Humour – Page 73 – Nourish-n-Cherish

The Athletic Girls

The niece was a-visiting for the summer. She is a year older than my daughter, and the cousins spent hours dawdling, drawing, ‘illustrating my books’, reading and watching shows on Television. The husband looked at them lolling around and decided that what the girls required was a severe physical regimen and enrolled them in a Badminton camp not far from home. The girls were excited enough about it and got ready on time. There was a lot of noise about backpacks and water bottles and questions about whether they would need Gatorade etc. In all the melee, I was shrewd enough to notice that we did not have badminton rackets for the girls. Ask anybody. If you need to learn badminton, you need badminton rackets.

I walked swiftly to the car wondering whether we had enough time to stop at a store and pick up the rackets without being late for the first day of class. I just put on my seatbelt when my athletic daughter piped, “Don’t worry ma! I found the rackets. Come! Let’s go.”

Perplexed is the word I am looking for here. You see? This precious daughter can’t find a spoon if it is sitting on her plate in front of her. There have been times when I’ve sent her upstairs to fetch something with specific instructions. “Go to your room. Turn on the light. Turn to the right. Look near the bookcase, there is a box. In that box, you will find a pair of scissors. Bring it.”

“Amma….I don’t need instructions like that! I know where the box is.” Sassy Tasha.

A minute later, “Errm. Amma, have you moved the box?”

“No!”

“I can’t see it there.”

“Did you check near the shelf?”

“YESSS!” Irritated Polly

“Isn’t it there? Near the shelf. Check behind the door.”

“NO!”

So, I thump upstairs moaning and walk into the room, turn right and there to the left of the bookcase is a box containing a pair of scissors. I turn around with a question mark and an exclamation mark on my face. The daughter says, totally unabashed “OH! To the left of the bookcase, I looked here – on the right.”

This girl found badminton rackets in the home when I thought we didn’t have any usable ones? Fishy. So, I heaved myself out of the car and asked her to show me the rackets. She proudly held up two Wilson tennis rackets.

We were running late to a class on the first day, and yet, I had to laugh at this. I gave myself a face-palm and bundled her off to the car. All this while, if you will notice the niece is nowhere to be seen. So, I finally holler for her and ask her what is holding her back, and she says, “One minute! I am trying to decide whether to take mixture or chips for snacks!”

Priorities Ladies & Gentlemen. Priorities.

Badminton Rackets — Playing badminton with tennis rackets

The American Badminton Coaches, however, are a sturdy breed. They got these girls to establish contact between the shuttle-cock and the right kind of racket at the end of it all.

The TRUCKERS

Have you ever done something for an admiring audience? Something mundane that you brilliantly execute in front of your admirers? You feel pretty good that you consider it mundane and therefore a little embarrassed at all the rosy-eyed attention, but a trifle pleased with yourself that what for you is simple, is so inspirational in others.

I am sure that is pretty much how the truck driver felt. A little embarrassed at the amount of attention his job was drawing and then a tiny glow of satisfaction at the admiring audience. The truck-driver was able-bodied enough though his stomach was beginning to look prosperous. He looked reasonably happy. In other words, a person one might have passed on the street without stopping to remember. Like a wet umbrella on a rainy day.

I need to set a context I see: The day was cloudy and the son was strapped in a stroller slightly against his will. But once the stroller started rolling, he sat back for a merry ride and what an experience it turned out to be! We had not really expected such a huge truck to come rolling on the road. As far as trucks go, this one was an eel and a whale all rolled together. It had at least 18 wheels, painted a brilliant green and had two huge containers strapped on its back, with another motorized lift at the end of the carrier of the truck. The truck driver was to drop off the huge containers to some building and we were walking right in front of that building. The truck stopped on the island in the middle of the road, and the operations began. The truck driver (it seems wrong to not give him an exalted title, maybe THE TRUCKER) got down and then lowered the machinery at the back of the truck single-handedly, fork-lifted the huge container onto the machinery and made off to deliver the thing.

The operation lasted less than twenty minutes and he obstructed three cars for a period of 30 seconds during the whole operation. THE TRUCKER then gave us a friendly wave with a sheepish grin that made the little feller in the stroller grin shyly too and he was off.

I had to sizzle back to the operation of unloading a few sacks in New Delhi a few years ago (Please refer to point #4 in the post: https://nourishncherish.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/traffic-absolutely-rules-in-delhi/) .

The truck driver there was not able-bodied enough, and his stomach looked like it could have done with another few parathas; but he looked like a man ready to wreak havoc on a busy interstate road.

He first parked his vehicle diagonally across the road. This enabled him to obstruct traffic flowing in both directions. The traffic was comprised of fellow trucks, cars, motorbikes, cycles, vans and buses. Not to mention some buffaloes and dogs.

Then, two helpers of his jumped down to aid things along.

What a fine mess the fellows made! They shouted at each other, shouted at folks walking past, shouted at folks trying to get to work in the morning and preened themselves in a mirror when they saw some girls staring to watch. All this while, folks are doing all they can to ease the flow. Motorcycles honked their way through and tried getting onto the dirt stretch on one side of the road to navigate the temporary bottleneck.

Finally, after about 32 minutes of a lot of shouting and yelling and cross-fighting and air-punching, three bags of potatoes were carried off by the helpers. How do I know they were potatoes? Because in all the melee of combing their hair for the girls, they had forgotten to fasten the string around the potato-sacks. The moment they carried one sack, it flopped and fell spectacularly in the middle of the road. The three fellows, aided by the restauranteur and his four helpers scrambled after all the potatoes, leaping under cars and running after poor children who managed to secure a few for their home, and finally got the potato delivery done.

I still don’t understand why, but the driver beamed with pride at the end of the delivery and made off.

The same job a different day………and so it goes. Fascinating deliveries both.

Nobody Appreciates a Bread-Runner

‘Unencumbered’ is the word I want when I set out to run a couple of miles in the morning. I like the cloudy days the best. You know the sun is going to come blazing through in its summer glory in a few hours, but you waddle on in the slightly chill morning laughing at all those people who will be running in the sun later. Ha!

I am almost out the door. The larks are singing and the birds are rising. The sleepy mother calls out to me and I ask her why she is up early. She shakes her head in a Duty-Beckons sort of way and asks, “Where are you going to run?”

“Just around the block. Through the fields. Fresh air is the key.” I was going to expand a little on the fresh-air-for-lung concept when I saw her mind already marching past towards her sense of purpose, so I shelved it for the moment.

“How far is Walgreens? Can’t you run to Walgreens instead?”

“Why?” I think I know where this is going, feign ignorance and hope for the best.

“There is no bread in the house, can you buy a loaf and run back?” she asks.

I nodded. After all the poor lady shook herself out of sleep to ask for a loaf of b.

Now, when I run, I snorkel away from signals like an octopus from a shark, but the Walgreens route shows me no such luxury. I stop at signals and run my way through. Pant my way through is more like it. I should be fitter than I am, but anyway…. I charge into Walgreens with the speed of a rhino chasing a dog, and stop as soon as I enter for I see 3 shocked customers, 1 shocked saleslady and 1 disapproving passport photo taker, who just had his subject turn away when he clicked to see the source of the commotion. Never have I made such a splash entering the store. I try to slink into the aisles, but the disapproving stares follow me even though people have started tending their own business.

I’d like to tell you that I bought the bread and ran back, for that is what I did. But I tell you. Till you run with a loaf of bread in your hand it is very hard to appreciate bread-runners. Let’s talk about positioning for one shall we?

How do you position a loaf of bread while running?

1) The nonchalant approach:

Just clutch the bread packet by its top and run. But it dangles from left to right like a pendulum clock and you land up swaying with it. Not to mention this looks very appealing to dogs out on a walk. Try it to see what I mean.

2) The Tin soldier with one arm approach:

Then I tried to keep the arm with the b.packet dangling limply by my side, while my other hand is clenched in a runners fist. I suppose this will work, but I realize this is like being in a march past where you are only allowed to swing one arm, but keep the rhythm of the other arm in sync with the left and right feet. It feels lopsided and half hearted and the bread packet looks stung for being left out of the festivities.

3) The Marcher Approach:

So I try running like a marcher. Swing both hands freely and run. I swear Bread packets have character. Mine did not take kindly to this swaying and to-ing and fro-ing. He, I mean it, scowled at me, kept banging me on my knees and generally creating havoc.

I scowled back, for I don’t approve of scowlers much – inanimate or otherwise. But this time, he (it!) slid from my hands. So, I had to take to walking a few steps, reassuring him(it) that all was well,and then run again.

Finally I tottered into my house clutching the bread only to have a voice ask, “Why did you buy bread now? There is enough for breakfast.”

A silent howl escaped me, but a louder, grandmotherly howl overtook mine and said, “No there isn’t! I asked her to buy it.”

Thank Heavens. And the next time you see a bread-runner, please stop and salute them. They deserve it.

Famous on Facebook?

It was a wonderful day. I was going about the joyous task of collecting garbage for the garbage truck the next day. I peeked into the kitchen trash and the fresh smells of carrot peels with coffee waste swirled up. I inhaled and exhaled with a rapidity that would have had a rabbit scuttling in fright. I then went for the lint removal in the washing machine dryer and added that non-smelling lot to the kitchen waste. It gave the gooey, soggy mess some texture. I grinned with an eye of a creative person and saw that what would really seal the deal was diapers. I charged for the diaper-genie in glee. To my dismay the diaper genie’s bag had burst and well, I shall spare the reading public some horrific images of the ensuing drama, but the important thing is to keep your positivity about you. I think the diapers added a new twist to the garbage scene. I had all the garbage collected – well all the garbage in the garbage cans collected, because there is garbage hiding all over the house, but that makes for another post on another day.

I suppose artists in the olden days used to get this sense of accomplishment when they saw beauty in the most mundane things and created entire worlds out of them. I felt a little like that, Of course, it was a harder path in the olden days for gratification was far from instant. You had to wait to be unearthed and then some before you could be liked. All that has changed.

With Instagram, stories were told through pictures. The golden era of ‘Being Liked’ was taken to a higher level. Suddenly people found that pictures of their feet in the sand was as wonderful as a sailboat badly framed in the distance when at the beach. They found that pictures of themselves in various poses was very welcoming indeed. The innate altruism in people kicked in and they strived to give their friends more and more of themselves. Just to give people what they liked, they uploaded more pictures. They were all consumed by a hungering public.

What if? What if? Creative people buzzed to see what they could do. Of course the common man had to fumble along trying to see what they could do in that regard. Voila! BinCam was born.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324503204578318462215991802.html

BinCam looks just like your average trash bin, but with a twist: Its upper lid is equipped with a smartphone that snaps a photo every time the lid is shut. The photo is then uploaded to Mechanical Turk, the Amazon-run service that lets freelancers perform laborious tasks for money. In this case, they analyze the photo and decide if your recycling habits conform with the gospel of green living. Eventually, the photo appears on your Facebook page.

The artist in me needed practice, but with folks like BinCam helping me out, I am sure I shall compete with the best in the industry. We could run student competitions with scrapbooks of trash can pictures and children will soon be yearning to take out the garbage so they could compare notes.

I wonder how our garbage compares to real celebrity garbage. There can be a competition and the true winner becomes Famous on Facebook.

The possibilities are immense.

Gold (Just Gold)

When I say something that is Economic sounding, it is because I like to sound wise in these matters. But if you buy a cart of gold and dig up your home to hide it based on my advice, I would not advocate that. Just saying.

What is appealing about Gold is that supposedly the total weight of gold remains constant and will therefore retain its value regardless of currency fluctuations. Currency may come and currency may go. Dig up some coins from the Harappa civilization and try to use it in the laundromat slots and you will see what I mean. Gold, on the other hand, is not like that. Gold in the Harappan civilization was valuable and is valuable in the current world.

My alchemical knowledge being as good as my economic knowledge, I can categorically state that there is no way to manufacture Gold. I was surprised therefore, to hear that this restaurateur is trying to get us to ingest gold (I am not sure what his ultimate goal is, since what goes in comes out and all that) This restaurant sells gold-plated Dosa at an abominable price.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vLOhR5oUNgk

http://itotd.com/articles/477/edible-gold/

If he is hoping humans would spout gold in the process, I hope not. I’ve seen people with golden teeth and my reactions have been civil on the outside, while the intestines coil and uncoil rapidly sending a “FLEE RIGHT NOW!” signal. It has something to do with the odd glint in the smile that gives the sinister-shading to the whole thing. I hope that doesn’t get in fashion anytime soon.

I read this a while ago and tucked it into a corner of my brain, but when I saw another news item that linked Gold, I could not pass it up.

There is one place on Earth where you can earn your weight in Gold. Dubai has offered its residents a gram of gold for every pound lost, and I was wondering whether the restaurateur would think of going there to stock up on supplies for his Dosas.

http://theweek.com/article/index/247191/could-dubais-gold-for-pounds-weight-loss-program-work

Ah well…The World is full of shining stories if you take the care to look for them.

Childhood Heroes and Cricket

Once upon a time, about a decade ago, or more precisely a few days after our wedding, the newly wed husband of mine was chatting up my younger brother. I lolled around in the background listening to the boys taking in the sights and talking about Cricket.

“Do you remember Kapil Dev’s batting in the 1983 World Cup?” asked the husband breathless with excitement. Clearly, it was one of those turning points in his life because that was the time he remembers the transformation in his image. The time he became the go-to-guy in the extended family. Suddenly, all his young uncles and their friends could bank on the lanky, shy eight year old boy to tell them all about Cricket. He had every player’s statistics at his fingertips. He had an audience for his gospel on batting techniques and strategic fours and sixes. Through all the frenzy, one special hero emerged: Kapil Dev. Kapil Dev was the hero for an entire generation. How many times have boys fought over who can be the Kapil Dev in their roadside matches?

Life moves on, however. Memories recede to farther and farther corners of the brain and sometimes fade. Only we realize that some memories don’t fade. They simply lie there waiting to be awakened again. One such was the Kapil Dev memory. It so happened that the husband got to meet his childhood hero recently.

When he came home after meeting the Cricket legend, I asked him how the experience was and he said,
“You know? As a boy I dreamed of meeting Kapil Dev and never once did I stop to think what I would say to him if I did.” The strange thing is, the intervening years seem to have done nothing in that department. He continued, “I had all week knowing I was going to meet him and I still didn’t think about what I was going to say to him.”

A glassy look came over his eyes and he went on mute. There I was waiting to listen to the rest of whatever else happened at the tip of my chair, but there was nothing. The eager wife waiting for the hero-blessed-husband to chat was left wanting. There was silence. Well he was sipping his coffee, so the slurping noise filled the gaps but not much else. I prodded him gently by poking his ribs and yelling “HEY! ”

He “Uhhned?” and said, “It must be really hard being a celebrity. Imagine, I went there and told him it was nice to meet him, but my heart was thumping that it was nicer still to take a picture with him. That’s all most people were interested in. A picture to be posted on Facebook.”

But the husband brought up a good point. What do you say to the celebrities? They certainly inspire us to dare to dream, but what do the celebrities get out of the exchange?

The husband got this…..

The Crow Vs Grandfather Dilemma

Is your grandfather a crow?

I don’t know how many human children can answer that question unless they were sired by crows, which is rare.

Every parent, grand-parent, aunt, uncle or friend remembers some gems of baby talk from the children in their lives. I remember swelling like a balloon fish when the daughter sang her first song. I hadn’t known it then, but it was pure audacity calling it a song. It was gibberish, but precious gibberish all the same.

The daughter had trouble saying “Tha” as a baby. She seemed to think that “Ka” and “Tha” were the same. That would have been no problem at all if there was another word for grandfather in Tamil. It turns out that the Tamil word for ‘Grandfather’ has not one, but two “Tha”s. (“Thaatha“)

The child tried and tried and called him “Kaaka“. It was not an ideal replacement given that crows were inclined to respond every time and break their flight midway to answer her. (“Kaaka” means “Crow” in Tamil). So, every time, she hollered for a crow, the grandfather would answer, and the crows gradually learned to tell the difference. They had their little training programs written out that said, “If a child calls a crow when you fly over Latitude x and Longitude y, do not stop over. You are not welcome and will scare the child. Keep flying and stay productive. The resident grandfather there thinks he is a crow and will handle the situation. He responds to ‘Thaatha‘ and ‘Kaaka‘ ”

The crows and grandfathers were mutually happy with the situation, they waved to each other from afar and life chugged on.

The problem is that the training manual for the Crows has not been updated for several years now. Years passed, the child had a brother who is now stringing words together and this young man cannot say”Ka”. He can only say “Tha”.

Cars are Thars and Cows are Tows.

So, this little fellow stands in the garden and yells for a Crow (“Kaaka Kaaka!” he screams. The audience hears”Thaatha Thaatha!“) The crows fly on, while grandfathers respond.

All very confusing I tell you. Both Grandfathers and Crows need new training packets.

Grandfather or Crow (?) — Thaatha: Grandfather
Kaaka: crow

Let’s end on a bit of a tongue twisters for children, crows and grandfathers (kuttis, kaakas and thaathas) shall we?

The Thaakaa Kathai

Thaatha-ku Kaaka kathai

Kaaka-kku Thaatha kathai

Thaatha-kum Kaaka-kum Kutti kathai

Kutti-kum Kaaka-kum Thaatha kathai

Thaatha-kum Kutti-Kum Kaaka kathai

The Frog Said: PJ LOL

Humankind has to stop every now and then and take a breath to see what are the things that need to be passed down from one generation to the next. So far, story-telling seems to be the best way to make sure that essential details are passed down. Things that may be important years afterward like spiritual knowledge, or the virtues that are important. The only problem is we seem to be passing on a lot of stories, and not all of them are poised to stick for a million years. I mean marshal the facts: we have Mahabharata, Ramayana, Greek legends, Norse and Roman mythology that have been around for thousands of years. As if all this were not enough, we keep adding to the repertoire all the time: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter etc. To this ever evolving and rich lot, we must add tales of real men and women like the unfortunate noblemen who have found his fame as the greatest gobblers of all time: The Earl of Sandwich

Yet, will all this be enough to prepare us for success a million years from now? Time for me to stop, take a breath and tell you where I am going with all of this right? Well, here is a startup that is operating on the premise that people will pay to send text messages to a potentially habitable solar system that is at least 17 light years away.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/17/technology/enterprise/lone-signal/?google_editors_picks=true

I quote from the article:

The messages are being beamed to Gliese 526, a potentially habitable solar system that is relatively close to Earth.
In addition to the text messages, which can be written in any language, Lone Signal will simultaneously send a message written in binary code — the language computers use to communicate — that contains basic principles of physics. The idea is that these principles apply throughout the universe and thus are more likely to be understood by an alien than, say, a text message written in English.

Every system’s design has a few assumptions. I am glad these are called out in the news article clearly. Binary code and basic principles of Physics can apply throughout the universe.

What will we do when we receive answers from these beings? Maybe a thousand years from now. Will our children know the lore of the anonymous text message that was sent to them hundreds of years ago?

The aliens received the message, decoded them and got “PJ LOL” from the message. After years of research trying to understand its meaning and craft a reasonable response, we receive “DGKG DF@#JRJF”

Now what?

Once upon a time, a frog lived in a well…

PS: The UK government has now closed the UFO desk as well. (http://www.space.com/21671-ufo-files-alien-spacecraft-mod.html?cmpid=514630)

Chocoleg Law Enforcement

It was one of those days when I was beginning to ask myself why we have made life more complicated in an effort to make it simpler. I was just tutting and clicking my tongue when I saw this news article. This child wrote a letter to the Vice President with a possible solution to the gun control problem. He suggested making bullets of chocolate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/joe-biden-letter_n_3271533.html

How marvelous! It need not be chocolate, but it could be bullets of a different nature: a stinger rather than a killer. The bullets of the killing kind can only be obtained in limited quantity after intense background checks and so on.

If chocolate bullets work, why not Lego blocks in police chases?

Imagine this scary criminal heading out. He is prepared: his car is ready and he grabs his gun. He decides on wearing his vibrams since it ought to help him if it comes to a chase on foot. Of course, he hopes there will be no chase at all, but hopes and dreams turn out quite different from real life. This criminal is about to learn this hard truth very soon.

After the deed is done, he sees that his worst fear is coming true. The police cars are clobbering him. A hot chase later, a patrol helicopter appears on the scene and it starts raining down Lego blocks.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57572674-1/lego-spill-tangles-up-west-virginia-highway/

There is no way for the car to maneuver. What does he do? What does he do? He glances at his feet in desperation. The vibrams. That is what he must do, he has to go for a run.

The Scary criminal laughs and grabs his gun to take off on foot and what happens?

OUCH! Running on lego blocks hurt man! Ask any parent who has trod on the things at the middle of the night, and they’ll tell you. Left with nothing to do, he whips out his gun and starts shooting. For a second he is triumphant and then realizes that the gun has done nothing but spurt a fountain of chocolate.

“FATE!” he exclaims and throws down his gun as he stubs his toe on a Lego block of hideous proportions.

The criminal is caught and the watching populace cheer at the ingenuity of the operation.

Give a few minutes for a heli-based giant vacuum cleaner to suck up the lego blocks and spray water on the chocolate rivers to wash off the cars and life is beautiful once again.

Do you see any problems with using chocolates and legos for preliminary law enforcement? I quite like the idea.

The Queen Mother

The Mother’s Day gifts from the daughter are always a bit overwhelming. For days ahead, I am not allowed to step into her room or throw out any scraps of paper because they may belong to a piece of the gift she is making for me. I sigh and turn my eye at all the ensuing mess secretly enjoying all the effort that goes into the presents she showers me with.

This time, she said, I must be prepared to have the wind knocked out of me, for the gift would make me wish I was a Queen that no one would bother ever again. I really am not sure where she thinks that the most appealing thing for a Queen is not to be bothered again. I mean wouldn’t the Queen wonder why everyone is leaving her out of things? Imagine yourself to be the Queen. There is a dinner banquet downstairs and everybody arrives dressed immaculately, having wonderful conversations amongst themselves, and pile into the food without the Queen. What would the effect be on the Q’s psyche?

Anyway, I must say she got her wish. You see she made me a crown of a magenta color. Then, she went ahead and glued on large ‘precious stones’ on them. She gushed that the color would suit me splendidly and I thanked her for it. She was right – the color suited me perfectly. I blushed a matching magenta wearing that crown. Of one thing she was assured. With me in that crown, there isn’t a single soul who would think of bothering me!

I wanted to wear the crown and go down to the Supermarket to see the effect it would have on people, but I chickened out. I just couldn’t. Like all windows of opportunity, the crown window was an extremely slim one. Risk it on Mother’s Day and tug the daughter along, there was a chance people would think me as a mom in need of an intervention, but could have escaped without being marched off to the loony bin. But, I let Mother’s Day slip through my fingers. I regret it a little now. If ever there was classic blogging material, that would have been it. I must make a note of that for myself for next year.

I am waiting to see if the husband would get himself a crown to call himself a King. If he does, I will need a little bit of help getting him to wear the thing in public, but I suppose it is worth a shot for a blog entry. What do you say?

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