They say a fertile mind, when it is idle, rises to the pursuit of minutiae. You might have seen it printed in The Big Book of Quotations, thus:

“A fertile mind, when it is idle, rises to the pursuit of minutiae”-They.

Take my friend A. Mallikarjuna. By quirk of an inattentive immigration clerk, clearly unschooled in the Hindoo pantheon, his name got misspelled and the passport of his adoptive country read, Malik A. Juan.

As it happened, “Malik Juan” rang way cooler than “Mallikarjuna”; it positively pealed with the promise of a Russian-Spanish hottie, with the last name of history’s most famous lover. (More the irony because he is scraggly, unemployed, underfed, under-bathed and bears a distinct left-tendency on Tinder.)

In the thrall of idleness, Malik Juan set about creating a group on Facebook, of all people named Malik Juan and offered eggnog to anyone who happened to be passing by. Very soon, he received a call on Christmas Eve, from someone enthusiastic to meet him.

At the appointed time, he flew eagerly to answer the doorbell.

Standing there, handcuffs at the ready, was the state police. Apparently, the cops had been looking for a drug-peddling con artist, of Hispanic origin, who had also robbed many women of their naivete.

“Malik Juan?” one officer asked, gruffly.

“No,” he answered timidly, “my name is really A. Mallikarjuna.”

“I am from India,” he added, needlessly.