CAWBOYS AT CROWBARS

While I waited for the bus in my Sunday best, it came; not the bus but a blob of 'crow dung' that landed splat  on my head. This wouldn't have happened if I had an open umbrella over my head (I often use this contraption to protect myself against spit-spray orators). Or if the crow were wearing a diaper.

Yet, my ‘crow’ning glory could be an aberration considering a recent report that talks of dwindling population of crows in the city. This was borne out by the local birdwatchers' rumoured plans to study the crows with embedded mi-crow-chips. A further proof is the fact that citizens offering Vayasam(feeding rice to crows) during Hindu rituals find no corvine patrons despite incessant cawing by the zealous worshippers, inviting the crows for the binge. But my raconteur friend tells me that the modern-day crows may only be found at their favourite watering holes - the Crow Bars!

The city's ‘crowlessness’ has become so acute that some of the crafty entrepreneurs are planning to start crow farms, dreaming of becoming Crow-repatis overnight. Through tie-ups with funeral priests, the likelihood of rent-crows-by-the-hour outlets mushrooming across the city appears plausible. And the term 'crow-ny capitalism' might find a place in future lexicons.

The last time I heard the song ‘jhooth bole kauwa kaate’ (crow bites the liar), it struck me as odd that the services of this bird has not been availed by our Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL). I mean, there is no justification in spending a fortune on computerized polygraph  (lie-detector) equipment when the humble crow can easily do the trick by merely biting the liar on the nose. And the crows on our court staff can fast-track the backlog of cases by nipping the lie in the witness box.

People often believe that a crow's caw brings bad luck. At the root is the communication gap. For all you know, the crow in question could be amusing itself by humming a few bars of ‘Raag Darbari caw-nada.’ Alternately, it may be just saying, "Holy crow, where is my next dead rat coming from?" So, why can't a crow exercise its ‘freedom of caw’ without ruffling the feathers of bigots? And it is time that the civil society gave a sympathetic ear to this persecuted bird.

 So, it is to lend a sympathetic ear to this much-maligned bird that I decided to learn the crow language with the help of  ‘The Handbook Of Crow Talk.’ But I had to turn tail when I realised that movement of the tail - an appendage I lacked - was integral to crow language (turn the head to left and vibrate the tail to warn of danger etc). With that, my foray into crow linguistics came a ‘crow-pper.’ The project is shelved forever - unless, of course, I sprout a tail in future.
*********************************************************************

WACKO WALKERS

Sitting in Padmasana on a park bench, he covers his eyes with both palms and sobs in silence. Thereupon, with his fingers, he plucks some imaginary stuff from his eyes and ‘tosses’ it into the air before breaking into a broad grin. This bizarre drill apparently illustrates a yoga exercise that helps its practitioner get rid of his worries. Welcome to the Bangalore's park where weirdos of every stripe wander in and out unhindered.

As it happens, the park benches are as often patronized as the walking tracks. This is where the 'Shavasana' buff lies supine like a corpse and eventually drifts off into deep slumber. For him, it is merely an extension of his night's sleep post-intermission. His 'morning walk' ends when the park's care-taker wakes him up as a prelude to locking the gates.

The burgeoning parks across the city have spawned many such wackos who make the morning walkers' day. Take for instance, the insatiable Mr. ‘Gorging’ George. At first he loiters around the park chatting with a few windbags . Then he barges into the nearest restaurant and stuffs himself silly on idli-vadas. He doesn't exercise. To make him bend over, you would have to put diamonds on the floor! His motto: After loafing goof a while, after chatter eat a pile.

The ‘Trailing Wife Pageant' is one more amusing sight. Here, a young lanky husband walks at a blistering pace followed by his pint-sized chubby wife trying to keep pace with him. Possibly, this is his way of getting even with her for making him run after her during their pre-nuptial days.

If you visit the park at 5 A M, you find a few zombies who are at the fag end of their walking schedule. They might be either the insomniacs who entered the park by jumping the fence or the ones who slept inside the park overnight to outsmart the insomniacs. At least some of them could be the somnambulists (sleep walkers) who went missing from their beds after midnight.

'Deaf Adders' are the most common species that haunt our parks. You recognize them by the swaying of their heads or snapping of their fingers. They are deaf and oblivious to your approach from behind due to their being plugged on to the ipod. All you got to do, then, is to cough or clear your throat loudly and you get your right of way.

As you come out of the park, you find on the road a man shouting, "Stop Bruno..you bad boy..", as the Great Dane drags him on to a dunghill. Both the dog and his master are on their morning constitutional and it looks unclear who is taking whom for a walk. Moreover, it seems to me that the city dogs can understand only English!
*********************************************************************

IMPISH ANGELS

"Children are God's greatest gift to mankind, " I said quoting a Victorian philosopher. My friend Tom begged to differ. "Obviously the dumb philosopher had no children of his own," he sniggered.  "I have four such divine gifts(children) who, when they are on rampage, can be deadlier than any atomic device. If my country were a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, I would have been forced to surrender my children to International  Atomic Commission after being labelled as fissile material." Tom fell silent for some time as if reflecting upon some momentous fact. Then he somberly added, "I am at loss to know  how to handle them. Before I got married, I had four different theories about how to bring up children. Now I have four children and no theories."

'Yes, no one really knows,' I mused, 'how to bring up children. There is nothing like a perfect formula.' My thoughts went back to the time when my own children were infants. How often did they wake up in the middle of night letting out howls that could put the most vocal of the wolves to shame, disturbing my sleep on regular basis. Someone rightly pointed out that a baby is an alimentary canal with loud noise at one end and irresponsibility at the other. Despite all the trials and tribulations, no parent would really mind. For, nature made the children lovely to look at so that they can be tolerated until they acquire 'some sense.'

HAND ON THE PULSE

So, who is this professional who excels in the art of feeling the pulse, not just of his clients but also the society in general? No prize for guessing. He is none other than your friendly neighborhood barber. If you wish to gauge the mood of the society you live in, the barber's shop should be your destination. There you can find out things like whether people feel secure under the present government or if Obama could win 2012 presidential election. You will also get enlightened on whose wife ran away with whom or whose unmarried daughter got pregnant.

At the barber's shop you can also perceive if the society is in a jolly mood or if there is a furrow of anxiety on the society's brow. While you extract info from the barber, he tactfully keeps at harvesting the crop on your head    and juicy files buried deep inside it downloading them to his own mental compact disc for future use.

When it comes to ingenuity in feeling the customer's pulse, the auto-rickshaw driver in Bangalore takes the cake. As you board into his contraption mentioning your destination, he switches on the auto-meter as well as his 'pulse  meter'.

FINGER ON THE PULSE

"Doctor, Why is that you always begin the physical examination by feeling the pulse?" asked the anxious and  inquisitive old lady whom I teasingly called Mrs Nosy Parker.

"Well, you see, " I began, debating in my mind how to explain, " the wrist pulse is the heart's outpost that provides us with a 'live telecast' of the happenings within the heart itself..." I trailed off realizing the futility of describing the technicalities. Instead I light-heartedly said, "My dear lady, the truth is that the pulse gives me a fair estimate of your bank balance and lets me decide how big a hole I can drill in your wallet. In fact, doctors call it pulse because it rhymes with purse." Mrs Parker laughed heartily, all her anxiety draining off.

It is not just the prerogative of a doctor to feel the pulse of his patients. Quite often, patients too try to feel the doctors' pulse; figuratively, of course.How is that? Let me tell you how. If an in-patient at a hospital says, "Doctor, I would dearly like you to join me for dinner at my home next Sunday", the concerned doctor need not feel flattered. For, indirectly the patient is trying to find out if he(the patient) is likely to be discharged before the coming Sunday!

There is at least one occasion when I can't help feeling my own pulse. And that is women folk at my home talk on long-distance telephone lines to New Delhi or Kochi to discuss the latest recipe with an aunt or granny. As the seconds tick away into minutes, my pulse rate rises in direct proportion to time elapsed and in an inverse ratio to the STD pulse rate! The corollary of this 'teleconference' is that I end up gulping down some exotic stew at a price that could fetch me a ton of caviar!

Every trade or profession has perfected its own device of feeling the the pulse of the customers or clients. Do you know of one particular type of professional who excels in the art of feeling the pulse not just of his clients, but also society in general? Find out in my next post "Hand On The Pulse".

HURRICANE SOPHIE

Last year we, a family of four, set out on a head-hunting expedition. Please don't get me wrong; it wasn't the kind of mission the cannibalistic gourmets of Sarawak excelled in, no sire. ( though the members of my family wouldn't hesitate for a moment to eat me alive for breakfast if the situation so demanded). I was referring to the mundane task of prospecting for a housemaid.

The task was laborious what with too many prospective employers chasing too few maids (no pun intended). With the effort that went into the search, we could have discovered Lockness Monster or the Abominable Snowman of Himalayas if we wanted. And just when we, in frustration, braced ourselves to make do with anything that wore a skirt and walked on two legs(and worked), Sophie breezed into our lives.

At a walk-in interview at Sophie's place, which we attended with trepidation, Sophie probed into, inter alia, our family head count, number of guests who visited us per annum and the carpet area of our abode in order to 'guesstimate' the likely work load. Having satisfied herself, Sophie spelt out her pecuniary demands that included hefty severance pay in case Sophie's services were unilaterally terminated by us. Despite all indignities, we clung on to the maid (not physically, of course), little realising that we were embracing 'Hurricane Sophie'.

LUCKY TRUDGES ON

(Continued from last post Lucky's Salad Days)

Lucky often got into a spell of benevolent musings(thinking of some sweet young thing) that gave him an effervescent desire to pat the humanity on the back in explicit camaraderie and under the spell of such bonhomie, he turned a great philanthropist doing good turns to many a puzzled fellowmen; things like giving a fiver to a beggar(when, in fact, he had six bucks in his pocket) or helping an old man climb on to a bus(which eventually he would miss).

Lucky The Pious

At sixteen, Lucky turned deeply religious. He frequented temples and churches regularly in order to worship the gods, a ruse he devised to meet young goddesses. As his 'religious fervour' grew in intensity, his itinerary brimmed with visits to temple fairs and church feasts.He became a permanent fixture at all religious processions patronised by the female of the species in their hordes. Yet, all his piety gained him a zilch. But even God could not withhold His benedictions for long.

And At Last..

For every animal that grazes the meadow, God always provides some grass earmarked for that animal, a cluster of grass that beckons to be grazed. Lucky couldn't have been an exception to this divine edict. After scores of snubbing and the brusheroos from the lassdom of this world, there came the moment of truth when Lucky was presented with the prospect of meeting some loved one behind the rhododendron bushes at a pre-appointed time. Lucky conducted elaborate solo dress rehearsals to churn out flowery monologues only to botch up the lines at the grand finale that turned the rendezvous into an unmitigated disaster! Later lucky bitterly complained that girl had no heart, knowing all the time that she had in fact two, one of which was Lucky's that she had stolen.

Lucky Mosquitoed!

But my search for a rational explanation for Lucky's abortive forays into the realm of courtship bore fruit when a scientific study revealed that Pheromone, a hormone-induced chemical substance secreted into ones skin, when present in adequate quantity, made one highly desirable not only to the opposite sex but also to mosquitoes on their blood-sucking binges.

If my memory serves me right, Lucky was never bothered by mosquitoes in his youth and he often bragged that he was a mosquito repellent in human shape!

You Might Also Like

Conclave Of Ghouls
Kidney In Sydney
Short-changed By Long Hand

IDIOMAGNOSIA PART - 2

For the students of Idiomagnosia( refer Idiomagnosia part - 1 for the definition) there can not be a better subject than our friend Bill. He appears to be the originator of many idioms but by accident rather than by design. Once, while he was an in-patient at a hospital for a fracture he sustained, he narrated to me how he broke his bone. " Yesterday our domestic fowl (cock) had vanished and during the search operation I was chased by an angry bull and fell into a ditch. But I told the doctor that I fell while riding a bicycle," confided Bill with a conspiratorial wink. " You are the only one to whom I revealed the true Cock and bull story! "

Bill's incarceration at the hospital provided me with further Idiomagnotic tid-bits such as 'my blood boils when the day temperature goes up'. Or, 'I did not shake hands with that blood bank technician because he always has people's blood on his hands'.

Then, a young exam-going student had once come to me complaining of excessive fatigue. I told him that his problem was due to over-exertion."Stop burning the mid-night oil hence-forth, " I advised him. A week later he came back without much relief. I enquired if he had been following my advice. "Yes, doctor," he said dumbly. "Now-a-days, whenever there is mid-night power cut I only burn candles; not oil."

Then there are tricksters who pretend Idiomagnosia just for fun. Jason is one such person. He had some problems with the municipality and I bumped into him while he was on his way to the house of the local blacksmith who also happened to be a municipal councillor. "Going to curry favour with the councillor, Mr Jason?" I enquired. "Nothing of that sort," quipped Jason taking out a blunt rusty axe out of his bag and showing it to me. "I just happen to have an axe to grind."

A similar story is about a locksmith who was arrested at a casino and produced before a judge. The judge asked him, "what were you doing in that gambling den when the police raided it?" The locksmith looked down sheepishly and said, "Your Honour, I was making a bolt for the door."

Finally, there are those who see idioms in any sentence when there are none as amply demonstrated by this anecdote: A man fell into a deep ditch and struggled unsuccessfully to climb atop. Soon a large bunch of curious onlookers gathered around the ditch, but no one offered to help. When the desperate man shouted, "Give me a hand, please," everybody in the crowd applauded enthusiastically!!!

You May Also Like:

All Smoke And No Fire
Short-changed By Long Hand
Bollywood Medicine

IDIOMAGNOSIA - PART 1

"Dr John, I am taking a coffee break.Keep a watch on this patient till I return," I instructed the house surgeon. Yet, when I came back, John had already left the ward but not before keeping a wrist watch on the patient's belly as a mark of his obedience! For, John suffered from a malady which I called Idiomagnosia.*

Now, lured by the asterisk, you need not search and yell for a footnote. Because the above asterisk is nothing more than an asterexasper(meaning an asterisk with no corresponding footnote). You need refer to a dictionary for the word Idiomagnosia either, since the word is of my coinage and may be considered a sniglet(any word that doesn't appear in dictionary but should). So, let me explain the meaning.

Idiomagnosia is a condition often found among literates in which the affected person is mentally blind to the true meaning of a given idiom or phrase due to ignorance real or feigned. To make the term more clear, I will illustrate it further.

Take, for instance, the case of George. He told me about an incident that strengthened his belief in astrology. According to George, a newspaper astrology column had once predicted for him ' a significant windfall in the near future.' Shortly thereafter, as he was returning home from his office, a thunderstorm broke out and a sudden gush of wind that got trapped in his umbrella flung him on to the ground. "As rightly prophesied by the astrologer," confessed George, "I had a real bad windfall."

A news item appeared a few years ago about a man who was rendered unconscious when he was hit by a heavy book. Even funnier was the fact that he was hit by a police officer. Apparently the officer's superior had given instruction to call the man to the police station for interrogation and he didn't co-operate, to 'throw the book at him' (which means slap a case against him). The police officer did just that. He threw a hardbound law journal at the poor man.

To be continued in next post......


You May Also Like:
The Mobile Mob
Kidney In Sydney
Buy More, You Mor(e)on

THE PHEROMONE FACTOR

WHEN THE D-DAY CAME

The day dawned with peals of temple bells echoing right across the town as a special pooja(servise) was performed to the accompaniment of chants of hymns by a battery of priests. The rituals culminated in a 'Thulabharam'(an offering in weight equal to devotee's body weight) of coconuts to be destributed amongst the poor.

The occasion was my 55th birthday. I was, of course, niether a hotshot politician nor a fat-cat buisiness magnate to warrant such razzmatazz. I was just a commoner drilling a neat hole in my wallet to commemorate a mile stone I hadn't hoped to reach.

Oddly, it wasn't a clairvoyant who presaged my early passage through the Pearly Gates( a euphimism for dying). It was a formula I came across in a local rag, viz, TALE= GAS-LIE (where tale= total allowable life expectancy, GAS= general ancestral survival, and LIE= lethal indulgence effect) that portended a premature tryst with my maker. For, in my case TALE worked out to be 54 years.

But the motives behind my longing for longevity were purely altruistic. I just wanted to be around to applaud the world when the first man landed on Mars. To see global community, instead of fighting like cats and dogs over Global Warming, come to a radical decision to save the earth. Or to see my neighbour's son who had been studying medicine for a decade would ever pass his final degree.

Well, coming back to my tale, it made me feel likedrug on the chemist's shelf with the expiry date printed on it. The upshot was that I began reading the obituary columns avidly, merely to compare my age with the age of the people who went from dust to dust (younger they conked out, the shakier I became).

Each day I counted my falling hair (a hair on head worth two on brush) with concern. And I grew supersticious and seered clear of buckets, lest I should kick one of them.

And once the purported D-day passed off uneventfully, growing in confidence, I set out on a search for the elixir of life. As a part of my research, I attended a function to honour the pldest man on earth, a centenarian, just to hear him give away the secrets of his long life.

I was bitterly disappointed when the man didn't turn up owing to the illness of his father!

Then I read about a 90-year-old man who married an 18-year-old girl. At the wedding reception, her friends gave her an expensive night gown and his friends gave him two months.

My longivity research is going on.......so far.

You May Also Like:

Bollywood Medicine
A Free Hotdog Saga
Dictionary Of 'Woo Fix Klan'

DONE IN BY DIAL-BLINDNESS

It was a close encounter of the weird kind. At first he cringed when I asked if his drunken clientele brawled frequently. Then he groaned when I enquired if Mutton Kebab was served at his place. Finally, when I pried into the quantum of tip he cleaned up each day, he let out a growl that grew into a bark and stomped off. It was as if I had blasphemed which, as it turned out, I did. For, he was a temple priest in civvies whom I had taken for a bartender!

I was, in fact, having one of my habitual bouts of 'Faceagnosia' - a congenital inability to recognise faces - which manifested in two forms:
a) Mis-faceagnosia : Wrong recognition.
b) Non-faceagnosia : No recognition.
While the former often landed me in a mess, the latter branded me as a pompous ass. It is not uncommon to see an acquaintance of mine raise his hand to greet me and, having seen no glint of recognition in my eyes, change tack to pick his nose to save his face.

The non-recognition syndrome has another downside to it. My truant debtors, for instance, brazenly walk past me secure in the knowledge that my 'radar' can't pick them up.And my 'dial-blindness' comes in handy to a local scrap collector who has been buying old newspapers from me on credit, each time assuming a new identity without ever paying up.

But it is the miasma of misrecognition that is hanging over me like a sword of Damocles. What if I ask, say, a police inspector in civilian clothes if he acquired his 'third degree' assuming that he is one of my son's professor? I shudder to think of the consequences.

The other day at a party, an unknown quantity 'hi-howdied' me gushingly.Even as I struggled to place him, he complimented me on taking the 'Voluntary Retirement Scheme'. "Phew, that bank job of yours. Good riddance." he affirmed. I scowled at him. For, he had taken me for a retired bank employee, whereas yours truly is a member of the healing profession! I had met my match Poetic justice, did you say?

You May Also Like

Short-changed By Long Hand
Whistler's Hall Of Fame
Ode To An Odd Pal

THE LIJIT STORY

With no task on hand and lots of time to kill I, twiddled with the Blogger buzz instead of my thumb. And I tumbled upon a strange name, Lijit. For once, I confused the name with a brand of papadum produced in India called Lijjath. Could it be that the Google clan added papadums to their favourite list of delicacies? The veil mystery soon lifted when I clicked on the link. So, this is where I met Lijit and a promise of a love at first sight (first bite had it been papadum) looked imminent.

When the rush of initial infatuation ebbed, popped up the question of credibility. Could I blindly chase this dame called Lijit? What if she stealthily placed a malware into my liver or intestine and robbed me blind? The clincher was when I found that Ms Lijit was related to Mr Google. And I trust anyone who is a relative of Mr Google. So the alliance was sealed.

As my association with Ms Lijit grew, I found that she was not one of those run-of-the-mill 'Search and analytics' gals. She had created a special niche for herself that was unique(date her and find out, I don't mind) in a world of wannabe pundits. She surprised me with her special body feature called 'Surprise me.' She surprised me even more when the 'Surprise Me' disappeared from her widget. Despite that, my torrid affair with Ms Lijit went on until Mr Internet Explorer(IE) tried to separate a couple of love-birds with a few barbs. It was only later that I realised that Mr I. E. did nothing wrong. Nor was Ms Lijit was to be blamed. Confused? Let me explain.

On a fine sunny morning as I logged onto Blogger, Mr I. E. started sending messages such as 'I. E. can not open this page' or 'some element in the page is forcing IE to shut down' and so on. At this stage, I must confess that I was also dating a few Ms Portals whose widgets I was carrying on my page. Who was the disloyal paramour? Who was the unfaithful? I was in a tizzy. As a result I deleted all Ms Widgets from the pages of my (blog)life.

That night Ms Lijit appeared in my dream pleading her innocence. "Why do you suspect me when you know that I am Mr Google's relative? What price for my fidelity?" she exhorted. In the middle of the night I got up and re-installed her into my life. And I was right in doing so. For over the next week I was able to zero in on the true 'culprit' who was summarily dismissed from my scheme of things. I will not disclose her name, for, even a hooker has a right to privacy.

As of now, my affair with Ms Lijit has moved on to an even keel. The brief separation had taught me how much I missed her. And I am trying to understand her better. For, being a rookie, I am yet to find the different facets of Ms Lijit. I hope, with a bit of effort and some inputs from her parents I will be able to better fathom the depths of her possibilities.

One last word to you all. Date Ms Lijit. And whenever you find any thing interesting about her, send me a line.

LOCK, SHOCK AND BARE-ALL

"My tools leaped, bouncing off the wiry coils of hair," recounted Sanju, my barber, referring to a shaggy head he tackled during the hippie era. "Yet, two hours and two twisted scissors later, I could subdue the shrubbery. But the end of the 'harvest' saw my salon crawling with colonies of dispossessed lice, ticks and bugs besides a baby centipede. He was exaggerating, of course, as is the wont of men of his tribe. But I kept mum letting him get on with my haircut.

"Then came the age of inverted pots," Sanju pressed on, spreading his tonsorial wisdom. "A generation of youth went around with their shaven heads glistening in the sun like leaky oil cans. Once sitting in the balcony of a cinema, I saw the screen images in full reflected over a sea of tonsured heads in the stalls - a kind of 'cranioscope' instead of the CinemaScope." Ignoring Sanju's wild imagination, I just said, "Uh-huh."

I thought of the current crop of cutting-edge-technology kids with their chisel 'n' mallet hairdos. Their hair styles mostly resemble leftovers of a dinner devoured by ravenous moths. A young bloke once told me irreverently that the parallel tracks carved out on the side of his head were for the lice to go on their morning walks!

"But, of all the weird hair styles, the pilot cut of yore was the hairiest," carried on Sanju wistfully. I squirmed in my chair. His allusion to the 'pilot cut' reopened an old wound transporting me to the mid-sixties.

Let me explain what pilot cut is all about. It entailed medium-clipped hair over the rear two thirds of the head blending into a long thick mop in front which was brushed sideways with a short parting. Unfortunately, as a 12-year old lad, my experiment with the pilot cut ended in a 'crop failure'. The then barber of mine, a wily old fox, chopped the hair on the rear of my head down to the scalp leaving a long bushy shock in front. The net effect was I looked like a bald ostrich with a frontal tuft.

But unlike the proverbial ostrich, I did not hide my head in sand till the status quo ante was restored(for being young and uninitiated, I was oblivious to the fact that the barber had created a monstrosity on my top). I attended a wedding where a rough-neck kept stroking my head with a feigned awe as if it were a rare meteorite rock. A thug tugged at my forelock causing me to howl in pain.

Then I felt that someone was playing tabla on my head. It was Sanju starting his customary head massage and waking me up from my trance. "Shall I give your hair the porcupine finish, sir?" he asked, making my hair stand curl. I answered in the negative not daring to shake my head lest he carved a 'lice track' on my head.




Video Courtesy: http://www.youtube.com/
Image Courtesy: http://www.angelfire.com

You May Also Like:

'Chitting' At Exams
Dollar Dreams
A Cat-alytic Conversion

BUY MORE, YOU MOR(E)ON

Handing me the confectionery with a toothy grin, the storekeeper wisecracked: "while you savour this cake with jam filling, sir, its sticky bits get jammed between your teeth and give your molars free filling, necessitating a versatile toothbrush. I've got just the right brush!"

He was manipulating me for additional business by linking the cake to the toothbrush. Bristling with defiance at his ploy and yet unwilling to brush him off, I bit the bait not so much for the brand's promise at removing the 'jammed bits of cake', as for my failure to replace my worn-out toothbrush that was beginning to resemble a chrysanthemum.

Honestly, I have been charitable towards sales persons resorting to legitimate sales drive provided they didn't go into over-drive. Something akin to that happened at a departmental store where, as I asked for a box of candles(blast the power-cuts!), the sales clerk tried to smooth-talk me into acquiring a power inverter. He was the kind who, if you purchase a padlock, would try to ram down your throat a flashlight, a crowbar and a nylon cord - all to tackle the burglar in case of a break-in!

At an out-of-the-town drug store recently, as I paid for a few strips of anti-diabetic tablets, the chemist asked, "Wouldn't you need some co-enzymes as an adjunct?" Pleading ignorance, I begged for enlightenment.

"You see, the co-enzymes," said the chemist flaunting his erudition, "stimulate carbohydrate metabolism at the cellular level."

"But aren't you referring to thiamine and pyridoxine, commonly called B-complex factors?" I queried, seeing through his little game.

"Well...... that really is the case," said the chemist a bit rattled, "but where did you get this dope?"

"From my professor of therapeutics at the college where I studied medicine," I replied truthfully, watching his face turn red, then purple and finally ashen. I had just encountered a hard-boiled yet half-baked charlatan of a chemist who, without batting an eyelid, would endeavour to 'dispense' foam mattresses, feeding bottles and nappies to the buyers of fertility pills.

At this rate, it wouldn't be long before the agents for long-distance night coaches plying dacoit infested routes put together a package deal consisting of, besides the tickets, helmets, knives and first-aid kits. Or, if you could afford, a revolver - Smith & Wesson, perhaps?

Sales Pitch:

Video Courtesy: http://www.youtube.com/

Image Courtesy: http://www.4to40.com

You May Also Like:

A Touchy Issue
Under-hand Cricket
Whistler's Hall Of Fame

VILLAINS, TAILORS & STEREOTYPES

The man has a mountainous mole on one cheek and a long scar on the other that can scare you stiff. And a stare through the bushy brow that can browbeat the lion-hearted. In a clean-shaven urbane avatar he dresses flamboyantly and hatches gory plots as he massages his tonsured pate. But in his down-market edition, he dons a T-shirt on a lungi and an amulet on his arm besides a tiger nail pendant around his neck while sporting a fiery handlebar moustache. Meet Mr Villain from the world of Hindi cinema, the quintessential Mugambo alias Jaggu Dada.




For decades, the cinema-czars from Mumbai have been dictating rigid costume codes for various movie characters, thereby churning out celluloid stereotypes. As with the comedian who flits around mostly in knickerbockers, if not in a warm pair of long johns with the loose ends of its draw-string hanging in front.

The rustic hero lands at the city wearing dhoti-kurta and a crew-cut with a tuft hanging from behind his dome as he flaunts Santoshima's vemillion tika on his forehead. Hugging an old iron trunk that contains all his worldly possessions, he swears by Bhjarangabali in Bhojpuri.

The country heroine (with plucked eyebrows!) roams the hillocks with a billy-goat in tow(soon to be replaced by the hero) wearing long-sleeved blouse on top of a knee-length pleated skirt and her hair in a single plait. To maintain her equilibrium (and to attract the attention of village desperadoes), she wears a pair of silver anklets which, in due course, will provide the opening jingle for the duet that she will sing with the sheharibabu in a desolate barn on stormy night.

Scores of characters parade through the movie bearing the stamp of their vocations. The tailor dances at his friend's baraat wearing a measuring tape around his neck. The doctor unfailingly dons his white coat with the stethoscope coiled around his neck (like Lord Shiva's serpent) even while attending his patient's funeral (just in case the corpse stars blinking).

But the police inspector is real case in point. For one thing, he wears his uniform even in bed, and for another he can't speak unless he keeps tapping his left palm with a baton. His favourite wind instrument is the police whistle which he blows either to kill time or to entertain the fleeing criminals.

Finally, what most of us don't realise is that the Mumbai filmdom has universalised the nightie as an all-weather, all-occasion garment. Today, if the nightie trade has become a golden goose, the credit should go to all those lovelorn heroines who, clad in nighties, sing soulful solos on the decks of the house-boat braving the biting Kashmir chill.

The Nightie Phenomenon:

Video Courtesy: http://www.youtube.com/

You May Also Like:

Bollywood Medicine
Hitched To Habit
Whistler's Hall Of Fame

SAMY IN 'NON-PROLIFERATION'

I lay spread-eagled like a corpse under a merciless sun as the birds in flight ejected their droppings on my face and the ants went on an exploratory expedition all over my body. A stray dog that approached me sniffed at my head assessing its suitability for a quick spray from underneath the hind leg, changed its mind and left.

It was a tall order for a hyperactive ten-year-old to play dead which, nevertheless, I did lest I incur Samy's wrath. My ordeal ended with Samy's final whistle that signalled curtains for the game of "cops and robbers".I was the only 'robber' to be 'shot down' that day by Samy (the supercop) with his toy-pistol, a retribution for failing to pay him my weekly tribute in the form of a choco-bar. For, Samy (short for Guruswamy), the oldest and burliest among a bunch of boys numbering about 20, ruled the roost as the sole superpower in our neighbourhood during my school years.

On cricket playing days Samy clung to the bat as though he were born with it and acted as a de facto umpire while the boys slogged in the field. If someone had the audacity to get Samy clean bowled, he would be promptly banished to the square-leg boundary close to a swamp infested with vermin. The boys invariably dropped Samy's catches fearing an identical fate. In case any 'third man' argued on some 'silly point', he would sustain either a 'leg-break' or a 'hit wicket'. Or he may end up losing his quota of custard apple come harvest time.

For, Samy was the self-appointed lessee of a custard apple tree located near our common pathway. Periodically he would pick ripe fruit, keeping large fleshy ones for himself, leaving the rest to his underlings (provided they were not blacklisted). The handouts came with a couple of strings attached: (a) the fruit had to be eaten in Samy's presence (a comprehensive ban on tasting them behind his back) because (b) the boys had to surrender the seeds to Samy (a non-proliferation measure devised to perpetuate Samy's custard apple 'hegemony'). A couple of Samy's most favoured cronies kept up vigil to enforce the moratorium on the forbidden fruit cultivation.

But beyond the reach of Samy's surveillance, a custard apple sapling had grown on its own into a tree in the inner courtyard of our house, laden with the fruit. And when I flaunted my new acquisition, Samy was so furious he was almost frothing at the mouth. Predictably, a string of Samy's embargoes cascaded down on me like ton of bricks.

Then something that Samy feared all along happened. A couple of boys switched allegiance to me ( lured by a few plum 'trade proposals' I dangled before them) and the trickle soon turned to a deluge. Suddenly, I was heading my own cozy set of allies.

The unipolar world had given way to a bipolar world!!

Image Courtesy: http://freeclipartnow.com/

You May Also Like:

Conclave Of Ghouls
Conspiracy Of Silence
Ode To An Odd Pal

ASK PADDY

"What is the last thing you take off before going to bed?" the young prankster asked his aunt who went crimson as she groped for an answer and looked at Paddy as if to ask 'you tell me.' "Your feet off the ground" he volunteered with impish delight and scooted leaving behind a gawking aunt.

Meet Paddy, my teenaged nephew, who looks at the world through his own kinky prism. For him a 'serial killer' is a TV channel that abruptly discontinues a popular TV serial. And a male office clerk who collects the school fee is a 'fee-male. Paddy holds that a Western toilet, the 'paper-loo' is a ham-handed version of the Indian 'water-loo'. And then, just because natives of Poland are Poles, he regards those of Holland as 'Holes'.

If Paddy were to be believed, Azharuddin's sisters call him Azhar bhai jaan (a la Azerbaijan, the Central Asian Republic). According to him, Ugaadi is a festival first celebrated jointly by the peoples of Uganda and Burundi. And two master chefs, one each from Samoa and Formosa invented Samosa!

During one of his imagination-let-loose sprees he quizzed me, "What slogan would the striking mill workers demanding the restoration of mill's broken door shout?" I goggled at him in anticipation of enlightment. And it came in the form of 'Eh mill maan-gay door' which, of course, is a spooneristic spoof of the ad jingle 'Eh dil maan-gay more'.

"Inviting tender for construction of lavatories - Second call", Paddy once read out, toungue in cheek, from a newspaper. Paddy can spot gags where others fail to see anything funny. Once he buries himself in a newspaper, quotes like 'hand grenades at throwaway prices', 'take a crash course in aviation', 'government waters down the proposal to increase fat content of milk' or even a 'guitar for sale. Cheap. no strings attached' fly thick and fast.

A dab hand at spinning yarn, Paddy weaved this story about the Indo-Pak detente. When PM Vajpayi informed Musharraf over the phone that he had chosen Agra as a venue for the summit, the latter asked "But why Agra?" And, under the mistaken belief that Musharraf was enquiring about 'Viagra', Mr Vajpeyi ostensibly replied "We will put it under Confidence Building Measures".

Paddy's etymological lexicon has many entries. But one that he cooked up during a South Indian pilgrimage was quite resourceful. After coming across a string of legends at different places, each attributing the construction of the temples' holy tanks to the Pandavas, Paddy wondered aloud if the Pandavas were in fact 'Pond'avas.

Image Courtesy: http://www.orgsites.com/

You May Also Like:

A Touchy Issue
Who Hung King
Medicook's Remedies

'B'S BENEATH MY BONNET

As the bus gathered speed, the cadence of the revving engine lulled me into a semi-trance. I clutched the pen and the notepad ready to pounce on the 'fleeting new idea that, like a rabbit, would streak through my conciousness' which, if not jotted down, would sink into oblivion.

Then, spurred by the draught, it came in a gush enveloping me all over. And what came gushing was not a creative idea for an article but a torrent of regurgitated breakfast - bits of idli, vada etc. - from the passenger in front. The co-passengers stared at my face as though it were a menu printed in an embossed hieroglyphic script.

Thus my foray into the first of the three 'B's - bus, bed and bath, supposedly the fertile cradles of creativity according to my new guru - had gone bus-t. And all I had scribbled on the notepad was the opening line of a Manoj Kumar's movie song - Aur nahin bus(!?) aur nahin.

Next, I decided to try out the 'bed' to capture the 'perceptual experiences in the moments before I fell asleep - a fertile semi-sleep state called hypnogogic.' So I slept on the edge of my cot relying on the faithful gravity to wake me up on the brink of slumber. As I passed into hypnogogic state, a gem of an idea - a real smasher - hit me in a flash only to be doused in a trice as the downward progress of my momentarily airborne head was arrested by the floor. I found the hard way that hardest thing about this approach to creativity was - you guessed it right - the floor.

Then I contemplated the last of the three 'B's - the bath, or stretching myself in a bathtub, a contraption I didn't have, and letting the mind wander freely. But the only living mammal that basked in the bath of such variety around our town were, barring the porcine fraternity, the water buffaloes that wallowed in a dirt pond producing, god only knows, what kind creative ideas. Nevertheless, I had known all along that the bathroom (a euphimism for toilet) was truly a fertile(?) milieu where the traffic of creativity peaked during the hour of '(de)congestion.'

Still, I couldn't shake off my guru lock, stock and bathtub. For, recently when I travelled by an intercity night bus that was nearly empty, I made myself a cozy bed on two adjacent seats and slept. Just as I was about to enter the the land of Nod, I was woken up by a steady drip of rainwater from the leaky roof of the bus. And yet, a blend of all the three 'B's - bus, bed and bath - couldn't trigger my dormant muse. Or could it?

Image Courtesy: http://www.uoguelph.ca/

You May Also Like

Samy In Non-proliferation
Whistler's Hall Of Fame
Dollar Dreams

CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

During the past couple of decades I seldom needed an alarm clock to wake me up in the morning. For, my wife and children, a flock early birds, produced enough cacophny to wake the dead. Therefore, their behaviour on that October morning seemed quite out of character as they went about their chores with bottoned-up lips.

My wife, a role model for a pair of boisterous offspring, never considered silence a virtue. There were just three occasions in the past when my wife was forced into an ordeal of silence: 1) during a bout of laryngitis (then too she hissed around like a ratsnake); 2) when a thermometer was thrust between her lips during a febrile illness (she nearly choked on it trying to talk) and 3) when the ENT specialist applied tongue depressor to examine her throat.

She remained as loquacious as ever at all other times (even while she slept). Her excited prattle with bisibele bath in her mouth could truly be a auditory delight for any connoiseur of rap music and an envy of all accomplished ventriloquists.

In the light of the above facts, her new avatar of silence appeared quite enigmatic and, what's more, her paroxysms lasted exactly an hour after rising and an equal duration before bed-time. In the interim period it was buisiness as usual for her vocal cords. Despite my persistent cajoling, she refused to disclose the reason for her atypical behaviour. This state of affairs went on unabated for weeks. The mystery continued to haunt me, but not for long.

At dawn on the Diwali day, just when my wife brought the morning cuppa, a misguided cockroach took it upon itself to make a dramatic guest appearance on the coffee table brandishing its antennae. No doubt, the poor arthropod was on its way home after a gruelling night shift, but the insectile apparition forced my wife to break her silence with high decibel scream and, in the process, she spewed out (like an aerosol) some kind of oily substance all over my face and body.

Subsequent inquiry concerning the 'oil spill' revealed that my wife had taken up a new therapy called 'Oil Pulling' (a fad purporting to be panacea for all ailments, requiring gargling of certain quantity of cooking oil with lips tightly closed). Thus the secret behind the silence was spilled at last, and literally so! And inthe bargain, my wife invented a novel method of anointing for the ritual oil bath of Diwali!
The same day, I presented my wife with a fresh(large) can of cooking oil and a couple of books on 'oil pulling'. And why not? After all it was merely a case of 'oily to bed and oily to rise'.


Image Courtesy: http://www.arokaya.com/


You May Also Like:
Villains,Tailors & Stereotypes
Incognito In Throng
Konkani Spam