Chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao, known for his good oratory skills and articulation often peppered with jokes or poetical anecdotes, had his audience in splits on Sunday.

While thanking the people of Telangana for showing an overwhelming response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for ‘Janata curfew’ by staying indoors, the Chief Minister shared a joke in circulation about a dialogue between two dogs.

The joke goes like this. As the streets of Hyderabad wore a deserted look with millions of people staying indoors as part of the social distancing exercise to help stop the spread of the virus, one dog wonders as to where the humans have disappeared suddenly. It asks the other dog whether it has any idea why the streets are deserted. The other dog replies “Probably, they have been picked up by the baldia (municipal) officials for spreading the corona virus.” The chief minister said the joke was not meant to trivialize the issue being dealt by the governments across the world, but only to press the point how serious the problem had become when humans have to live in isolation and social distancing.