. Still, the backlash grew nastier: goons vandalized his office, Gupta resurfaced with allies, whispering that “the boy won’t last a year.” Yet Bhairavganj rallied harder, lantern processions chanting his name, children refusing homework until streetlights were fixed, Chachi’s stall now renamed “Mayor Café.” And one evening, as Arjun rode his battered scooter through lanes lit brighter than ever, he realized the battle had shifted; he was no longer fighting just for smoother roads but against a system that thrived on potholes—political, bureaucratic, moral. The absurdity of it all both terrified and thrilled him. Standing atop the scooter in front of a roaring crowd, sling finally off his arm, he shouted, “They think I’m a clown, fine! But even clowns make people laugh through storms, and maybe laughter is what this state needs before it can breathe.” The roar that followed was deafening, not because of promise but because of possibility, and as the night sky cracked with fireworks borrowed from someone’s wedding, Arjun Mishra—pizza boy, scooter survivor, accidental mayor—felt the pull of destiny nudging him from local legend to state-level irritant, and wondered with a grin whether he was ready to deliver chaos at scale.
When the Bhairavganj Express app leaked into neighboring towns, it wasn’t because of a grand marketing plan but because Pintu’s cousin uploaded it to the Play Store with the description “Better than government helpline, guaranteed response before your chai gets cold,” and within a week residents from villages miles away were logging complaints about drains, power cuts, and missing cows, all tagged under “urgent order,” which sent Arjun’s phone buzzing at three in the morning with a notification that read, “One cow, brown, still pending.” By dawn, half the state was trying to use the system, and newspapers reported with half-mockery half-awe that “Pizza Mayor’s Delivery Democracy Goes Viral,” comparing it to a start-up that had accidentally franchised itself. Soon delegations from small towns were arriving in Bhairavganj, demanding to meet the man who turned bureaucracy into takeaway, and Arjun, sipping tea at Chachi’s stall, found himself giving pep talks to bewildered sarpanchs about the importance of writing deadlines on blackboards. Crowds swelled daily outside Town Hall not just with locals but outsiders clutching complaint slips as though they were train tickets, and though chaos reigned, the sight of action—even symbolic—spread like wildfire, birthing slogans that painted walls across districts: “Order Governance, Delivered Fast.” The state leadership, once amused, now grew alarmed, realizing what began as a joke had mutated into a populist spark threatening to expose their deliberate inefficiency. Gupta, sensing opportunity, whispered in their ears that Arjun had to be stopped before his clown act rewrote the rules. Conspiracies multiplied: funding for Bhairavganj projects was slashed, contractors were bribed to abandon work, and journalists were fed stories portraying him as reckless, a liability, a danger to “stability.” Yet every sabotage backfired; when garbage trucks mysteriously failed to arrive, Arjun personally rented tractors and led a cleaning drive, joking live on camera that he was launching a “Trash IPO.” When funds for streetlights vanished, shopkeepers crowdfunded fairy lights strung across lanes, which locals proudly called “People’s Electricity.” Every punch thrown at him was absorbed and reshaped into performance, each failure transformed into a meme, until his popularity no longer depended on smooth service but on the visible struggle, the comedy of one scooter rider against an empire of SUVs. Still, the pressure mounted: threats turned into raids, tax officers barged into his one-room house only to find nothing but Pintu snoring, memes were doctored showing him pocketing bribes, and anonymous calls promised that next time the pothole wouldn’t save him. At night, Arjun lay awake, staring at the ceiling fan, wondering if laughter could really shield him forever, if a town’s hope could survive when bulldozers of power rolled in. Yet each dawn, Bhairavganj answered back louder—crowds waiting outside his gate with sweets, children chanting sandal slogans, mothers pressing his hands with coins saying, “For your scooter petrol, beta.” And in that absurdity, in that fragile trust, he found energy enough to keep fighting. The climax of the frenzy arrived when a delegation of college students from the capital launched a campaign called #DeliveryDemocracy, printing stickers with his face and plastering them across buses, phones, and even exam halls, transforming Arjun from a local mascot into a reluctant state symbol. Leaders panicked, plotting to crush him under legal cases, smear campaigns, even whispers of arrest. But when reporters asked him what he’d do if jailed, he smirked and said, “Then I’ll launch Jail Express—deliver freedom in thirty minutes or less,” and the clip exploded across the nation, laughter and outrage tangled together. For the first time, Arjun realized the battle had left Bhairavganj entirely; his jokes were now weapons wielded by strangers, his scooter a metaphor painted in graffiti far beyond his own streets. And as he rode home through a lane shimmering with fairy lights donated by shopkeepers, he felt the weight of history sneaking onto his scooter seat, muttering to himself that accidents have ripples, and maybe this one was becoming a storm.
Betrayal never announces itself with thunder, it creeps in disguised as loyalty, and for Arjun Mishra it arrived in the form of Pintu, the roommate-turned-sidekick whose folder of chips had once been a punchline but now carried signatures, receipts, and the fragile trust of Bhairavganj. It began subtly: meetings missed because Pintu was “busy,” documents misplaced and later found in odd corners, his laughter at Arjun’s jokes thinner than usual. Arjun brushed it off as fatigue until one evening he discovered Pintu leaving a restaurant in the capital with none other than Councillor Gupta, the man whose mustache could slice cucumbers and whose ambition was sharper still. The sight hit harder than the SUV ever had. Later, when confronted, Pintu mumbled excuses—Gupta offered “advice,” nothing more—but his eyes flickered the way eyes do when truth has been rented out. Arjun said nothing then, only nodded, but the silence stretched heavy between them in the one-room house, their ceiling fan spinning like a useless witness. Soon after, leaks began: internal app data splashed across newspapers, painting Delivery Democracy as chaos; photos of Arjun napping on his scooter circulated online, captioned MAYOR TOO LAZY TO WORK; and rumors spread that the mayor pocketed money from the fairy light crowdfunding. Arjun laughed it off in public, but at night the laughter soured, because the only people with access to those details were himself and Pintu. The town, loyal but confused, asked questions with hesitant eyes, and Gupta’s camp seized the chance to brand him a fraud. Yet Bhairavganj wasn’t ready to abandon its miracle, and crowds still gathered outside Town Hall, chanting slogans, pressing sweets into his hands, but Arjun felt the ground shift beneath the noise. Then came the sabotage that nearly broke him: one morning dozens of complaints appeared on the app under his name, marked “delivered,” but the issues—garbage, drains, lights—remained untouched. Fury erupted in Ward 9, mobs gathering with sandals raised in betrayal, and when Arjun rushed there, riding the scooter at reckless speed, he was met not with cheers but with jeers, people shouting “You’re just like them.” Standing in the middle of the angry crowd, bruised from falling twice en route, he wanted to scream his innocence, but the words choked. Only later, sifting through records, did he see the ghost trail: false updates logged from his account, the password shared only with Pintu. When confronted again, Pintu finally snapped, confessing Gupta had promised him a “real future,” that Arjun’s circus would collapse, that friendship couldn’t pay rent forever. The words sliced deeper than any bribe or SUV could. For hours Arjun sat on the scooter outside Chachi’s stall, staring at the symbol on the app, feeling as if the entire comedy had been stolen from inside his chest. But Bhairavganj, absurdly faithful, refused to let him sink. Mothers defended him in markets, children painted slogans anew, and old Chachi, slamming down cups of chai, barked, “If your friend leaves, so what? You still have the town.” The rage of betrayal slowly hardened into resolve. The next day Arjun called a press conference, this time not with jokes but with the rawness of someone who had been punched by trust itself. He admitted the failures, exposed the leaks, and declared that Bhairavganj Express would no longer run through backroom administrators but directly through citizen volunteers, ordinary riders of democracy. “If they want to break me from inside,” he said, voice cracking but eyes steady, “let them try. This town doesn’t run on passwords. It runs on people.” The crowd roared, sandals waved like flags, and though the wound of betrayal remained etched on his face, Bhairavganj saw in that moment not a clown nor a scapegoat but a fighter learning to laugh through pain. And as he rode away afterward, scooter wobbling yet unbroken, Arjun Mishra muttered to the wind that some deliveries must be made alone.
The crackdown began before dawn, as crackdowns always do, with boots pounding the quiet lanes of Bhairavganj, jeeps lined like black beasts outside Town Hall, and officers storming into the mayor’s office waving warrants that seemed more like theatre scripts, charging Arjun Mishra with fraud, mismanagement, even sedition—because nothing terrifies a system more than laughter turned into loyalty. They seized files, toppled chairs, even uprooted the dying plant in his office as if it too were a conspirator, while TV anchors parroted headlines written the night before: PIZZA MAYOR EXPOSED, DELIVERY DEMOCRACY A SCAM. At his home, Pintu’s old bed lay empty—proof of betrayal still raw—while police ripped through cupboards containing nothing but sauce sachets and cracked helmets. Arjun, warned by a chai seller at dawn, didn’t run; he walked straight into Town Hall as cameras clicked, raised his hands not in surrender but in greeting, quipping, “Careful, if you cuff me my scooter will get jealous,” a line that ricocheted across social media even as officers dragged him into a van. Bhairavganj erupted within hours: markets shut, children painted sandal symbols on their cheeks, women blocked roads with rangoli spelling FREE MAYOR, while Chachi’s tea stall transformed into a resistance headquarters, distributing free chai stamped with “Not for Sale.” The state, furious at the uproar, doubled down: posters declaring him criminal plastered on walls, nightly debates where experts dissected his “dangerous populism,” attempts to erase him from memory by turning his comedy into crime. But the people refused erasure. Volunteers revived the Express app on hacked servers, renaming it Jail Express, tracking not potholes but updates on his hearings. Songs sprouted in alleyways comparing him to folk heroes, the scooter elevated into legend, painted on walls beside slogans like “You can’t arrest a delivery.” Inside the jail, Arjun faced not despair but absurdity: guards sneaking selfies, fellow inmates asking him to file complaints about leaky taps, the warden complaining about potholes on the approach road. Arjun laughed, then cried, then laughed again, realizing even prison couldn’t mute the demand he had accidentally ignited. Yet nights were heavier; betrayal by Pintu echoed, whispers of torture loomed, and anonymous letters warned him he’d be “transferred” to a distant cell where memory itself could vanish. The state underestimated one thing: Bhairavganj’s talent for turning despair into performance. Every day outside the courthouse crowds gathered chanting “Delivery in thirty minutes or less,” waving scooters painted cardboard silver, while farmers, students, vendors joined hands in the largest protest the sleepy town had ever seen. Leaders panicked; Gupta, now bloated with arrogance, declared on TV that “the boy is finished,” unaware that each sneer only fueled the fire. After three weeks of legal theatre, when Arjun was produced before a magistrate, the crowd outside swelled so huge the police barricades bent like matchsticks, and chants shook the glass windows until the magistrate, exasperated, ordered him released on bail. When Arjun stepped out, thinner but unbroken, he didn’t raise his fist, he simply climbed onto the battered scooter waiting faithfully at the gate, kicked it twice until it coughed alive, and rode straight into the arms of Bhairavganj, shouting above the din, “Delivery resumed!” The roar that answered could have toppled governments. That night, as fireworks burst and slogans painted the sky, Arjun realized the crackdown had backfired—he was no longer just an accidental mayor, he was a symbol stitched into songs, posters, graffiti, chai cups. And though he grinned, though he cracked jokes, deep in his chest pulsed the certainty that the storm had only begun, that the final delivery would not be measured in pizzas or potholes but in whether laughter could outlast power itself.
The final showdown arrived disguised as an election, though everyone in Bhairavganj knew it was a war dressed in ballots, because the state, rattled by one scooter-riding mayor turned meme into movement, declared early polls, hoping to crush his wildfire popularity before it spread beyond control. Arjun Mishra, who had once laughed off nomination papers like pizza receipts, now found himself at the center of rallies stretching from tea stalls to stadiums, his sandal symbol painted on trucks, scooters, and even kites flying over paddy fields, each kite a tiny rebellion against suits and SUVs. Gupta sneered from giant billboards funded by shadowy donors, his mustache sharper than ever, declaring stability, experience, and “real governance,” while Arjun’s posters were handmade, often crooked, showing him grinning on the battered scooter with slogans like “Delivery Guaranteed, Thirty Minutes or Change.” The state tried every trick—blocking his rallies, cutting power at meetings, sending officers to intimidate volunteers—but each obstacle became a joke that turned viral: when mics failed at one rally, Arjun borrowed a wedding band’s loudspeaker and shouted promises between Bollywood songs, when police shut down Chachi’s stall, the town painted FREE CHAI slogans on walls and handed cups from their homes. His campaign wasn’t strategy, it was chaos, but chaos that felt human, funny, alive, in a landscape choking on scripted speeches. Reporters who once dismissed him as a clown now followed him like pilgrims, recording his one-liners that sliced cleaner than manifestos. “They promise five-year plans,” he shouted once, hair wet from rain, “I promise five-day drains!” The crowd roared, sandals raised like flags, chants echoing through lanes. Yet beneath the laughter he carried fear heavy as concrete—the memory of potholes, betrayals, jail, the SUV’s headlights—knowing this stage was bigger than Bhairavganj, and failure meant erasure. On the eve of voting, he sat alone on the scooter parked at Town Hall, fairy lights flickering, whispering to the machine like an old friend, “One last delivery, partner.” Election Day erupted like a festival: queues wrapped around schools, women in saris holding sandal-inked fingers, children playing scooter races in alleys, the town buzzing with something it hadn’t tasted in decades—choice. Reports of booth capture attempts poured in, but villagers defended with sheer presence, crowding polling stations, chanting until officers backed down. By evening, turnout shattered records, and whispers grew: the accident had become avalanche. Counting day dawned hot and restless. Gupta’s camp strutted early with leads in rich wards, anchors announcing Arjun’s fairy tale was ending, but by noon the rural boxes cracked open and sandals poured forth, votes stacked higher than anyone imagined. By afternoon Bhairavganj itself erupted, results flashing across channels: Arjun Mishra, independent, accidental, absurd, had not only retained his mayorship but swept into the state assembly with numbers too big to dismiss. Gupta’s face drained on TV, the mustache suddenly powerless, while Bhairavganj lit up with fireworks, drums, and fairy lights strung across every lane. Arjun climbed onto his scooter once more, this time surrounded by thousands, his voice hoarse yet clear: “This was never about me. It was about proving that laughter can govern, that honesty can ride a scooter faster than lies in an SUV.” The crowd’s roar drowned the rest, history written not with manifestos but with memes, not with marble speeches but with cracked helmets and delivery slips. That night, as the town danced and children sprayed colors on the walls, Arjun stood alone on the roof of Town Hall, looking at the chaos he had somehow authored, wondering whether destiny would keep him funny or demand he grow into something heavier. The stars blinked indifferently, the scooter coughed in the courtyard below, and with a tired grin he whispered into the night, “Order delivered.”
END
