Nov 25 – What the ****s

Feeling a bit silly so here goes…

Kept telling my new driver to keep his eyes on the road.. he kept telling me he was..and I insisted he wasnt.. later realized he was cross eyed…

The US apparently spied on Tony Blair and had his private conversations recorded … Heres some insider information…3 agents quit because of boredom…

Animals are becoming cricket coaches.. thats what I thought when I saw a headline saying
“Moles Named New Zealand Coach”.. of course I was wrong.

Lalloo.. he of the gobbar disposition compared Rahul Gandhi to Mahatma Gandhi..keep licking Lallooo… elections are getting closer. Hope Rabri aunty is helping out…

Someone at the office mentioned that Watermelons were more powerful than Viagara…I wonder if thats if you eat watermelon or someone drops a watermelon on your whatchamacallit.

Sleeping Bea(uty)st

This man even falls ASLEEP in his SLEEP.

Heres a wonderful picture of our “Son of the Soil” also from henceforth called “Traffic Jammer” perhaps he was hoping that people would do this in their cars while they were stuck in traffic. (Got this wonderful picture in an email)

Nero Fiddled. Gowda Snored. Not even God can keep him awake.

 

By the way, can someone give me a better caption for this?

Chitra had a nice rant on the recent traffic jam as did Nikhil on Mirrorcracked.

The Dog

I don’t have a dog now.. never will.. thats not because I don’t like dogs.

“Dad can I have a dog?” used to be my perennial question to my dad.

“We already have you” used to be the answer.

So I decided to take things into my own hand and started scouting for a puppy.. after many days of asking.. Jayarama who used to live down the street said he knew somebody who knew somebody whose dog was expecting a litter. I had to pay Jayarama one rupee for his efforts.

Life went on, I forgot about this “request” and continued with my quest for a dog…

One day out of the blue, Jayarama appears at my school during lunchtime. “I have the dog” he says excitedly.. “I left it in your backyard as no one was home”.

I was ecstatic.. my own dog. I promised to pay Jayarama later – he wasn’t happy with that but one rupee was was a lot of money and I didn’t carry money around in 6th grade.

Hopeless

Heading back to my Engineering College days (see how effortlessly I dropped the hint that I did Engineering).

So one fine day the “Blood Donation” camp arrived…all of us volunteered. Not because of any sense of service but because not donating was tantamount to being called chicken and your name would go up on the toilet walls (no one wants their name on the toilet walls).

Come the day of the camp and all of us hesitantly made our way to the venue. Rumors were already floating around “Seena Fainted” they said, “Muthu’s blood was blue,” someone else bleated…”They could not find Sanjay’s blood type”… it went on and on. The only positive thing was there were free bananas to be had..and in those days anything free was worth it…

The first step in the process was to determine the blood type. One of my other classmates Vishy and I gave our samples together..we screamed when the finger was pricked to draw some blood…I kid you of course. Then there was this 10 minute wait while we anxiously waited for our blood types (what if we were like Sanjay???)…

While we were waiting.. we glanced across the room where bottles of blood were being collected from the other folks (oh by the way, it was an all boys college… thats another story).

Suddenly our thoughts were interrupted by the person who took our samples.. “Vokay… both of your blood types are Hopeless”…

Our worst nightmares came true.. Vishy and I gave each other a mutually sympathetic look. “Wwwwhat?” we managed to quaver… the guy gave us and annoyed look and said “Yes appa both your blood types are Ho Plus”… and he proceeded to write the words O+ on a sheet of paper… “Yuver blood is HO PLUS.. UNDERSTOOD AAA??”.

We understood.

P.S: Sanjay’s blood type was HO PLUS as well…

How Old?

“Happy Birthday Dad,” says my fifteen year old… “How old are you today?”…

“Old Enough,” I say…

Just how old? Maybe the incident below will give you an idea.

Two pretty young girls stopped me to ask for directions last week (junior was with me as well). Using my bestest English I pointed them in the right direction.. then they thanked me by saying “Thank You Uncle…”

Uncle Indeed… Sigh !!!!!

Culture Culture

Ya ya… we are a multi-thousand year culture.. yada yada yada… bear with me…

Barack Obama wins the election and McCain concedes gracefully. He says that the entire country must help the new President.

“I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face,” McCain said before his supporters in Phoenix, Arizona.

Cut to India. Party 1 wins election against incumbent Party 2.

1. Party 2 accuses Party 1 of rigging and irregularities

2. Party 1 will open all kinds of investigations

3. Party 1 will stop all “development” projects of the previous government.

4. Losing party will hold Dharnas. Burn effigies of the election commissioner

5. People will defect to the winning side. Suddenly opposing principles dont seem too bad

Different Country. Different Culture. Something worth Emulating?

Value for life = 0

Now that Deepavali is over, I’d like to write about something serious that happened the day after Deepavali.

A friends wife was on the balcony of their apartment watching her 9 year old playing below. The friend and his teenage son were out visiting relatives.

Unknown to her, her clothes caught fire from a lamp (diya) behind. She was burnt very badly and suffered over 50% burns.

Now comes the sad part. It took the shocked family over 3 hours to find a hospital that would accept her. All of them said that this was a police case. Imagine this, a wife and a mother is nearly charred and they wont accept you because they are afraid of the police. What the hell is that???? This was especially difficult because it happened to a lady. Finally influence had to be used to get her into a hospital.
So what are they saying here. “Sorry maam, we know you are hurt, but we cannot treat you because this is a police case”????

Am I missing something here???

UPDATE: She has had 2 surgeries and is doing well.. but a long way to go.

The “Medicine”

Ok.. back to the family archives for now. A tale thats been related to me by Gopi uncle my father’s older brother. (Gopi Uncle deserves his own tag and posts.. but thats for later)

It was a sometime in the 50’s and my uncle had to take Ajji (grandma) from Mysore to Chennai (then Madras) for some medical treatment. Ajji was very restless and made life “miserable” for him constantly complaining about the train, the noise and how her cough and cold were not allowing her to sleep. She claimed none of the medicines worked (Ajii always believed in strrrrong medicine).

Having endured the hounding all the way to Bangalore, Gopi uncle hits upon an idea… he steps out while the train has stopped and picks up a bottle of brandy from the Spencers store in the station (yes… apparently they used to have these stores all most stations and yes they sold booze).

So once the train starts for Madras, he pours a large “peg” in a steel tumbler, tells my ajji that this was medicine and asks her to “gulp it down”…post “medicine”, ajji is out like a light and does not wake up till the train chugs into Madras.

Later that day, ajji calls out to uncle and says “You know the medicine that you gave me last night was excellent… can you give me some of that today as well?”.

While Gopi uncle is figuring out what to say..she adds “..and it tasted very good as well”

I think he got out of it by saying it was out of stock in Madras.