Category: Humour

The Queen’s Correspondent

Ten years is about the time in life when one knows the really funny stories from the better half’s past/childhood. You’ve probably met the aunts waiting to tell you about how they pinched your husband’s rosy cheeks and how he cried when he dropped the ice-cream. It is also about the time one unabashedly nudges them to regale the stories for those gathered for the after dinner storytime.

“Oh…tell them about the time you went to Darjeeling?”
“Which one? The one with the pooris or the train?”
Then you roll on the floor and say, “Both are funny. Start with the train one and if folks are upto it, we can work the poori one into tonight’s show!”
It is at this point that things start to go downhill. You know before hand when the jokes come and you guffaw before the funny spots and ensure that even semi-rotten stories get the laughs they may or may not deserve.

So, imagine my surprise that I discovered something really funny when my tenth anniversary rolled around.

Engage the Queen of England to an after dinner conversation, and I am sure she has many stories to regale. She may touch upon world politics, fame, money, charity, armies, economies, humanitarian aid, United Nations, monarchy, familial obligations, the Middletons, her grandsons and many more. I don’t know whether she is a funny narrator of stories, but I doubt she could narrate a story involving herself to such mirth and laughter as the one the love of my life did.

I am not sure whether I have described the husband’s school before – allow me a moment’s diversion while I do so. It is critical to the story. The schools is situated in Chennai, India and has the clarifying word ‘English’ in its name (Just to add that aura of sophistication.) I don’t want readers to dream up an image of the Metropolitan Chennai and come at my throats about English medium schools in Chennai. This is one of the poorer areas where any English is a bonus, and boys studying in an English school were considered elitist. The school may have ‘English’ in its name, and nowhere else.

For reasons fathomable to pre-teen boys alone, it seemed like a good idea that they should write to the Queen of England. Why not a cricketer or a movie star? Why the Queen? Nobody knows! Possibly one of the boys had a crush on Lady Diana and was too shy to admit it, and settled for her mother-in-law instead. Anyway…give my husband an idea like this and I can imagine the teenager being swept away by the notion of being the Queen’s correspondent. Apparently, his confidence was not brimming then and he decided to write to the Queen first and then brag to his friends after she wrote him back. A short story about obtaining the aerogramme (cost Rs.5 then) later; the letter was sent.

The rigour of evening kite flying and fighting with one’s brother eclipsed everything else, and the Queen was forgotten. And then it arrived. A letter bearing the royal seal of the Queen of England addressed to the boy in Thiruvottiyur Chennai. The news that he had received a letter from the Queen was discussed in hallways and Pallavan buses; on cricket grounds and roof terraces. Quite an event it must have been. I quizzed him on the contents and he said something about encouraging young talent to reach out to royalty.

A letter has the power to change a life. This letter may not have changed the course of anyone’s life; but it sure gave an ordinary boy the nerve to dream.

Which is why, I loved reading some of the letters on this site: www.lettersofnote.com (Hope on over when you have some time and some of them are perfectly delightful like this one: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/02/she-doesnt-answer-phone.html)

The Indian Twist to the Schadenfreudian Principle

I recently read a book that had Amazon’s review pages creaking and groaning. It just could not deal with all the heaps of praise and drudged along a bit moodily when you called upon the page to load. Naturally, when I started, I expected it to pull my attention given the huge fan base it had garnered. I was in for a shock. Not only did it not retain my attention, I found myself making excuses for not picking up the book. The book was dank, depressing and catered to the author’s almost pathological need to describe everything.

“He looked at his shoes. The brown leather had been cut a bit brashly along the edges, while the leather leading up to the laces were done alright; almost like the cobbler preferred the laces portion to the edges. The brown was a little too brown and on the dusty trails should have blended in, but the gathering dust on the shoes made his feet stand out. Shoes that large gathered a lot of dust.”
And on and on, he went about the dust and colours of the dust, and the patterns it made on the shoes(iff he decided not to take off on the cobbler somewhere near the lace section.) If this was his attitude toward brown shoes, he seemed to get even more excited with tragedies and dripped and dried our hearts out to dry.

Definitely not what the doctors prescribe for already depressing Januaries. I found myself moping about the house, after donating all the brown shoes I could lay my hands on, because that is what a depressing book does to me. It etches my senses down a couple of notches. It just goes to prove that one never knows what is it that people like and why. It is a known fact that humans love to watch suffering in their entertainment choices.

There is a name for it. It is called SCHADENFREUDE: enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.

It is this that Indian soap opera producers tap into to get their daily bread. Watch any Tamil (or Indian) TV serial in the evening for a healthy dose of morbid fear and tears.
Which brings me to a fundamental question. One can hardly assume that a human being can put up with this much stress, mental agony and physical pain and still take the care to line their lips perfectly with lipstick, and pin their neatly ironed sarees while waiting for the next blow to strike them. I mean when I was reading Book One, I couldn’t even bothered to get out of my pajamas. It seemed too much of an effort.

The Schadenfreudian Principle may indicate that humans enjoy looking at troubled folks, but basic human research suggests that people subconsciously like beautiful people. The result is Indian evening entertainment. These women brave the most severe emotions – raging jealousy, copious tears, vicious misdemeanours and heavy physical and emotional abuse – all the while looking like this. Never a disheveled girl would you find in all the serials of Tamilore.

Thank you Ladies!

A simple grocery list …

This article was published in The Hindu dated 6th May 2017. (The illustration for the published article was done by a cartoonist whose work I have admired for decades, Mr Keshav)

I doubt my mother-in-law would accept the job of creating logical puzzles for the toughest segment of the GMAT. She’d scoff and probably laugh. I’d say she doesn’t know her talents enough. The trick is to get her to talk and just stand by and listen. Then, off you go and replay the conversation and Voila! Riddles galore for all.

Take a task of making grocery lists:

“I am going to the store, what do you want?” The husband says as he sets out to get some milk.
“Right…there is no milk. Curd? … but we have curd. So, no need for curd okay?” she says.
“Okay….milk:yes, curd: no. Got it.” And he tries to grab the keys while the going is simple, but no luck there. She hollers from the kitchen again.

“Vegetables….get some radish pa. No raddishes at all at home, buy tomatoes also. No need for onions – I think there are 6 or 7 left.”
Another step grocery-store bound and she pipes, “Also, get pumpkins. Long since I made avial.”
“Okay…” Now, he really wants to dash out the door to sort out this list in his head, but she isn’t done yet. She has gone to peek into the refrigerator. An act that never bodes well for grocery lists’ health or refrigerators for that matter. Ever.

She exclaims loudly from the geographical location of the refrigerator.
“Ayyo….definitely, need spinach too. Poor child has not had spinach in a long time. Appppaaa….definitely no chillies. There is no much here.”

The mind in the meanwhile, is buzzing: Milk:yes, curd : no, radish: yes, onion: no, tomato: yes

“Get some coriander also….rasam just doesn’t taste the same without some fresh coriander.”
“Okay..”
“Oh….I said to buy pumpkins for avial right? Hmm…” and she switches off mid-way through the sentence. Almost like somebody hit the snooze button on her.
“Hellloooo….some one is trying to leave the door to buy groceries. Anything else?”
To which, she gets irritated. “Oh…..stop hurrying me so. I am trying to think whether I should buy a fresh pack of curry leaves or just use the dried ones.”
“Does it matter…just ask him to get it.” pipes in the father-in-law who has been pottering about acting as though he couldn’t hear a thing.

Now…remember how one talks about hitting the raw vein? Apparently, this statement hit one of hers. “Look at him talking as though he doesn’t care whether the curry leaves are dried or not? When I do make the avial with dried leaves…he will say, his sister uses fresh curry leaves when she makes avial.”
“So what? I only say that my sister uses fresh curry leaves in avial!”
“And…what does that mean? That her avial is good.”
“Of course, her avial is good!”
“And what about mine? When I do use fresh curry leaves…not a thing! When I use the dried ones, you have to talk about your sister! So now, I have to remember all the previous avial attempts and collect all his previous comments and sort out the ones he likes and the types he doesn’t and figure out on my own what he likes. Why can’t he say something simple?”

The human mind I tell you. It just doesn’t reflect on its own grocery lists.

The husband, in the meanwhile, just closed the door and settled down on the couch. Long association has told us that the avial topic is a lengthy one. He has turned on his laptop and is cackling at some you-tube video now. A trifle tactless if you ask me. When the avial topic reaches the consistency factor, it is time for all birds flying above our homes to evacuate and change flight direction immediately; not sit down on neighbouring trees and laugh like hyenas at you-tube videos.

If anything irks her more than the sisters-avial-loving-husband topic, it is the sight of the son evidently enjoying something when the grocery needs to be done.

She gathers her wits about her and says, “Oh fine….just get any vegetable. I will sort out what I want to make later.”

A loud sigh later, he leaves. She hears the ignition and charges to the door. “Kondhai! (Child!) I also need toor dal. Don’t get 4 lbs – 2 lbs will do ”
“Okay….”
“And moong yellow 1 pound.”

The husband leaves as fast as his accelerator allows him to; before something else is thrown at him. He stands there at the grocers looking confused like a puppy that just lost its way.
Milk:yes, curd: no, radish: yes, onions: yes or no? whatever. Better get some. tomatoes: definitely no, chillies: definitely yes ….coriander?
What about fruits?
And the dhals?

The man has always been credited with thinking on his feet and he places an emergency call from the store. A joke is made about how he has to call from the store every time and the instructions are repeated in pretty much the same order without the avial-curryleaf detour finishing up with the loving note, “Just get any vegetable! It is fine!”

The man comes back looking like he physically hauled a dump-truck across the continent and dumps the produce on the counter. His mother hands him a cup of coffee – you know brace his soul for what is coming.

The man sips contentedly when she asks, “Did you not get beans?”
“NO…you didn’t ask for any!”
“Yes…but I said ‘Get anything!’ I’d have thought that includes beans..”

Eureka! τατουάζ !

I don’t like needles. There have been times when I have shut my eyes so tight and balled up my fists so tightly while having my blood drawn for medical purposes, that nurses have gently drawn my eyelids apart some minutes later, telling me they finished with me some time ago in case I hadn’t noticed. One even said, she finished and was just watching me to see how long I’d sit like that. Well…I am always willing to give people their moments of fun! Those are the good nurses.

I’ve had ones that had me screaming in pain, only to be given the stern look and asked truthfully whether that really hurt that much. To which, I have to gulp a good-ish bit, put on my best school-girl-innocent-still look and bleat about hating needles.

So, you can imagine my horror when I read this news item.
http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/06/10009107-penis-tattoo-gives-guy-permanent-erection

Every one has their ‘Aaha’ moments. And not all of them have them while bathing naked in a tub. Thank heavens for that. I am not sure that what the world needs is a bunch of naked men and women running on the streets shouting ‘Eureka’ in any language that appeals to them. Having said that, I would like to know what gives some people their ideas.

Take this man for example: Not only did he have his penis tattooed, he had it tattooed with the first letter of his girlfriend’s last name. Bizarre as this sentence sounds and definitely not one I’d ever envisioned myself writing on my blog; but the world is a strange place and the best stories are not those of fiction.

Back to the penis story, I want to know why he chose the first letter of his girlfriend’s last name. I mean why not the first letter of her name? Did he think he was going to refer to her Ms.Madhatterson or Ms.Mc.Fearsome for all his love life?

“Oh my lovely Ms.Goodmundsen! ” or

“Don’t cry – I love you so Ms.Maudlin!”

The story ends on a note that doctors discourage penile tattooing lest this man trumps up some followers.

Brisk Get-to-work January

The first month of 2012 is here. You see, if corporate America has a fault, it is that in their minds a lax December or a holiday season should be followed by a brisk getting to work January. Only, the holiday season in all my experience has never been lax. There are two things that contribute to this:

1) People take vacations during the holiday season. You know how tempting it is – the Christmas holidays combined with the New Years and all of that. Which leaves the folks who do not take a vacation during that time to bear the brunt of the workload.
2) Despite all the “Ho Ho Ho”s of the Office parties, this is definitely the point when the year is running out. All the grandiose plans suggested when the New Year had rolled around suddenly becomes important. Folks are milking the remaining ones in the office to cut the slack and buck up to completing as many goals as possible, while tucking into the chocolates.

So, that takes care of the holiday season. Now the day New Year rolls around, there is this pressure around you to undertake slightly unachievable targets. The idea being that if you achieve them, then your goals were too simple (Duh!) and this allows one to stretch one’s limits. In the euphoria of the New Year, we gullibly do so. (What gets pushed out month after month can be dealt with in December with by those who don’t take vacation!) Not only that, we add on personal goals of our own too, and if one of them involves compensating for the extra calories that you ate while achieving the year end goals of the previous year, luck be to you.

2012 rolled in like a stern taskmaster and rapped everybody on the knuckles. In fact, this is the image doing the rounds ….happy working everyone.

hitman monkey
Hitman monkey has no joy!

Zero email policy!

I suppose it is an occupational hazard of being in the echelons of upper management. Let a flowing river flow and pretty soon people start questioning why you are there, if the river is flowing perfectly well by itself. Put up too many dams and you have environmental groups shouting that their dearest wish is to see you drown in those very dam’s waters. So, what is a person supposed to do? I’ve noticed that anyone who comes in sees an immediate need to do something.

Give a child some clay and he will blend and mould the clay into flowers, or worms. Give him some building blocks and he will build something. Give him people and he will re-organize. There is a sort of dull resignation to these re-organizations that come over the ages.

But, this is new.

http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=946724522&ids=0Vc3oSd3oSd3AId3kRdP8Od3gVb38Sej0PdPsPeiMOczkQczsSd3AIcPARdj8Od3gV&aag=true&freq=weekly&trk=eml-tod2-b-ttl-1&ut=3MAoDOEErfnR01

This company decided the change is not in making Paul report to Tom instead of Harry, but to make Paul, Tom and Harry stop emailing each other. Email can be a waste of time, but it isn’t without its advantages. Any day, give me email over SMS and pagers. I mistakenly thought that what these visionaries were going for was increased efficiency because of the barrage of emails throttling their system. Turns out I was wrong. I quote:

That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.

I don’t understand how this is supposed to work, but isn’t this a bit like saying “I will throw the wood chunks in the river, and you stand along and fish for those that have an interest to you.” Some days, you can stand fishing or wooding all day and come up empty, so, you decide that enough is enough and get down to do some work, when the crate of wood meant for you flowed down the message river, leaving you looking pretty stupid.

There is this though. One can always rely on the echelons to give us musing material.

Art & Science of Idli Making: Foreword By Shri. Kapil Sibal Ji

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/india-asks-google-facebook-others-to-screen-user-content/

When I read articles such as this, I have a lump in my throat. Such altruistic cabinet ministers we have. They spend all their lives just giving and giving. In the article, Kapil Sibal (acting Information Minister in the Govt of India) summons representatives from Facebook, Google and Microsoft and asks them to use humans to scan and approve content before it is posted.

“In the second meeting with the same executives in late November, Mr. Sibal told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not technology, the executive said.”

I don’t blame him. Kapil Sibal is auto corrected to Kapil Sins. Now, we all know acting cabinet ministers don’t sin. They don’t even ask anything for themselves – all they ask for is increased employment. In a country of a little over a billion people, why can’t Facebook/Google/Microsoft employ all of them to scan all the content being generated by the World Wide Web and approve only what is not objectionable?

Since people are touchy on the topics of religion and caste, let us take the case of idli batter for this exercise. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idli)
Case : You are a staunch believer of the theory that idli batter needs eight hours to ferment and thereafter needs 7 minutes of steaming on cloth for the best results. Your idlis have been proclaimed to be the best in the country by admiring neighbours, nephews and nieces. Rose petals have gone away scrubbing moisturizer on themselves because they feel hard in comparison. You have spent a good 56 years and 3 months making and giving idlis. Therefore, you are deemed the idli expert and given the daily idli content of the web to review, correct and approve.

The first one is by a girl who calls herself “Dimmi” (“The name you give a dog!”, you think disparagingly and her name has already set her back in the idli content quality in your mind.) To make matters worse, Dimmi says it is best to use a mixie and ferment for 6 hours leaving the oven light on.
The lips purse a bit. Does everybody have an oven? Lips pursed, you continue.
Then, take the batter and make idlis she says.
The pursed lips purse a little further and the need to correct the procedure is overwhelming.
Use a pressure cooker for best results she says and has photos of the whole process!
There being no more space for pursing the lips, and no opportunity to meet Dimmi to correct the procedure by lovingly showing her how best to make idlis, you think it preferable to not allow these dubious idli recipes on the web. “Best if I write something on the best method to make idlis”, you say to yourself. But after reviewing the 67000 pages of idli content, you are tired and the 6000 that did pass your stringent standards were still not up to the mark. Yet, they would have to do.

One day, you would write a whole book on the Art & Science of Idli Making, and the foreword would be written by none other than Shri. Kapil Sibal Ji. Till then, all the youngsters can continue using the sub-standard idli recipes. It makes Dimmi want to try harder….

Sigh…..

The One-way Parrot-xysm

I still remember the time aunts shouted into telephones while talking to people far away, as if they needed to magnify their voices to be heard. It is often the other way around – you need raised voices while addressing someone right next to you because they are busy with their laptops, notebooks, phones, tablets or ipods. But for as long as I can remember, the telephone signalled two way communication. All that changed for me last week.

I could savagely bray the Kolaveri song without fear of retribution the same way that monstrosity was dumped on the unsuspecting public. The song has poets either turning in their graves or else yearning to rush into one as soon as possible. When one does something, it is only basic human courtesy to see the effect it would have on people, is it not? I digress, but really? Kolaveri?!

Anyway…I had been for a walk stopping to gaze at parrots and dogs when the phone rang. The tendency to talk has been a congenital disorder: I realised somewhere around the 22nd sentence of the phone call that I could not hear the other person. I hallo-hallo-hallo-ed for a bit and seeing a parrot look down with disdain at me shelved the attempt at parroting. I hung up and tried calling another friend. Same thing: I could talk, they could hear, but could not respond. Ha!

The husband suggested that maybe I was married to the phone. (“The wife could say what she wanted and assumed the husband listened, and not expect any nonsense by way of back-talk”) I gave him a frosty look that the comment was totally unappreciated, but it was wasted on the man who was thumping himself on the brilliance of his own joke (I know!)

But even I can’t deny the possibilities this opened up. I could call telemarketeers and give them a sample of their own medicine. I could call the husband and pile on chores that he wouldn’t touch with a barge-pole otherwise. Then I could accost him for not doing it, squashing the argument that he never agreed to do it, because guess who did not hear that he refused?

I did none of that. I am a loving wife and I also needed him to take my dear phone to the store near his office.

Anyway, the long and short of it was that I was able to go my way telling people what I thought, and my communication felt like living in the age of fancy telegrams. I was never much of an SMS person, but the phone had me spilling my guts on SMS. A number of intentions were miscommunicated with the helpful hand of auto-correct. (Auto-correct is begging a separate post from me – shall get to it one day)

I am sorry to say my phone no longer does that. It has been fixed. Two way communication has been established, but I can’t deny that I enjoyed the one-sided deal for a while.

Babyhood & Titanic Fusion

About once a year, when the holiday season rolls in, I get to see my Prince Charming as he looked on the night before his wedding. The way my father imagined a son-in-law to go to work everyday. He places a frantic call to me asking if I can dust up the old suit, since the holiday party dress code says it is formal. He swirls the word ‘formal’ around his tongue like it is something unpleasant. But I look forward with glee. I love to see people dressed in coats and suits – a lifetime of seeing all the authority figures in my life and school dressed that way no doubt, but I love the crispness of it. I love the way, it slaps your shoulders out of that slouching position and the shoulder pads make one looks like a gladiator in charge of his arena as you stride through.

So, once a year he gets out his suit, gets me to make the tie for him, and off we go – he resolving to lose weight as the pants remind him of a slightly expanding waistline, and me looking proud, happy and thankful that Women’s clothes are more forgiving when it comes to waists.

This year, the party was aboard a ship. I can’t tell you how romantic the notion was. Well…it was filled with folks from his office – that isn’t the romantic part, I mean…the notion of being aboard a ship finely dressed like the adventurers of yore. That is.

After a while of smiling my way through a banquet filled with things that moved till a few moments ago; we decided to take a walk to the hull. We stood there for a few minutes gulping in the skyline of the distant city, when I heard my man don a dreamy look.

How does one hear a dreamy look? Well…the husband likes to clarify these things with sound acoustics and switched on a look that in others would have had me asking if they needed a eye-check-up, but I refrained, because he had also started using his falsetto to hum a tune.

He had a Leonardo DiCaprio-ish air about him. I think he was thinking of spreading his arms, but was hesitating.

He was humming a  tune ‘Ta-na-nan-ta-na-nan-ta-na-na-na-do-da-ta-tan’. I scanned  the horizon for a running giraffe, and found nothing but a bay ahead of me. I looked at him quizzically to which the maestro said,

“Titanic…duh!” Confidence was clearly not one of his problems.
I looked at the poor fish with pitiful eyes and clarified
“No…that is the Baby Einstein tune for a giraffe running in the Savannah!”

Babyhood has finally got him. I told him it was futile to resist.

Gold @ End of the Rainbow

I love my cell-phone, but do not want to tell it that. You know…keep it in its place, before it gets ahead of itself and starts interfering with my life more than normal kind of thing. So, I bemoaned the constant need for the cellphone that fell on deaf ears because the husband was on the cell-phone and I went out for a walk with the infant. Just the stroller, baby and I.

The day was beautiful. The temperature was just right, the rain-bearing clouds had parted just enough for some sun rays to peep through, and put some rainbows our way. A few birds were tapped on their shoulders to cheep and the snails were up and about. All in all magical.

I passed a corn field and I stopped. The clouds were still gathered rather low over the fields and the farmer, being a hard-working sort of bloke, had started harvesting in a haphazard manner. He had just cut a path out in between some pretty tall corn plants. The rain had done its bit of good work and left a muddy, sloshy trail. Just looking at that made the heart come down a notch. The gloomy clouds, the muddy slippery path that one has to walk through…. But ….behind the fields, the hills provide a backdrop. The hills were flooded with sunshine – the golden beautiful kind of light that comes at dusk. I was admiring the whole ‘dark-difficult-path-leads-to-light-later’ thing and reached for my cell-phone. The picture was perfect. I didn’t have it on me. I tried cooing to my baby, but he had taken in the beauty of the thing and fallen asleep.

The need to expunge this profundity engulfed me and I found the first man walking – a wizened old Mexican man, who, I am pretty sure did not understand what I was saying. I got cracking.

“You see the symbolism of the whole thing?”
“Si…Si”
“A hard path, sometimes hard to navigate, but at the end of the road, beautiful sunshine just waiting to shed its light on you.”
“Si…Si.” Smile.
“Lovely huh?”
“Si…Si”. That is what I was telling him. “See..See” and he kept repeating it back to me. “No..no..you see…”

Seeing this was going nowhere, I smiled once more and passed from his life only to come back into it a mile later as I stood mesmerized by a beautiful rainbow. The whole arch – perfect colours and bent right over the neighboring houses. Picture perfect was putting it mildly and of course I did not have the cell phone on me. Damn!
“See the rainbow?”
“Si…Si…”
Now, I had to stop and see this Si-man and saw a tiny hint of gold glinting through his side teeth. In that evening light when everything looked magical, the golden tooth looked sinister. Was this what people meant when they said you would find gold at the end of a rainbow?

Raindrops came on without warning and the Si-man and I parted ways. Me ,running helter skelter with a baby sleeping peacefully in the stroller, and he, making a mental note to take another road next time. I passed the corn field and the whole outlook was gloomy – I saw that I had not the time to make it home without soaking the infant, and found refuge in a friend’s home nearby. Counting my blessings as I sipped gratefully at her tea.

I loved the spontaneity of the evening, but may just carry my cell-phone next time.