With COVID-19 cases continuing to rise and Maharashtra under a lockdown, the Mumbai Police has found some rather unusual ways to urge people to stay home. Wordplay seem to be the preferred choice - be it the Trojan Horse from Greek mythology or a pop musician. And while some of these puns may seem a tad tortured, well they're certainly hard to ignore.
The posts come on a day when India is once again setting new COVID-19 records, with more than 3.79 lakh fresh cases and 3,645 deaths in the last 24 hours. While Maharashtra recorded more than 60 thousand of these cases, Mumbai's contribution on Wednesday was nearly 5000 cases.
"Stay BTS, don't venture out. Don't go out in Linkin Park. Taylor Swift mein ho ya Dzire mein, seedha ghar jaayein. if Lipa stays home, she gets Dua. Wear Mask 'Lil', or life will go in Wayne. Charlie stays Puth, the virus is Cyrus..." these and other gems now occupy space of honour on the Mumbai Police Twitter handle.
And going by the caption, Mumbaikars are responsible, at least in part. "Thank you Mumbaikars for sharing your ‘Lyrics Of Safety’ with us. Mumbai Police, in collaboration with responsible Mumbaikars, is proud to present Safety Remix - Volume 2," the handle tweeted on Thursday morning. The attached video featured many of these standout turns of phrase, unfortunately without a similarly remixed soundtrack to go with it.
While these are the only musically oriented puns that the handle appears to have published recently, their word games do not end here. "If you 'Note' all the rules and act accordingly, we'll 'Excel' to beat Covid soon. We give you our 'Word'!" tweeted the Mumbai Police CP recently, sharing the well known MS Office logos.
"Quit horsing around," read the hashtag on a post featuring the wooden Trojan Horse.
