With dark comes light

With dark comes light, and something as multi-faceted as the deadly sins requires a look into its humorous side. Acts that revolve around things like greed, lust or wrath can have amusing consequences. We shouldn't take ourselves so seriously all the time, and the following stories provide a modern and light-hearted twist on the classic concept of the seven deadly sins. It's important to take a step back and be able to laugh at ourselves every once in a while. It does wonders for the soul.

Lust
So there was this girl on Facebook and Rafid was super into her. Her name was Sabrina.

She looked hella pretty, had a lot of friends, got a lot of likes, had really cute curls and was really fashionable. She was perfect. So there was only one problem, they weren't friends. 

He had never met her in person but had come across her profile because she was a friend of a friend. He was going to ask his friend to set them up but he wanted to do his research because he felt that this girl was special. 

He did feel a little weird doing homework on this girl but he knew once they were dating, things would get out of hand quickly. Everybody nowadays showed up for a date all dressed up and with their resume. He knew that because she was single, she would process him with some sort of market value as soon as she saw him. She would scan and determine his weight, age and history using facebook and then match this to his car in the parking lot. 

Unfortunately, he knew that is how dating worked nowadays. So knowing more about the girl would definitely benefit him on the first date. Plus he wasn't really that impressive face to face. On the web, he was charming but when he met girls for dinner, he'd have nothing to say. They might as well pass notes back and forth across the table. 

So some research had to be done. He did his research and sent her a message. They started talking and then flirting and within an hour, he was convinced that she was the one. Beauty, brains and as cool as a broski. What more could he have asked for? Feeling happy, he said goodnight, promised to text her tomorrow and turned in.

On the other side of the screen, Sabrina was in the form of a 30 year old man with huge panda paws and legs. He smiled freakily as he logged out of his profile which was named “Sabrina Zaman.”

Sloth
Partho was a sloth. His whole life was a testament to how lazy a person really could be. He was that guy who ordered underwear online with overnight delivery because he didn't want to do the laundry. He'd much rather re-download a new operating system on his laptop than go downstairs and turn on the pc. Technology, he loved. When the tv was on too low and he had already sat down in his lazy chair, he could just download an app on his phone and turn the volume way up. 

A legend in the field of sleeping, his nightstand always had ear plugs, eye covers and a Twilight book. He of course didn't read ridiculous books like Twilight but the book was there to throw at anybody who disturbed his private time. 

He wasn't entirely to blame for his laziness. Practically most of his family consisted of major procrastinators and full on lazies. His uncle was well known for his procrastination over major surgeries. Long surgeries were a buzz kill, his uncle had told him. Others in his family put off cleaning dishes, washing clothes and loving their children! 

For him, it all started when he was a child. He had to wake up at 4 a.m. for a special marathon at school. He didn't know that a 4 a.m. existed. By the time he was up, his eyes were bleeding and weeping at the same time. It took him hours that night to get all parts of his body out of bed and he ended up in school wearing his pyjamas and carrying a soft pillow. Thus, pyjama day came into being.

He believed laziness had some cool benefits. He wouldn't have to worry about renewing his car insurance because he was too lazy to insure it in the first place. If lights were on in the room at the end of the apartment, he could let it be. It'd eventually run a fuse. If he forgot to feed his cat, no worries; she'd find a mouse when she got hungry.

Partho was a sloth and he was too lazy to not be okay with it. OR You know what they say, the calendar does move super fast. 

Greed
She was eyeing the pokemon plushy and meowing. She wanted it, needed it. By that very evening, she had taken out a few vases, a lamp and a mirror. She had also scratched out some new pumas, redecorated her owner's wall with cat lyrics and dived into the aquarium. Until she got what she wanted, she intended to physically abuse anything that so much as tiptoed. Because of this her owner hadn't blinked in days and the one time he had, he paid heavily for it. 

So, the owner decided to call a cat shrink that very night. The shrink told him that the cat was going through some behavioural changes and was getting greedy and had to be monitored and politely disciplined. Unfortunately, the shrink had no idea that this particular greedy cat was a spawn of Satan himself with most of her weight existing of her claws and tiger sharp teeth. She was not to be messed with. 

Soon it was late into the night and the plushy was still well out of her reach. Because of this, she retaliated by licking everything in the apartment one by one. By the time the clock struck midnight, she had turned into a super speedy zombie and was zig-zagging trying to parkour her way onto the table that had her prize. 

The next day the owner woke up to a half destroyed living room with the cat on the table, clutching on the plushy and snarling at him so as to mark what was hers. He took a picture. Rumour has it, it got 420 likes! 

Envy
Abrar was very disappointed. He had been a very good boy this year so it really annoyed him that Santa Claus didn't visit him this year. He wondered what the reason could be. His grade one teacher had told them that Bangladesh was a highly populated country so it was possible that Santa might miss one or two kids. But he had been so good. It hurt knowing that other children – who clearly behaved worse than him – were getting more presents.  

He envied the little kids who were running around in Christmas jumpers, trying to look all cool and festive. He knew he had to find a way to get his hands on some presents. So he sought the help of his mentor in crime; his older cousin. By the time he explained everything to his cousin over the phone, it was bedtime. 

He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. And there he was, Santa Claus looking as jolly as ever and staring directly at him. “Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas,” said Santa. Abrar was in no mood to mess around. He looked at Santa, narrowed his eyes and asked sharply, “I don't know whats wrong with you Santa but I don't get many presents!” Santa replied, “Well presents are not the only way to tell who's been a good boy this year. We have a machine with big scales that evaluates how many presents you get. Kids who have families to love them and aren't happy with material things usually get only a few presents because you already have all that you need. The most presents go to those who are most lonely and ignored by their parents and don't have brothers, sisters and friends. 

Abrar was having trouble believing all this, but after some careful thinking, he said “I've thought about it, and it doesn't bother me anymore. I'll try and be happy for those kids instead of envying what they have.” 

The next day, Abrar woke up and went downstairs to find five presents under his name, waiting to be opened. His cousin had delivered them to his parents late into the night. Smiling, he rushed over to open them and muttered under his breath, “Thank god real Santa showed up, dream Santa was a complete nut!”

Wrath
Mariha had an anger issue. Actually, it was a serious anger problem. Her last boyfriend ditched her in the parking lot, broke into a car, drove a few hundred miles out and changed his name and address. It was at that time when she realized that she needed a fix. Being super pretty was just not cutting it anymore.

It was just getting too dangerous and people were starting to be afraid of her. She had considered going Goth - to complement her angry self - but she didn't like the outfits much. Anger management classes were lame and yoga required too much patience. Also, last time she was at a therapist's office, she had punched a picture frame of a puppy that was hanging on the wall so that was out too. 

So she devised two possible plans. The first plan would be to take out all her anger on someone she didn't know instead of repressing or taking it out on her friends. She decided the unlucky numbers would be her ex's friends. She knew them but oh well. She tried it out by calling her ex's favourite broski and screamed at him till she was numb. 

It had worked. But, she needed a back up plan for when she couldn't get a hold of someone on the phone and very soon it hit her. She could road rage! Get into a fight while driving and give the other party a good piece of her mind. She'd scream and yell obscenities. Now that was a plan.    

And there it was; the answer to all her problems. Well, it was the answer up until she ran out of ex's friends to call and encountered a 12 year old girl on the street who knocked her out cold following a few minutes of heated exchange.

Gluttony
Imran lived in the fattest city of Bangladesh. This did not mean that the city had wider streets but it meant that the behinds of the people walking down the streets were wider than the behinds of the people in other cities. Being a resident of the fattest city, he was honoured to be number one at something. 

He loved to eat and so did all of his friends. He knew it was a lot easier to find a fast food shop here than to find a store that sold skinny pants. Other people would call him a compulsive eater but he didn't care! He knew if Dhaka had a marathon, the short version would be half of the people “power waddling” to the nearest King's store. Plus he didn't really mind the doctors warning him about being super overweight. If his weight became too much of an inconvenience, he could join the army and in the next war, strategically sit on the enemy and that would be victory. He also knew getting thin might affect him emotionally because right now he was confident that he was “too big to fail.” He was heavily inspired by Fast and the Furious movies and believed that one should live a quarter mile at a time and eat every quarter mile too. 

Besides if he wasn't getting any fatter then there would be no point of having amazing shows like the biggest loser! 

Pride
Samir was a proud man. He was proud the first time he drove a stick and the first time he wrecked it. He was proud of his custom furnished apartment and his corporate job with a big tobacco company. He was proud of his pacman record and his kill-death ratio in Call of Duty. But what he was most proud of now was his new model wife.

Yes, he had just married Anya and was enjoying their honeymoon at a 5 star hotel in Dubai which just happened to have an incredible indoor pool. On the very first day, he decided to show off a bit for his new bride. He noticed that the pool area was super crowded but that didn't stop him. He readied himself, took a run up and did a perfect swan dive. Feeling quite pleased with himself, he swam until he could touch bottom and started walking towards her. 

To his amazement, Anya was laughing hysterically. She was laughing so hard that in fact there were tears rolling down her face. Samir got out of the pool and made his way to her to ask her what was funny but she couldn't stop laughing. Finally, she shakily raised a finger that pointed towards the diving board. That's when Samir noticed that his swimming trucks were stuck there! Looking down, he realized that he was completely naked in a room filled with people. 

As Samir rushed for his hotel room, using his hands to shield himself and swearing that he'd not come out again until it was time to leave, he could hear Anya shouting japes in the background. 

By Naveed Naushad