JUNKYARD GENIUS

The Pistol brand purgative is the most popular one ,sir, '' affirmed Thampi, the scrap collector, on an errand to my house to collect old newspapers. '' Three out of five purgative bottles I collect belong to this brand. The contented users tell me that results are instantaneous and explosive.

I crumpled my nose in distaste at the graphic details of the Pistol's effect. All the same, complimenting him, I said, ''Well, well, Thampi. You seem to know a lot about people's brand loyalties.''

''I certainly do, sir,'' said Thampi with a touch of pride. ''In fact, the big companies can save millions that they spend on marketing surveys by employing the services of my clan.''

I was quite impressed. 'Market pollsters, beware!' I thought with amusement. 'The Thampis of this world are out to put you out of business.' But that was not all. The proponents of economic liberalisation may soon have to find new jobs, if one went by Thampi's 'interim report':

''There are heaps of information buried underneath those scrap heaps, sir.'' declared Thampi. ''My inventory of empty liquor bottles, for instance, tells its own story. While a lucky few have climbed the social ladder, from rum to scotch, majority of the poor have come from arrack to hooch. It means that while the rich got richer, the poor got the begging bowl. Some thing is seriously wrong with this government's policy, sir.''

For some reason, the teetotallers were given a go-by in Thampi's sample survey. Nevertheless, Thampi had demolished the trickle-down effect theory of the economic reformists. The only thing that trickled down to the poor, it seemed, was hooch!

By that time Thampi had weighed my stock of old newspapers and said, ''15 kgs in all, sir.'' As he paid me, he whispered, ''We are all victims of people's greed and dishonesty, sir. Why else do the scrapped spark-plugs and disposable syringes find their way back into the market?'' With that parting shot, Thampi left, carrying the bundles.

Later, my wife took me to task for being naive enough to repose my faith in Thampi's weights. For, earlier in the day, when she had checked the stack of newspapers on the bathroom scale, it had weighed more than 25 kgs.

Well I was the latest victim of people's greed and dishonesty!!!!

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A BORING DRILL

(Continued from last post "A Pain In The Neck".)

So who is this master bore? A sales representative is a classic example of this ilk. As a part of his sales pitch, such a person would indulge in long-winding blabber about matters unrelated to his visit such as Obama's religion, of how Zen Buddhism took roots in Japan and finally, just when you begin to wonder where all this leads to, he would wind-up by extolling the virtues of the the wares that he has come to sell. So forceful can be the discourse of such a bore that an insurance salesman may convince you (or at least try to make you believe) that your days on this planet are numbered. Or a dog biscuit sales person may highlight the merits of his product in such glowing terms that you start wishing you were a dog.

A third and final variety of bore is one who is most injurious to your mental health. He bombards you with bland and insipid prattle. He can put you to sleep with such alacrity that he can give any anaesthesiologist a run for his money. Simply put, he is a bore to the core. People tend to avoid him a if he were a bearer of some kind of pestilence.

There was one such character in our hostel during my college days. He was nicknamed 'Boric Acid' because, like boric acid that banished germs, his presence made other students vanish without a trace. The moment he appeared at the hostel's entrance, the inmates bolted to the nearest room and bolted their doors. His apparition had the power of imposing a curfew-like situation along the hostel corridors. Some even suggested that he was an ideal candidate for the post of commandant of the riot police. For, all he had to do in case of social unrest was to walk along the street and hey presto, the curfew would come into force without a getting an order from the magistrate!

But then, the Bores have their own uses depending on circumstances. When you are waiting for a shop to open or sitting in an airport lounge awaiting the arrival of your plane of indeterminate time-table, even a bore may come in handy to while away the time. But if, en route to the airport, you run into Mr Bore, avoid him like a plague and take flight. Or else, instead of catching your flight, you might get caught up in your friend's flight of fancy!

A PAIN IN THE NECK

How often have you ducked into a crowd on catching sight of a crashing bore and beat a hasty retreat into the nearest departmental store to make a fictitious purchase? If you didn't duck, you would end up being a sitting duck for his/her long and tortuous barrage of inanities that could bore a hole into your cranium driving you bonkers.

A bore is a person who talks when you wish him to listen. He also belongs to a class of bipeds who spend so much time talking about themselves that you can't talk about yourself. When you try to talk to him, all you do is stare at his mouth with a forlorn hope of finding a silent gap in order to interject your views into the matter under discussion. While an intelligent conversationalist talks because he has something to say, a bore does it because he has to say something.

Bores come in assorted hues and forms. A congenital bore is one who takes to boring people like a fish takes to water. You could almost believe if someone told you that such a Mr Bore, as soon as he was born, talked for hours on end with the midwife who delivered him about how much he got bored during his 9-month-old incarceration within his mother's womb, of how he withstood suffocation in the amniotic fluid, of how he survived the ordeal of claustrophobia in the confines of the uterine walls, of how his movements were impeded by the umbilical cord and finally how relieved he was on entering the free world full of willing listeners. With such a person one can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience.

Another master bore belongs to the genus 'Borelia Consummata', a consummate bore. Just as the beauty pageants keep harping on "Beauty with a purpose", this bore artiste's pet slogan "Boredom with a purpose." Boring people is, for him, a means to an end. Who this bloke could be? To find out, read the next post, "A Boring Drill."

LUCKY'S SALAD DAYS

Lucas Charles 'Sticky' alias Lucky is one person whose memory is indelibly etched in my mind, not because he saved me from African lions nor due to any hefty loan he gave me to start a business. (By the way, this not a memorial piece since Lucky is very much alive, though not kicking.) Lucky still retains that special place in my heart because his life had all along been an open book to me, especially the the chapter dealing with his adolescent(puppy) love life.

A junior to me by two years at the high school, lucky was known to me from our Salad days when his imagination had just sprouted wings of a ostrich that enabled his teenage fancy to run, though not to soar; a time when, with an imagination that was out of step with the reality, he could not get over the idea that he was a thing of beauty and boy forever!

Forever In Love

His every waking hour was filled with romance for someone known(mostly unknown); when the fields magnetism surrounding the fair sex inducted electric thoughts that galvanised him into action providing the sole motivating force behind all his ambitions spurring him on to sartorial elegance. His favourite dress was a green shirt on top of a pair of pink trousers that earned him the nickname 'Pink Panter'.He had a kind of special savoire-faire that enabled him to put his foot into his own mouth whenever he opened his trap, a form of foot and mouth disease.

Lucky went around wearing a silly grin on his dial for reasons best known to him and often eagerly awaited at the street corner news-stand for the copies of glossy magazines just to have a peep at (but never to buy the mag) the the centre-spread photograph of some two bit starlet in advanced state of disrobing.

Romance In Air

To Lucky, every film heroine seemed like a demi-goddess and every second gal appeared to be his his prospective spouse in full bridal attire, whom he would soon be leading down the aisle amidst the chants of hymns by the clergy in their solemn voices.

His racing ticker oozed sugary drippings of polysyllables that could together form excellent stuffings for many Mills and Boon romantic concoctions. During one such fit of exuberance, he had composed, compiled and mailed 'an anthology of amorous verses' to the daughter of a local police constable. And on learning of this bravado, I had to apply a thick coat of grease to the palm of the constable's housemaid in order to intercept the mail at the delivery end, thereby saving Lucky from the privilege of cooling his heels in the jug, not to mention a florid black eye.

( To be continued in the next post, Lucky Trudges on)

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THE SLEUTH SURGES ON

Continued form the last post, A Sleuth Is Born ......

At 14, during the Christmas season, I had scripted and directed a drama called 'Murder by Poison' in which the children from the neighbourhood donned the grease-paint. The enactment progressed without a hitch till the interval when the events took an unforeseen twist. In the drama, the hero was to drink a glass of lime juice to which the would-be murderer had surreptitiously added the poison. Soon after drinking the juice the hero had 'fallen down dead' as dictated by the script. But when the time came for the hero's 'body' to be produced for post mortem, the 'corpse' was nowhere in sight. Without the knowledge mine, the script writer, the plot had thickened. The actor ( who played the murder victim ) had quietly slipped into the loo, leaking, as he was, like a defective municipal tap, from the wrong end of his alimentary canal. And he refused to come out of his sanctuary.

As was found out later, a boy had played a prank by adding a dose of castor oil to the lime juice. In the mean time, pandemonium had broken out in the auditorium as the drama had come to a grinding halt. It was, indeed, a testimonial to my ingenuity that I managed to effect impromptu changes to the script and went on to complete the play by changing the title from 'Murder by Poison' to 'A Case of Missing Corpse' !!

The Sleuth Turns Scribe

With such background, it was no wonder that in my late teens, the cacoethes scribendi (persistent itch to write) took the better of me. I came to the conclusion that the time was ripe to transcribe my fertile imagination into concrete words and write a murder mystery of my own. After protracted mental churning, a plot emerged which I considered at that time to be the cream of an idea.

The story revolved around a love triangle involving two friends, let's say, men A and B, and a girl C. A was murdered and B was implicated for the crime based on:
a) presence of the accused at the scene of crime on the day of the murder
b) the obvious motive, the love triangle
c) B's finger prints on the murder weapon - a knife
d) presence of A's blood in the scrapings of B's palm collected soon after murder

B's pleadings of innocence were rejected by the court against the backdrop of foolproof set of evidences, particularly the the blood on B's palm on which the outcome of the case hinged. Just when an adverse verdict was about to be delivered, entered the super sleuth, Merry Passion(no relative of Perry Mason).

Merry Passion argued in front of the magistrate that B, in fact, was innocent. Mr Passion claimed that he had carefully examined the sample containing the scrapings the palms of the accused, B.
Apart from A's blood, it also showed a few parts of a dead mosquito under the microscope. Merry Passion contended that on the night of the murder when B was in A's house, the B had swatted a mosquito that had just bitten and sucked the blood of A. "That explains the presence of A's blood on on B's hands", declared Passion. The magistrate dismissed the prosecution's case and granted B an honourable acquittal.

At the time I wrote this murder mystery, I had no doubt that it was a masterpiece. So I sent it to a reputed periodical for publication. But, alas, someone in the editorial staff had killed the story.

And to this day I am searching for the killer. One more 'Case of Missing Killer' for you.

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A SLEUTH IS BORN

Murder mysteries and gory tales tickled my perverse sense right from early childhood. The flicker of interest ignited by the hair-raising tales by Earl Stanley Gardener( in which corpses got strewn around like junkyard garbage) soon turned into a burning flame by the blood-curdling fictions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. The passion finally became an obsession, thanks to the gore-in-gallons depictions on celluloid by that master 'terrorist' Alfred Hitchcock.

At the age of ten, inspired by the fluorescent hound in Sir A C Doyle's "Hound of Baskerville", I anointed our pet dog Jackie with some stinking ointment and watched him the whole night to see if he glowed in the dark but to no avail. The flip side of it was that the next morning saw Jacky shivering in cold after having lost all his fur, looking like a freshly shorn sheep. I can still hear the echoes of the sound thrashings I received from dad for my canine misadventure.

In those days, I was a miniature sleuth of sorts that earned me the sobriquet 'Nosy Parker". Though wet behind the ears, I always kept my powder dry. For, any matter needing nosing around in our neighbourhood was promptly referred to me, be it a pet that vanished or articles lost, needing to be found.

One fruitful mission that stood out in my detective 'archives' was the solving of the mystery surrounding the violent death of a pet cat in the neighbourhood. Having been summoned to the scene of the crime, I closely inspected the mutilated carcass of the cat(or what was left of it). Peeping from the torn entrails of the feline victim were a few bits of undigested dog biscuits that screamed out the evidence.

It didn't take long for me to to follow this lead to our own pet dog, Jackie. Blood stains on Jackie's snout and a piece of cat entrails in his kennel were unequivocal pointers to Jackie's being the psychopath killer. Apparently, the late cat had stolen a couple of biscuits from Jackie's larder and Jackie, a dog of few barks but firm and decisive action, took law into his own hands(or paws) and did the cat in. The whole murder investigation, as it turned out, was a open-and -shut case.

(To be continued in the other post "The Sleuth Surges On".)

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ART OF CIRCUMLOCUTION

Language, whether spoken or written, is a medium of communication in which words are skillfully arranged in order that diversity of thought, wish and feeling expressed by the speaker or writer may clearly be understood by the listener or reader, leaving no scope for misinterpretation. Going by the same yardstick, the opening line of this piece itself contravenes the very rule by by its sheer length. Yet, there is a greater sin than this in the use of language. And that is circumlocution.

Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary describes circumlocution as 'the use of many word to say something that could be said in a few words. A classic example of circumlocution was given by Dr. Samuel Johnson, the father of modern English dictionaries. According to him, a friend of his who wanted a pinch of snuff had asked him, 'could I take with the digital ends of my hand from the concavity of your palm some powdered tobacco?' A truly roundabout talk!

A habitual circumlocutor uses this form of language merely to show off his erudition. Unwittingly, he makes a brazen display of his snobbery(like the friend of Dr. Johnson just alluded to). He falls into the category of pompous asses (I often get the nagging doubt that I could be one of them). For a circumlocutor, an ordinary thirst can be 'a deglutitional longing for aqueous solution caused by the parching of the oropharyngeal membrane'.

And a discussion is 'a bidirectional flow of logically verbalized thought process'. If one asked him what circumlocution actually meant, he would describe it as 'an instance where multifarious utilization of wordy configurations switch roles with their frugal application resulting in disproportionately inflated semantic content of the sentence! '

Snobbery at Its Best

The circumlocution is often used as a legitimate tool by certain sections of the society such as politicians, career diplomats and lawyers, to name a few. While a politician uses it with uncanny precision either to keep the public in dark about what he actually promises or to parry awkward questions at press conferences, a career diplomat makes vague and lengthy speeches to keep all doors open for future negotiations. But a lawyer is miles ahead of the rest in the skilled application of the art of circumlocution.

Without prejudice to the norms of the legal profession, I must admit that a lawyer uses circumlocution to hilt and artfully to boot, as it has been his wont for centuries. To emphasize that his client was asleep, at the the murder took place, a lawyer could say, "Your Honour, my client, as always did, having a substantial quantity of nourishment and being overwhelmed by the exhausting effects of hard manual labour, ventured to knock off the last vestiges of wakefulness which he ultimately succeeded in doing, at the time the murdered man breathed his last."

Haig Locution

And finally, when it comes to circumlocution, Alexander Haig, the former US State Secretary, takes the cake. Haig, a career diplomat turned politician, was once approached by one of his office clerks asking for a raise (in his salary). Without batting eyelid Mr. Haig said, "My dear son, because of the fluctuational predisposition of your position's productive capacity as juxtaposed to the Government standards, it would be momentarily injudicious to advocate an increment."

With utter incomprehension, the clerk said, " I don't get it." (meaning he didn't understand what Haig said). "That's right." replied Mr. Haig coolly.

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FOOTLOOSE FOR FOOTAGE

As school kids in the days of yore, we rated a movie as 'immensely
watchable' or a 'must-see' only if the blokes featuring in it fought like
cats and dogs at regular intervals. While songs and dances were for the faint-hearted, we settled for nothing short of a surfeit of fight sequences - the more the merrier - involving swords, sticks, bicycle chains and what not. For us, harried as we were by some of our tyrannical school masters, watching the hero beating the daylight out of the baddies was a cathartic experience. As we jumped in our seats baying for the villain's blood, we honed our whistling skills which stood us in good stead later in life.

While the 'fightful' movies were for us, the under-12 tots, the stripling of the under-19 category with raging hormones and an apology of a beard had skewed appetite for lewd sequences code named 'Scenes'. The members of this nocturnal species tip-toed into the darkened cinema halls that showed Hollywood skin-flicks with hope of catching a few 'Scenes'. Like cockroaches on their nightly errands, they crept into the theatres after the lights got dimmed, only to go underground temporarily during the intermission to avoid being fodder to back-biting gossip-mongers.

Yet, our country-cousins who cut their theatrical teeth on the long winding 'Yakshagana Field Drama' that rang down the curtain only at cock-crow, based their ratings on 'per-penny footage'. For them a movie was good value for money if it cost them, say, two pennies per hour for a eight-penny ticket. So lengthy were the movies catering to this 'niche market' that, according to a local gag, the first place the police looked for in search of a missing person was the cinema hall that showed ' Dashavataram ' or ' Sampoorna Ramayanam ' (Hindu epics with long story lines).

Next on the list was the ' Lachrymose Brigade ' consisting of women folk who thronged the movie halls to watch tear-jerkers, carrying with them terry towels to wipe off their tears. The mothers-in-law amongst them wept uncontrollably at the travails of the on-screen daughters-in-law only go home later to get on with the business of harassing their own daughters-in-law. The house-wives wailed at the hardship of starving on-screen families even as their famished husbands and children waited at home for the 'return of moms' to get their quota of nourishment.

Those were the the days when the movie's star cast included a few garrulous members of the audience. These interjecters peppered the on-screen conversation with generous contributions of their own, transforming dialogues into 'trialogues and 'multilogues'. "Thrash the villain soundly," one would shout to the movie's hero. Or, "Don't arrest him. He is innocent," another would advise the police.

Often the audience of the front-bench variety joined in the on-screen dance number and were kept away form the stage by the management-appointed 'bouncers'. On one occasion, while a popular matinee idol danced, it became a free-for-all as the bouncers too, carried away by the revelry, joined the floor!

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DOMESTICATED DEMOCRACY

"Dad, you have no choice but to buy the Street Cat bike you promised me. I have the backing of mom and Vicky," said Amit's eldest son, 15-year-old Mittu. Amit's wife Aditi and Vicky nodded their assent. Their 9-year-old daughter Maggie, youngest of the lot, was the lone dissenting voice. She had, after all, nothing to gain. At least Vicky was promised an occasional ride in return for his vote.

The venue where this drama was unfolding was their dinner-table. The main item on the agenda was how to appropriate Rs. 3000 earmarked under the head ' Fancy Purchase in the family budget proposals for the month.

Well, with 'Mummy', Mittu and Vicky voting in favour of the bike ( through a 'Noise vote'), Amit reluctantly yielded to their demand. He was in a minority in a household of five. As Mittu said, he had no other option. Especially since he was instrumental in introducing the ' Domestic Democracy Doctrine ' (DDD) in the matter of family budgeting. Now he regretted that he had not retained the power of veto. 'There goes my Electric coffee maker,' Amit thought with a sinking heart. He slept fitfully that night.

Next morning, while he shaved, Vicky crept silently into the bathroom and whispered in a conspiratorial tone: " Dad, you can still get your coffee maker. But only if you get me that Chinese video game which, at the most, would cost you Rs. 300. I will throw in my lot with you, lock, stock and barrel, if you concede my demand. With Maggie on our side, we can carve ourselves a cozy majority." Amit jumped at his offer. Their clandestine pact was sealed.

At the breakfast table, Amit triumphantly announced their newly-emerged alliance expecting to see the crestfallen faces of his wife and Mittu. Instead, they burst into guffaws, sharply ridiculing his naivete. Apparently, in anticipation of such a turn of events, they had enticed Maggie back into their fold with the lure of a silk Churidar at their midnight rendezvous. Little Maggie had defected overnight! The opposition had pipped Amit at the post.

This happened last Tuesday. Now, here he was, at the wheel about to start the car on the way to their weekend shopping to buy the bike, when his wife Aditi threw an unexpected bombshell. She informed him with a touch of pride in her voice that she along with Vicky and Maggie had forged ' third front ', dropping Mittu like the proverbial hot potato from the new Front. The conditionality of the new alliance gave her a sari, Vicky, his video game and Maggie, the churidar. Amit's wife who had all along been a neutral umpire got greedy and threw her hat into the ring claiming a chunk of the spoils. This was quite unsettling for Amit, even though, that in no way altered his position vis-a-vis the coffee maker ( which was, in any case buried in the graveyard of domestic democracy).

With his spirits dipping to an all-time low, Amit drove into the main thoroughfare. As the cool breeze hit his face, his dejection began slowly melting as a new scheme took shape in the crevices of his brain. He decided to take the family to the park on the way to the shopping arcade. Though his wife would be watching her coalition partners with a hawk's eye, he hoped to find some pretext to draw one or two of them to a corner and try to win them over to his side. His horse sense told him that he certainly would.

Long Live DDD.

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HONING MY ' SKILLS '

When my 12-year old daughter pestered me to help her draw a portrait for the school drawing contest, I cursed the day I shot my mouth off about my artistic prowess. That made me ruminate on my quixotic fling with sketching during my formative years.

Frankly, I was born with a lacuna in my cortex where the drawing skill ought to have been located. Not that I couldn't draw anything at all. I could draw, say, water from the well with dexterity. I could even clandestinely draw a cigarette behind my mother's back. But when called on to draw a figure, I drew a blank. The best of the straight lines I drew reminded one of a snake wriggling with bellyache.

Nevertheless, around the time I drew my first breath, Mercury, the planet of artistic skills, took time off from its celestial obligations to holiday in the fourth house of my horoscope. And a vigilant astrologer meandering through my birth chart espied the vacationing planet and had a word in my mother's ear proclaiming that her precocious progeny(that's me) had the makings of a Ravi Varma or a Rembrandt. So, off I went to a drawing instructor under whose tutelage I honed my "artistic skills" after school hours.

For almost a year my only assignment was to draw "the coils of spaghetti", an apt exercise commensurate with my aptitude. In due course, however, I graduated to more 'intricate' patterns churning out such visual delights as 'The Doodle', 'Wisps of Clouds' and 'The Hotchpotch', most of them subtle variations of the good old spaghetti coils. And finally, I acquired enough pro(de)ficiency to draw, for instance, an elephant that could easily pass off as a hippopotamus with a long swollen (dangling) nose!

I drew my first colour portrait during school hours - that of our English teacher, who caught me red(green and yellow)-handed and beat me black and blue not for indiscipline but because in the picture he came perilously close to looking like a snarling bull-terrier. Yet, inspired by my new-found facility, I went on to draw the portraits of many of my friends, loosing each of them in the bargain for obvious reasons. Those of my school cronies who remained friendly to this day were the ones who made themselves scarce until such time my 'portraititis' ran its course.

Now, waking up from my reverie, I saw my daughter tugging at my sleeve daring me to prove my artistic claims. I picked up the gauntlet and helped her draw the portrait of a famous (but hairy) film actor.

That fetched her a second prize and a citation. For she was shrewed enough to submit her entry ander the caricatures category with a title 'The Lion with a grimace'!

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A TOUCHY ISSUE

"You look like being in the grip of pre-nuptial jitters," said Pintu, me nephew, to his soon-to-be-groom elder brother Chintu.
"Of course I am," shot back Chintu, "but not for reasons you are hinting at. What perturbs me is the prospect of going through the rigmarole of touching a few hundred pairs of feet (as mark of respect to the elders) all through the ceremony as custom demands. A friend of mine clocked up 911 feet-touchings at his wedding only to be hospitalised later with sprained back. He spent his honeymoon in orthopaedic wards hung up on a traction."

Pintu grew pensive. Quirky problems always brought out kinky solutions from him. True to form, Pintu's creative juices started flowing and then gushing. "Why can't we merely announce that all the eligible feet are taken as touched?" suggested Pintu. "Just like they announce at the company AGMs that the annual reports are taken as read."

"That'll make dad see red."

"Alright. We can ask each one to raise his or her feet in front, one foot at a time, of course."

"Our guest list does not include the canine species."

After a brief thoughtful silence, Pintu advocated devising a hand-held electronic arm that would squeak "bless me" each time it touched someone's feet. Chintu merely grunted. Pintu went on, "We can ask our senior guests to climb on to a conveyor belt raised four feet above the ground and you can touch every darned pair of feet, as they pass by, without you bending."

Chintu just stared at his brother open-mouthed incredulity. Nevertheless, Pintu carried on undetered. "Or the revered feet can be projected live onto a 36-inch touchscreen on the dais. And each time you newly-weds touch a pair of feet on screen, a speaker would chirp 'Happy married life." Pintu was getting more futuristic and weird by the minute. But Chintu demurred.

"How about making all the old coots give Power of Attorneys in favour of grandpa to recieve obeisance on their behalf? That way you can get it over with in one go by touching grandpa's feet," said Pintu triumphantly, hoping to wrap up the issue.

Chintu's hitherto deaf ears started flapping like that of an over-excited bat. His eyes lit up. "A masterstroke, " he gushed, "that needs a slightly different stroke. What if I and my bride give a Power of Attorney in your favour to touch all the venerable feet on our behalf? I'll pay your hospital bills if it comes to that. While you are on a traction, I can get on with my honeymoon."

But before Chintu could say 'I rest me case' Pintu was nowhere in sight. He might have vanished into the nearest gymnasium to exercise and fortify his back!
****************************************************

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MAD WORLD OF TV ADMEN

The man driving the car oozes charm at every pore, who condones anything while at the wheel, even his son's poor grade in maths. But the moment he steps out of the car he turns nasty. A modern day re-incarnation of Dr Jekyll (and Mr Hyde), he is a brainchild fathered by one of our TV admen to promote a highly esteemed brand of car.

Frankly, I ad-ore these (m)ad men whose cerebral ejaculations could boggle densest of grey matter. I ad-mire them for the ad-roit handling of their ad campaigns (aired ad nauseum on the TV) that open up a whole new world far removed from reality.

It's world where a house-breaker treats gold and cash with disdain, looting only trendy bib cocks (of a well known brand) from the toilet, and what's more, if he erupts into a fit of cough during burglary, the granny of the house treats him with cough syrup (of one more brand) that compels him to cry "Maa..." with nostalgia for the rest of his life.

It's a world where people recognise each other not by their faces but by their body odour ( in a deodorant ad), where a brand of hair dye promises to transform aunties into didis (elder sister) and where on chilly mornings, old men are woken up by the incessant clatter of their set of denture kept overnight on the bedside table (just because a brand of air-conditioner wants to tell us how effective their product is).

It's a world where, as you stroll along the mugger's alley, you needn't carry firearms for self-defence as long as you wear a particular brand of underwear that turns into a heavy-weight boxing champ. If confronted by hoodlums, thanks to the undergarment, you can knock the daylights out of the unfortunate thug much to the delight of your girlfriend.

The adman would have us believe that the bridal ghungat (veil) is a clothing behind which the ravenous bride conducts pet puja (eating bout) on a bar of chocolate(so enticed is she that she forgets she is in the midst of her own wedding!). A brand of pen has an inbuilt mechanism which makes nubile chicks peck you on the cheek whenever you lend it to them.

If the umpire turns a deaf ear to your LBW appeal, that's because you don't shout loud enough. So, chew shouto brand of chewing gum before you shout 'Howzaat' and the umpire, startled by the ear-splitting yell, raise his finger with alacrity. And, if by any chance, the umpire had eaten a certain brand of biscuit, then the verdict could be 'Fifty-fifty'.

And finally, you can trust me (I always wear an honest shirt : again a phrase invented by an adman) when I say that, taking a cue from the adman, I have discovered an ecofriendly mode of transport. All you need is to drink a cup of tea, and wah! taj, you feel so light that you take to air and levitate to your destination.

But a word of caution. If the beverage loses its zing en route, you may get stranded half way. So, carry a spare flask of the stimulant for mid-air refuelling.

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

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SHORT-CHANGED BY LONG HAND

I was piqued to discover that our new English teacher had, with sheer disdain, subscribed a curt 'rotten' at the end of my painstakingly composed essay. Curiously, an identical citation was conferred on each of my classmates too. The entire class sang blue murder in chorus - but then the chants of revolt got muted when it transpired that the teacher had merely signed his name, Rathan, which, due to his squiggly handwriting had turned 'rotten'.

An heir apparent to Mr 'Rotten' is a friend of mine whose scribble resembles rows of drunken earthworms belly-dancing at a street carnival. If a sampling of his scrawl recorded on a graph paper were to be given to a cardiologist, he might, assuming it to be an electrocardiograph (ECG), offer an exotic diagnosis such as 'a myocardial infarction with atrial fibrillation'. Or, if presented to a seismologist, he may raise an alarm forecasting an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale.

In the words of Sydney Smith, the 19th century English wit, cacography - poor or illegible handwriting - looks as if 'a swarm of ants, escaping from an ink bottle, had walked over a sheet of paper without wiping their legs'.

But inside a bank passbook, in the days of hand written entries, Sydney Smith's ink-sodden ants didn't just walk but played a lively game of rugby churning out reams of Dead Sea 'scrawls'. It took a person of great resources to translate an entry such as 'anal licker rut' into an 'annual locker rent'. And just because your passbook said 'chase yourself ' there was no need to quit the bank premises. For, all it meant was "cheque on yourself ". My own passbook was once credited with 5000 bucks by "Lotta and Tumbler" which eventually turned out to be a dividend credit from the company "Larsen and Toubro".

But a doctor's scrawl is, indeed, akin to a delectable hotch-potch of noodles garnished with oodles of scrambled eggs and a sprinkling of shredded vegetables. Therefore, imagine the plight of a party host who, from a doctor invitee, received a terse handwritten note (scribbled on a prescription sheet) supposedly expressing his inability to attend the do. But the host could not fathom the contents of the note for you know why. And after wrestling with the "encrypted" message for a long time, the host got a brainwave: Why not send it to the chemist for 'decoding'? After all, chemist knows best when it comes to doctors' handwriting. So the note reached the friendly neighbourhood chemist.

The chemist's face wore a puzzled frown as he drank in the contents of the memo, only to be replaced by a sneer as the matter sank in. Finally, a smug smile crept in as he, with great aplomb, placed a medley of medications on the counter and rattled out instructions on dosage schedules!

Tailpiece: A bride on a honeymoon jaunt wrote to her friend back home narrating how her doting husband hovered around her round the clock. There was a postscript that read: " If my handwriting is bit wobbly, blame it on my hubby."

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

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

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CONCLAVE OF GHOULS

Miffed by the peace and tranquillity abounding in the civilized world, a consortium of werewolves in Satanborough have allegedly signed an MoU (Memorandum of Undertakers) to host the First World Dracula Congress. The Lucifer Army, the official sponsors, has chosen the skull and cross-bones as the convention's mascot. Dr A Cula Pati, the Mayor, has promised to show-case Satanborough as the ultimate destination for the global vampire fraternity who will soon descend on the venue, a ramshackle castle deep in the forests.

A fleet of bloodhound-drawn hearses will ferry the delegates - the kingpins of the global blood sports - to be put up at 'Hotel Carnage Resorts & Spa' in light-proof air-chilled catacombs fitted with intricately carved coffins for the princes of darkness to sleep at cock-crow. The washrooms will have blood on tap for the delegates to have their evening blood-bath. 'Spooky', the famous fashion designers, will be officially entrusted with the task of providing weird outfits for the participants.

Necrophagous (corpse-eating) tribe of Aghoris are the official caterers who will run a steak-house at the convention locale serving delicious human organs cooked in pure blood. Pate de homo gras, a human liver delicacy, is expected to take the ghoulish gourmets by storm. Garlic, the purported vampire repellent, will be disallowed at the eatery (You don't invite a mosquito for dinner and serve him food cooked in Odomos!). Bloody Mary will be the recommended cocktail (to be served in skull bowls) at dinners.

For the thirsty delegates, gift cheques will be issued which they can present at any blood bank to 'draw' cold blood of their choice (A, AB, O etc.). Those preferring warm blood will get a specially designed drinking straw (making machetes and swords obsolete) to drink directly from their victims' jugular.

A local tantrik is trying to communicate with spirit of Jack the Ripper who will be commissioned to deliver the keynote address on 'Modern Trends in Going for the Jugular'. The skull sessions will be conducted at the nearby crematorium where the spirits of the victims of the past massacres too can chip in with suggestions to give butchery a humane touch. All the proceedings will commence after sundown and, following night-long deliberations, the delegates will go back to sleep in their coffins.

Efforts are on to rope in famous horror show moghuls from Bollywood to stage their popular blood-curdling drama 'Gore in Barrels' that will prompt the delegates to cry 'Whoopee' and break into danse macabre.

The proposed First World Dracula Congress has all the potential to make Bram Stoker, the creator of the Dracula legend, turn in his grave. It may even send him into a spin.

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

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BARGAIN BY 'INTUITION'

HITCHED TO HABIT

Just as the plot thickens in the thin story-line, the entire starcast of the film burst into a dancing fit. Irked by this sudden outbreak of pelvic gyrations, I impulsively reached for the 'remote' to switch the channel. But I couldn't find it because I was watching the film in a movie theatre. And on the way back from the cinema, when a stray dog scurried acoss the path of my car, I involuntarily raised my right foot to brake hard only to miss the brake pedal by a yard. For, my friend was driving my car while I sat on passenger seat.

Call it the force of habit or conditioned reflex, It is one of the human foibles I had in profusion since my infancy as my mother bore out. As a babe in arms with a pee-when-you-like default mode, being potty-trained in a red chamber pot, I used to wet anyone clad in red who picked me up.

On a sunny day in my teens my favourite song Chahe koi mujhe jungli kahe.... wafted through the window and at the end of the refrain I shouted yaahooo in chorus with Mohamad Rafi. Then heads of the stundents in the class pivoted in my direction and the teacher threw me out calling me 'jungli'.




It's the same conditioned reflex that turned my job-typist friend's piano lessons into a nightmare because after playing a set of keys, his left hand kept groping for the carriage return lever. It's the force of habit that may put a professional trumpeter in a bit of a (gold)spot while trying to drink his lemonade through a straw, for he may keep on blowing bubbles into the drink. And a swayer endeavouring to play the violin may literally make a hash of it, weilding the bow like a rip-saw.

Lift a politician three feet above the ground and he will launch out into an extempore speech. But never ask a church bell-ringer to unfurl a flag on the Republic Day, for he may leave the flag in tatters with repeated tugs at the string.

Yes, we are all Pavlovian dogs spurred into action by the conditioned reflexes as in the case of an uncle of mine whose daily chores are set in 'motion' only when he reads the 'explosive' headlines in the morning newspaper.

And wasn't it the force of habit that made wine-seller-turned-elevator-salesman lose his job because he always his salestalk with a "good till the last drop" gaffe?

Note: From the link of Pavlovian dog Click Play-----> click drooling dog----> click bell. drum & tumpet to see the conditioned reflex.
Video Courtesy: http://www.youtube.com/

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BOLLYWOOD MEDICINE

When the recently wed heroine faints, the entire audience is convinced that she is in the family way. But not the heroine's dumb relatives who summon the family quack. As the medic in white coat feels the pulse of the recumbent damsel, a knowing smile plays on his lips before he proclaims " Mubarak ho. Aap ki bahu maa bun-naywali hai ".

The Bollywood , in connivance with its subsidiaries down south has, over the years, evolved a vast speciality of celluloid medicine - the Cellopathy - of which the ' pulse method ' of diagnosing pregnancy is just a minor exhibit. And with the dizzy spells being labelled as the cardinal sign of pregnancy, respectable unwed lasses can't even faint in public without raising the society's collective eyebrows. But wait...... there is more.

Cellopathic manuals, for instance, expound that a snakebite victim would croak if allowed to nod off. Therefore the hero cajoles his cobra-bitten paramour into a song and dance sequence to ward off sleep while his sidekick dashes off to fetch the doctor. But even before the help arrives, the guilt-ridden cobra makes an encore, only this time to suck the poison out of its victim.

Goofier are the ways in which the on-screen characters showcase their ailments. A man about to go bonkers opens the proceedings with an alternate bout of laughing and crying and then tears his clothes into slivers before roaming around with a heart-wrenching song on his lips.

A terminally ill patriarch launches into a lenghty oration on the virtues of thrift while his relatives drench him in gallons of tears. And finally when he runs out of steam, the sudden closure of his eyes in sync with pivoting of the head to one side signals his demise. And taking the cue, all the relatives dive on to his body to expedite his passage to the nether world.

A Bollywood potboiler is repository of wonder cures. A person afflicted with amnesia (loss of memory), for instance, listens to the family signature tune and, after a bit of struggle, regains his memory shouting "Maaa..." or "Bhiyyaaa...." depending on who composed the ditty. A wheelchair-bound paraplegic heroine, threatened by the villain's amorous advances, jumps out of the carriage and runs like a bat out of hell.

But the Indian filmdom's ultimate trail-blazing innovation is its ridiculously simple blood transfusion technique. All one needs is long India-rubber tube with the donor's vein at one end and the recipient's at the other. As the blood gushes directly through the 'hotline' into the patient (to the accompaniment of the song " khoon ka rung ek hai..... " in the back ground), both blood-brothers beam contentedly at each other. Bloody smart - or what?

Clipart courtesy: http://www.mecombliteracy.org/

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WHO HUNG KING ?

Halfway through the roll call session at the inaugural lecture, the anatomy professor found himself on the brink of a sneeze. And sneeze he did with a resounding 'Hak...ack...shee...'. During the ensuing silence, a chinese student in the class stood bolt upright and blurted out, "Present, Sir."

The bemused professor quizzically peered at the student as if to charge him with insubordination. But when the apologetic student muttered, "My name is Hak Aak Shee, Sir," a ripple of laughter spread across the lecture hall.

This was one of many guileless gags involving the names of the Chinese at our cosmopolitan college campus in the late sixties which spiced our student days with spontaneous humour sans rancour.

Take the case of a Chinese name 'Ng', the phonetics of which was beyond description in written words except that the sound (as explained by Mr Ng himself) bore an uncanny resemblance to the tight-lipped groan of an intractably constipated chap straining to attain deliverance from his 'motion sickness'!

And being bitten by the Chinese (name) bug, the innovative inhabitants of the college hostelry took it upon themselves to nick name anyone (irrespective of ethnicity) having some idiosyncracy with a Chinese-sounding name. So, a foul-mouthed guy became 'Mr Tongue Too Wrong' and one who ate like a horse was called 'Mr Junk Chunk Chew.' Similarly 'Mr Stunk Lek Skunk' was a 'hydrophobic' who took a bath once every leap year.

The Chinese too sportingly joined the frolic with their own versions of Indian names. Mithun Choksey, for instance, became 'Mein Chop Suey' and it was 'Gung Ho Rum' for Gangaram. An innocent bystander like me too had to put up with a 'Cage-hey Shen Hoy' (for K J Shenoy).

Even though the the Chinese baptism entailed a highly evolved methodology, Mr Shambu (alias Sham An' Boo), our hostel's wit and racounteur, had his own theory. He postulated that christening of a Chinese newborn was a very simple ritual: the baby's father would merely fling a coin on to the cement floor and from whatever sound it produced - Ting dong tunk or Ding tonk deng - a name would be 'coined'.

"Then huccome my name has no coin ringing in it?" retorted Duk Tok Chee, a Chinese boy, taking exception to Shambu's hypothesis. "In your case," chuckled Shambu, "the coin might have fallen on the wooden floor producing the sound 'Duk Tok' which prompted your dad to exclaim 'Chee' with annoyance."

At that, Duk Tok Chee's embarassed face looked a spitting image of 'Ing Tind Mang', which in Kannada means a monkey that had swallowed a lump of asafoetida (a bitter spice).

TAIL PIECE: During the visit of the Chinese President Mr Hu Jintao to New Delhi, seeing the security drill on the streets, a man asked a policeman "Who is coming?" To which the cop replied, "Yes."

Clipart Courtesy: http://www.webweaver.nu/clipart/

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KONKANI SPAM

The man kept yacking incessantly his words pouring out in cascades, scattering a fine spray of spit. Stiffling a yawn, I kept up the facade of attentiveness, nodding at appropriate moments. I didn't dare upgrade his soliloquy to a colloquy, for, most of his lingo (besides the saliva) went way above my head.

Not that he spoke in Swahili; he used my own mother tongue - Konkani. But his was the Kochi hybrid born of liberal cross-pollination from Malayalam and with a lively lilt that nearly forced me into drumming my fingers on the bench in 'Vilambit Ek Taal'.

I had stumbled upon this Kochikaran, a man I didn't know from Adam, during a train journey. Like a predator on the scent of its prey, he had zeroed in on me, a fellow Konkanite, through the passanger manifest and pinned me down with a half nelson. My struggle to wriggle out of his vice-like grip served only to strengthen his resolve to cling on to me like leech and he babbled on in his brand of Konkani that sounded Greek to my ears.

At long last, a snippet of his mumbo-jumbo sank into my skull - he was asking me how many Aanu I had. And, with that he had released the half nelson only to land an upper-cut in my solar plexus and I gasped. For, Aanu in Konkani meant father. I scowled at him in righteous indignation and, going by his startled response, it muast have shown on my face. Pulling myself together post-haste, I said with a heavy dose of sarcasm, "Only one and he is no more." Clicking his tongue in sympathy, he triumphantly declared that he had five Aanu and all were alive! I was about to ask, tongue-in-cheek, if he was, by any chance, a descendant of Draupadi when the impending fracas was averted by the timely entry of a friend who dragged me to the dining car.

And it was my friend, a Konkani linguist of sorts, who cleared the air by explaining to me that in Kochi Konkani, Aanu meant brother. Suddenly every thing fell into place and I felt sheepish.

Back at our train car, I offered the Kochikaran my sincere apologies asking him if, through my shoddy behaviour, I had hurt his sensibilities. He gaped at me, as though apalled. A blob of froth welled up at his mouth as he let out what sounded like an amalgam of five grunts. Then he stomped out of the compartment in a huff.

Perplexed at this weird turn of events, I looked towards my friend for enlightenment. He, scarcely suppressing his laughter, said: "You have just asked him in Kochi Konkani if his mother was married."

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A FREE HOT-DOG'S SAGA

"Hold your ground and dare him to attack. And remember - a barking dog never bites,"asserted my friend an armchair consultant, counselling on how to grapple with the dog menace. He could afford to be dog-matic on the subject, for, it was I who was sticking my leg out inciting the canine to sink his canines into my shin. Moreover, I didn't have a dog's chance of encountering a law-abiding dog who would say "Right-oh, sir. By barking I have forfeited my right to bite."

The chain of events that led to the crunch was set in motion a year ago when I embarked on a morning walk regimen (my jogging schedule had come a cropper after a couple of 'jog falls'). Forewarned of the canine peril, I had, after a few cur-sory visits to the lanes and bylanes of our town, mapped out the least 'dogged' course, shunning the touchy brutes with itchy teeth - the ones that were neighbour's enemy and owner's pride.

In due course, I made a tacit pact with the dogs by which I let the sleeping dogs lie and they let a walking bloke ply. One of them even took to me, giving his tail a brief wag at my sight, often admonishing a stray barker to keep his trap shut. Whenever I skipped a day he would give me where-had-you-been look. Yet, I had to watch out for the odd dog out that got into a foul mood possibly because he had been a butt of night-long nagging by his 'girl friend' who might have given a brush-off after a lover's tiff.

Then one morning, a pair of mongrels probably the top dog of the vigilante squad and his sidekick charged ominously towards me. Skipping the adagio, they went straight into agitato and then crescendo rendering their duet at the highest notes on the scale of C major. Needless to say, I showed them a clean pair of heels (breaking the World Record for 500M scoot). I escaped by a dog's whisker, but, by then, the stitching on my trousers had come undone at ten places turning me into an ideal prospect for the cover page of The Vogue.

After a brief hibernation, I kick-started my constitutional with recourse to the oldest trick in the book - of throwing crumbs to the militant mutts. And while the biscuit diplomacy became a barking success, my morning walks began to resemble the Pied Piper's procession, what with a pack of dogs in tow. It was a spectacle that the people en route woke up early to watch. But I carried on doggedly.

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