FUN DOCTOR

THE ADS MADMEN

2012-08-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

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 "Mummy..." 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 eco-friendly 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.
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HEADHUNTERS ON PROWL

2012-05-23T00:07:00.000-07:00

The job looked tailor-made for him. He had all the qualifications demanded by the advertiser : a kink in the head, a fulminating gastritis and the willingness to sire a brood of brats. He couldn’t be blamed for his naiveté. For the ad that he saw read, ‘We are looking out for lunatics with fire in their belly to father the next generation of silicon chimps(sic).’

In a booming job market, the head-hunters are out in the IT jungle laying booby traps for tech-kids through crafty ad campaigns. And the phrasings in their transcript are getting dottier by the day.

Most of the ads are clever mumbo-jumbo, like the one that says, ‘We are looking hard for hardworking hardcore software professionals.’ (A real hard sell indeed. So drive a hard bargain to get paid in hard currency!).Or the one that declares, ‘We are shifting into top gear. Now we are looking for an accelerator.’(Once you are in their ‘clutches’, you will be looking for the brakes). Then there is an ad that yells, We invite IT pundits to software Mecca.’ ( Silly me, I thought pundits went to Kashi).

‘If you have aptitude, we will give you altitude.’ claims an ad. But read between the ad lines. What probably remains unsaid is that the magnitude of the task may drive you into servitude with not much latitude to show your fortitude as they only expect your gratitude in plenitude!

In the copywriter's lexicon the acronyms IT and US are natural bedfellows since IT professionals often head for the US. So the ad says, ‘If you got what IT takes, come and make IT big with US. Or, ‘If you have the ITch, let US help you start from scratch.’

All companies promise upward mobility as in case of an ad that proclaims, ‘On the career road we provide, overtaking is permitted. In fact we encourage you to break all rules.’ (And cool your heels in the cooler). Another smart ad asserts, ‘Most companies offer corporate ladders. But we provide you with long legs to climb it.’ (And after you join them, they keep clipping at your legs till you have no legs to stand on). But one that tickled me pink was an ad that boasted, ‘Behind every second call(?) made in this world, there is our technology.’ Pioneers in e-toilets, eh?

In any case, the writing is on the web (sorry, the wall is a passé); a crazy world lusts for crazy captions. So don’t wince at an ad that screams, ‘Wanted savage matadors to take the IT bull by the horns.’ Or, ‘Come, let’s mug the computer bug before it gets snug in the rug.’ Or even a, ‘If you fit the Bill, Gate(s)-crash and enter through new Windows!!

HISS MASTERLY PSHEEEEW!!

2012-01-31T00:23:00.000-08:00

Lying in the dark, I forced my breath through pouted lips. All I could produce was a dull ‘phooh’. I blew again. And again. Phew! I nearly got it, but not quite. During my sixteenth vain attempt I was struck by a cruel object and I cried in anguish. When the lights came on, I saw my elder brother, a cane in hand raring to smite again.

"I thought I heard a snake hiss,” he said apologetically. “I was merely brushing up my whistling skills,” I howled amid sobs. He consoled me with a promise to teach me the ropes of whistling.

As a kid, learning to whistle was one of my unfulfilled dreams. Therefore, when my brother taught me to whistle through the lips, I began showing off to all and sundry, giving unsolicited solo whistling concerts gratis. I even whistled ‘bhajans’ at family prayers. I was mostly off-key and at best I sounded like a whistling kettle. Nevertheless, for the first time in my life, I felt like a man. But not a 'complete man' that a present-day suiting ad exhorts every man to be.

For, in my opinion, whistling through the fingers (under the tongue) was the hallmark of a 'maestro' and my repertoire lacked such a faculty. Besides, it was the possession of this art form at their fingertips which gave the tough cookies watching the roadside acrobatics or the tumultuous mobs at the town hall recitals their rightful place in the sun,

Therefore, I wrung my hands at my inability to emulate those worthies who whistled merrily through their fingers. After a bit of cajoling, my brother helped me fill this glaring flaw in my character.

My whistling ‘Arangetram’ came when I went to see one or those black and white South Indian films in which the actors fought most of the time and mouthed a few lines between the bouts to get their breath back. During each outbreak of fighting I whistled through my fingers with wild abandon out-whistling all my co-revelers in the eight-anna seats. During the interval, a bloke with a shock of oily hair who sat next to me, himself a great exponent of whistling wizardry, paid rich tributes to the resonance of my whistle, predicting me a place in the "Whistler’s Hall of Fame." I hung on his lips as he offered a few tips on improving the pitch. “Keep it up” he said patting me on the back. And he gave me a toffee. It was a toffee that I never ate. For I kept it as a trophy for a long time after my 'resounding' triumph.

WORSHIP AT GUNPOINT

2011-12-08T00:54:00.000-08:00

Come festival season the Bangalore city’s devout Hindus embark on their favourite pastime : priest-hunting. Driven by piety and the yearning to devour laddos, chaklies and other goodies that come with each festival, their eyes scout around for that elusive owner of the tonsured head with a central tuft - the priest aka the pandit. Soon they find out that the pandit is more endangered a species than the Giant Pandas. And, therefore, once the ‘hunters’ buttonhole a priest, they stick to him like glue. But, in a seller's market, the spiritual salvation as dispensed by the priest comes at a heavy price.

For one thing, the quintessential priest is a man in a tearing hurry. He may start well with the chant ‘Vakratunda Mahakaya’, but somewhere down the line the chants turn into a stream of mumbo jumbo that sounds like a 33 rpm gramophone record being played at 78 rpm. As the mantras flutter out of his lips like bat out a barn, the trans-inducing rhythm and lilt puts you into a hypnotic slumber. And when you come out of the spell, you find that the priest has wound up his paraphernalia and decamped with your two-thousand-rupees dakshina(remuneration) en route to a satyanarayana pooja elsewhere in the city.

A priest I know, who only performs Vaikunta Samaradhanam - a sort of vaikuntologist - has a streak of travel agent in him. For, his vaikunta package deals consist of Elite Class(150K), Regular(100K) and Economy(50K). That gives one the impression that the passage to the heavenly abode is some kind of an air travel. And, possibly, the souls would end up in condominiums or apartments or slums depending on the package chosen.

A priest's remuneration (read dakshina) is something that is etched in (saligramam)stone. Anyone who dares to underpay him would face ‘bovine’ retribution as one my friends found out to his utter dismay, when he paid his priest 20% less than what was demanded. During the next Ganesh Chaturthi, he lit the homa fire with wet cow dung cakes and the resultant smoke was so thick that for weeks my friend's eyes burned and remained red. And he found the hard way that hell hath no fury like a priest underpaid!

Then why is that the urban priest carries on without getting the pink slip from his employers? Well, like any shrewd businessman, he too has an ace up his sleeve. He peppers his chanting with generous interludes of humorous sermons. “We call a housewife a Grihalakshmi and then go home and beat the same Lakshmi,” he would say, sending the womenfolk into peals of laughter. The homemakers love the priest so much that the mere talk of sacking him would bring out their knives and rolling pins in his defence. And with the additional threat of wet cow dung smoke looming large, all that the men can do is to twiddle their thumbs and hope for the best.

A PLATEFUL OF CARROTS

2011-09-30T07:14:00.000-07:00

The city's vegetarian restaurants are truly in the soup; not one of those 'two-handed' restaurants where you eat with one hand while holding your nose with the other and where cockroaches always enjoy pride of place. Nor the upscale eat-now-pay-waiter joints where waiters think that money grows on trays. My allusion is to the decent middle class haunts where the snacks have become so small that you start laughing and prices so high that you start crying, turning the eateries into 'whine and dine' centres.

With restaurants battling inflationary pressures, one can expect, for instance, the idli to deflate to the size of a paracetamol tablet; you pop it in and wash it down with water. And with their meal tickets coming under threat, the restaurant owners are leaving no (grinding) stone unturned to strike a balance between the size of snacks and the price line. For this, they are purportedly using an ingenious equation : Size x Price ÷ Improvise = Monetize.

To give the clients wider choice, WYPIWYG - What You Pay(for) Is What You Get - system may be introduced. Consequently, the restaurant menu cards may come to resemble car sales brochures that show the price of the basic model and then go higher up to GL, LX, AX etc, depending on the value addition. So, you may find on the menu something like this : Masala Dosa OS(Onion-only Stuffing)..Rs 20. Masala Dosa OP(Onion-Potato)..Rs 30. Masala Dosa FL(Fully Loaded)..Rs 50. Besides snacks, ‘watered-down’ versions of coffee/tea will spice up the menu.

Walls of the eateries may be plastered with sign boards that offer discount incentives. A poster may say, ‘50% off on all yesterday’s leftovers.’ Or, ‘Avail Upma Family Pack (ten portions for price of eight)’ Or, ‘Eat premium idlis–Idli Plus(30% extra - hurry, limited period offer).’ Besides, a 'Frequent Eater Scheme' too is on the anvil. By this, you earn one point for every ten rupees spent (fractions ignored).You can exchange 10 points for a free plate of idlis or upma or a vada. 50 points will fetch you a free masala dosa FL(fully loaded).

In days of yore, some of the finest citizens of the land were forced to grind dosa batter or wash dishes when they failed to square up after a square meal. Drawing heavily form this concept, our beleaguered restaurateurs might cook up new schemes to lure in the clientele. Under this, you get gift coupons for, say, cleaning your table and washing your dishes. Or, by choosing the roll-and-fry-your-own-chapatis plan. The coupons may be used during future visits to the restaurant (conditions apply).

Be that as it may, I know of one restaurateur who neither decreased the size nor increased the price of his medu vadas. He merely kept on increasing the size of the vada's hole!
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THE TAXING TAXI

2011-09-26T23:57:00.000-07:00

As we rode with 13 passengers aboard a shared tourist taxi, the flashing headlights of an oncoming cab prompted the 'downloading' of half a dozen inmates of our cab who started walking ahead briskly. The mystery surrounding this abrupt desertion of the clientele was unravelled when, a kilometer later, a poker-faced cop poked his head into our cab and took a census of its human cargo. The cop's head receded, once the head's owner found that our cab was not ‘overpopulated’ and we were let off. The return of ‘walkmen’ a short distance down the road, rang down the curtain on “Operation ‘Con’stable.”

The driver of the taxicab who conducted this 'packed tour' could aptly be called the loadstar of his tribe. For, he loaded the back seat with eight passengers, both weighty(like me) and skinny ones, in the ratio of 3:5. Then he ‘uploaded’ five more into the front seat. One of the ‘forwards’, a midget, sat on the driver’s lap as he (the driver) drove the cab peering over the midget’s head.

A casual observer, taking a peek into the cab would have mistaken me for a hapless raider who got pinned down by a heap of bodies in a kabaddi match. Or, for a pickpocket nabbed by a vigilante squad being taken to the police station after a sound thrashing. But I was beginning see me as a stick of sugar cane passing through a crusher. Even the sardines would have had a hearty laugh at our ‘packed House.’

But the taxi ordeal didn't dampen the spirits of the cab mob who - most of them regulars - chatted gaily and pulled each other’s leg (figuratively, of course). Mr. Squarejaw joked that the clean-shaven men who tried to catch a bus, grew long beards waiting for one. “I once waited for the bus to go to my nephew's wedding,” chipped in Mr. Moonface. “And, I reached so late that the cradling ceremony of his child was in progress!” Yet, amidst the ongoing revelry, I kept a staunch silence. For, in a cab that was chock-a-block with twisted bodies, my lips nearly touched my neighbour's ear.

Instead of peace reigning supreme at the end of an hour-long journey, there was bedlam. For, just as we were about to alight, a cop confronted us. This time it was a gigantic cop with a handlebar moustache and bloodshot eyes. He looked like a hybrid between a gorilla and an elephant : a Goriphant. Apparently, he was lying in ambush after a tip-off from the poker-faced cop who accosted us earlier. As he glared at the battalion inside the cab, his bloodshot eyes grew ‘bloodshoter’.

At the time of going to press, the ‘Goriphant’ was throwing the book - nay, the library - at the cab driver. Or was he hammering out an ‘out-of-court settlement?’ I couldn’t say.
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LOCK, SHOCK AND BABBLE

2011-09-22T01:44:00.000-07:00

I have 'bowed my head' to a galaxy of barbers in my lifetime but I am yet come across one who, like the Trappist monks, observes a vow of silence.The phrase ' silent barber ' is in itself an oxymoron. The quintessential barber is a multi-tasker; while his scissors snip, he plays the talk show host. Unless, of course, he is a practitioner of 'Oil Pulling' in which case he gargles a mouthful of oil all the time making it difficult for him to babble. Or, maybe, when his doctor placed a thermometer in his mouth and forgot to take it out.When it comes to his chatter, your friendly neighbourhood barber always finds the ' flavour of the day ', something around which his chat is built. Last Sunday, when I visited my barber, he was developing on the theme of 'the statewide bundh'. His invigorating account on the subject included a scholarly discourse on '5 Ways To find food during bundh.'

Unlike other professionals, especially the lawyers, a barber is quite lucid in his expressions. He is the only professional whose conversation you can follow, even though he talks over your head! When he holds court, a barber's peppy gushings can be a delight for the grandstand. The absolute depth of his erudition can make Wikipedia sound like pulp. And there is more.

At a barber's salon, stormy workshops are conducted at which red-hot national and international issues are analyzed threadbare. A keynote address by the barber sets in motion the brainstorming plenary sessions on topics ranging from LPG gas leaks to Wikileaks. It is at a barber's lounge that you can gauge the mood of the society you live in; whether the society is in a jolly mood or if there is a furrow of anxiety on the society's brow. It is here that many journos get their scoop.

Present day Gen Y 'hairstylists' have taken the multitasking to a new level. These colts watch the TV (that is kept for the benefit of waiting clientele) while they cut the (h)air. Add this to the customary banter and you get the proverbial powder keg. And if you happen to be on one such barber's chair, you get into 'shear' panic. What if the bloke pokes your eye with the scissors or shaves off your eyebrow? So you think of the old adage that the hair on your head is worth two in the barber's brush.Consequently, you try to divert him into a chat on, say, Rajinikanth's "Enthiran The Robot" before he starts acting like one. Or else, yours could end up being a case of ' hair today and gone tomorrow '.

Finally, there is one question that has always confounded me: When one barber cuts another barber's hair, which one does all the talking?

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RUSH-HOUR DENTISTS

2011-09-20T00:10:00.000-07:00

Do you know that most of our city motorists have become 'dentists'? Now, do not get me wrong; when I say dentist, I am not referring to the magician who puts metal into your mouth, and pulls coins out of your pocket. I am alluding to the breed of motorist who strikes his metal against yours by acci-'dent' causing physical depression on your car's body and mental depression to you. Show me a vehicle free from dents and I will show you one that hardly ventured out.

At fault are motorists like Mr. Toofan singh who reminds one of a bull in a bullring. To him, the red light at the traffic signal acts like a red rag to a bull. So, like the bull, he scrapes his right 'hoof'’ on the accelerator, snorts ominously(at the tail-pipe) and charges ahead in a cloud of smoke forcing other commuters to scurry for cover.

In a city where roads are treated like Formula One tracks, motorists have evolved their own set of traffic rules. For instance, their traffic manual exhorts them to overtake a) when there is heavy oncoming traffic, b) on blind bends, c) at intersections and d) in the middle of city centre. Their battle cry: Never allow more that two inches between your vehicle and one that you are passing; just one inch in the case of bicycles or pedestrians.

If you are a pedestrian, it is an asset if you can, like an owl, turn your head 360 degrees. It also helps if you expect an anxious driver to step on his accelerator confusing it for the brakes. Ultimately, you get a bit paranoid about being on the 'hit list' of all the motorists when you cross the road. And you begin to believe that people on the opposite footpath are the ones who were born there.

During the rush hour, the only way you can change lane is by buying the car driving next to you! And the traffic jams are so protracted that you can get out of the car and play cards on the roof of the car. And what’s more, should you get a flat tyre, you can change the tyre without losing your place in the line. In the end, you go to wherever other cars take you!

Fade out 2011 and fade in 2015.You sign up for a driving course at a reputed motor driving school. They provide a training track that, besides potholes, has Cows, goats, dogs and pedestrians roaming freely. Auto-rickshaws or bicycles that materialize from nowhere keep you on the edge of your seat. Specially trained road-rage artistes hone your fighting/shouting skills. By the time you graduate, you become such a careful driver that you honk your horn even when you go through a red light!
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CAWBOYS AT CROWBARS

2011-09-12T02:29:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-06-28T05:41:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2011-04-13T22:43:00.000-07:00

(Continued from last post 'Impish Angels'...)

A boy is, of all the wild beasts, most difficult to manage. I remember seeing a six-year-old boy on the ferry from Dover to Ostend who was nothing less than 'devil incarnate'. He went about the business of mischief with gay abandon and by the time we reached Ostend, he had broken three chairs, dislodged one elderly couple from their seats, beat up a few children and was shooed out of the engine room thrice for trespassing. The parents of the 'devil' could not be blamed because they had tacitly forewarned the public by cladding the boy in a T-shirt with the quote ' HERE COMES TROUBLE '. As someone said, there are only two classes of travel: 1. First Class 2. With Children.

When children join together to play, the proceedings usually start smoothly. But as the minutes tick away, the events degenerate into a pandemonium and soon enough the game begins to look more like the rugby game between thugs and wrestlers. And that is what I saw when some of my nephews and nieces played 'the thief and the police'. One of my nephews, the six-year-old Paddy whom I called 'Paddy the Peril' played the thief and all the rest were members of the constabulary. And by the time the law caught up with the 'thief' who was taken to the 'police station', the relationships between the participants had soured to such a extent that Paddy walloped the police black and blue. It was to become the first instance of custodial atrocity perpetrated by an under-trial on the police!

A thing that can certainly said in favour of kids is that 90 per cent of the truth told in this world come from them, often with grave after-effects. As in case of a boy who was once asked by his parents not to talk anything about a guest's ears. But when the guest arrived, the first thing the boy said was, "Dad you asked me not to talk about uncle's ears, but he has no ears at all." And the parents did not know where to hide their faces.

'Child is the father of man'; so goes the old saying. The modern day children are certainly the fathers of all men. I realised this when I overheard an eight-year-old tell his friend, "You know, Timmy, yesterday I asked dad about where the children come from. Believe it or not, he told me that the storks brought them. I just wanted to test his knowledge and he turned out to be such a dud."

Surely, a bundle of innocence, these present day children are. Aren't they?

IMPISH ANGELS

2011-01-29T04:23:00.000-08:00

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

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

The day the child starts walking with short steps, the parents begin their long crawl. What the child psychologists glibly call 'the learning process' is nothing more than breaking of glasses and dis mantling of your gadgets. 'Let's put the buying the washing machine and vacuum cleaner until after the children grow up' is the common refrain heard in households with children. As mischief comes as second nature to children, one needs to watch them with hawk's eyes. For, when children seem to be doing nothing, they are up to some mischief. With the curiosity mingled with sharp investigative sense (that can make James Bond look like an amateur), children can ferret out most craftily hidden objects with ease. You might have stashed away some eatables in a secure corner as a reserve stock, just in case some guests pop in, but your larder is emptied in no time and you meet the visitors with red faces being unable to offer them snacks.

Soon, you realize that all your university degrees are of no use when it comes to attending to simple tasks such as consoling a crying baby or taking your children to the dentist. Your son refuses to be taken to the barber until his hair grows to such an extent that he begins to resemble a chrysanthemum!

(To be continued in the next post 'Imps Go Wild')

HAND ON THE PULSE

2011-01-11T03:02:00.000-08:00

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

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

When it comes to ingenuity in feeling the customer's pulse, the auto-rickshaw driver in Bangalore takes the cake. As you board into his contraption mentioning your destination, he switches on the auto-meter as well as his 'pulse meter'.
Firstly, he would gauge you from head to toe ( as though you were something the cat brought in) looking for any bangalorean features in you. Then, having started the vehicle, he would take a wrong turn at the first opportunity. If you fail to detect the mistake, he would engage you in some idle chat to ascertain your antecedents. Once he is convinced that you are new to the town, he would take you on a sight-seeing tour of Bangalore. And by the time you alight, you might find the need to visit an ATM to pay his fare.

This happened to a friend of mine on his maiden visit to Bangalore. After reaching the hotel in an auto-rickshaw ( after traveling 8-10 miles), he took a room on the top floor of the lodging. Then, having freshened himself up, he ambled on to the balcony of the room and gazed down at the panoramic view of the city. But a certain spot 200 yards away from the hotel looked familiar to him. Then it occurred to him that the said spot was the bus-stop where he had alighted before catching the rickshaw!

While dwelling on the topic of pulse, I may as well add a postscript. 'Enumerate and describe different kinds of pulses' was a question that was asked at an exam in a medical school. A particular student was at a loss to answer as he was totally ignorant of the subject. But he was not the one to take challenges lying down. He neatly answered as follows:

There are mainly three types of pulses -

1. Pulses eaten by humans - e.g. beans, lentils peas etc.
2. Pulses used as animal fodder - e.g. horse gram.
3. Impulses - Imported Pulses.

Well, on an impulse, let me call it a day ( or night depending on when you read this).

FINGER ON THE PULSE

2011-01-11T01:38:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

HURRICANE SOPHIE

2010-11-30T04:17:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

And hurricane she certainly proved to be. For, Sophie, like the stars of Bollywood, worked in eight shifts (of 45 minutes each), flitting from house to house. Her modus operandi was simple: she worked at a blistering pace. Her act of sweeping the floor, for instance, reminded us of splendid hockey wizardry displayed by topnotch star players in their heyday. Wielding the broom-stick, she moved on nimble feet dribbling a few select bits of litter from room to room and hit spectacular 'goals' through the backdoor. And the dishes were washed before you could say 'Dish...um'. She washed the clothes using an ingenious technique called 'Drench-n-dry'.

The faux pas led us to a classic catch-22 situation: we could sack Sophie and cough up the hefty severance pay or suffer in silence. We took refuge in the latter option, if you could call it an option. In exasperation we tore our collective hair out and did everything else one did in such situation except the bungee jumping!

At this juncture, a distant glimmer of light shone through the mist of gloom. A strange quirk of fate catapulted Sophie into a candidacy for the ensuing municipal elections. A win at the hustings, we hoped, would make Sophie quit the job on her own. Sensing a golden opportunity, we threw ourselves into the election campaign in favour of Sophie. We went from door to door persuading, cajoling ( and often threatening) voters to support Sophie. Sophie did, ultimately, scrape through by a margin of a solitary vote. For us, it was as close a shave as shaves could get!

The morning after the elections results, Sophie appeared at our doorstep with her entourage. We waited with bated breath for the imminent proclamation. Sophie chewed on her gum vigorously and spat into a distant flowerpot with the precision of the Tomahawk missile and said, "Ma'am, the changed circumstances have forced me to quit my maid's job. But, considering your pivotal role in getting me elected, I have decided to work exclusively for you." Choked with emotions, tears of gratitude gleamed at the corners of Sophie's eyes.

Our eyes too brimmed with tears - tears of someone who had not only found the Lockness Monster but also was saddled with it as though for eternity.

JUNKYARD GENIUS

2010-11-09T22:26:00.000-08:00

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!!!!

A BORING DRILL

2010-10-16T03:01:00.000-07:00

(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

2010-10-16T01:58:00.000-07:00

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."

WAGGING TONGUE

2010-08-14T00:51:00.000-07:00

(Continued from the last post A Tongue Of The Slip

The power of the tongue is aptly illustrated by this anecdote: Once a gaggle of women were taken on a sight-seeing tour of the 'Niagara Falls.' The tour guide, after explaining all about the falls, finally announced, "Now , ladies, if you can interrupt your talking just for 10 seconds, you can hear the mighty roaring sound of the Niagara."
With this backdrop, it was no wonder that a garrulous aunt of mine was fondly called 'Tongue-sten' within the family circle for her rapid-fire blabber like the outburst of a stengun.
When we refer to the first language we learnt from childhood, we call it the mother-tongue and never the father-tongue(poor father!) even though it is the father who gives the tongue-lashing when the children play mischief. So, when we talk of the mother-tongue, I always remember the story of a lady candidate seeking a job, who, in her application form, had mentioned her mother- tongue as 'Spench.' When questioned about this at the interview, she replied, "My maternal grandfather spoke Spanish and the granny spoke French. So my mother speaks a combination of the two, which I call 'Spench'. Explaining further she said, "Since my my father's mother-tongue is German, my children's mother tongue is going to be 'Spenchman'.
And finally, when the General Elections come, look at what happens. Politicians click their tongues having tasted the spoils of power hoping for more. They approach the electorate with their tongues hanging out, drooling at the mouth, trying to catch your fancy with tongue-twisting slogans such as 'Cast costly crosses(X) to cobble credible class-creed-class crusade'. Like snakes in the grass with their bi-pronged tongues, they will promise you the moon only to retract later. When that happens, don't be tongue-tied. Loosen your tongue and speak your mind out. Then elect the right one(if you can find any) and stick your tongue out at the rest.
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A TONGUE OF THE SLIP

2010-07-31T04:20:00.000-07:00

Continued from the last post Tongue-in-Cheek Trivia

There are people with slippery tongues who call a 'Burning Train' as 'Turning Brain.' A friend of mine has this habit of mixing up words in a spooneristic style. "I hissed the mystery classes", he would say(meaning, he missed the history classes). Or, "I tasted a whole worm(meaning he wasted a whole term). But best part was that each time his tongue slipped, he would apologise saying, "Oh, it was only a tongue of the slip"(sic).

Linguists vouch for the fact that in many languages(tongues) world over, the the tongue is used as feminine gender. In Hindi for instance, the word zuban(tongue) is feminine. Meri zuban, one would say implying that the word is feminine. Same is true of Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French and German. There must be some reason for his ground rule., that came about during the evolution of languages. Is it because the almighty God, to compensate for the deficit of muscle mass, bestowed upon women this highly specialised muscle tissue? Or, is it because women as a class have an inborn skill to put this small bundle of flesh to it's maximum use? Read on, Sir/Madam, for an insight into these premises.

Just listen to what William Congreve, the 17th century English dramatist, had to say about one of his female acquaintances: "She has that everlasting rotation of the tongue, that an echo must wait till she dies before it can catch her last word."

Then, Charles Dickens once exclaimed, 'Tongue, well, that's very good thing when it ain't a woman's". Why, even the great bard of the yore W. Shakespeare didn't lag behind by saying, " You shall never take her without her answer, unless you take her without her tongue. Lucky that in days of Mr Shakespeare, there were no women's' lib activists. Or else they would have lynched him and the world would have poor by one great poet.

(Continued in the next post Wagging Tongue )

TONGUE-IN-CHEEK TRIVIA

2010-07-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

Which is the most flexible part of human anatomy? The tongue, of course. For, it can wriggle like an earthworm with bellyache, lash out like a whip, roll like a porpoise, twist like a well-cooked vermicelli, wag faster than a tail of courting lapdog and dance with agility that can make Michael Jackson look like someone who is taking correspondence course in dancing, having just reached the third lesson.
Besides, the tongue is stronger than the teeth, because it can heap choice abuses on a passing desperado thereby vastly improving the chances of one's teeth being displaced out of their sockets. Therefore the the tongue is that errant member which, more often than not, needs reining in. If people are unwilling to hear you, better it is to hold your tongue than them. So, teach your child to hold his tongue, he will learn fast enough to speak.
The tongue can make and mar men and their empires. Someone with a silver tongue can sell goggles to a blind man (or ice-cream to an Eskimo), while the one with evil tongue may get bitten by sanest and mildest of poodles. A sharp tongue is a guaranteed means of supplying you with enemies in their dozens. In fact, a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows sharper with constant use!

SHARPEN,BUT HOW..

There was a neighbour of ours whom we called 'Mr Sharp Tongue' for his harsh and angry talk. My 8-year-old son was quite perplexed about the reason behind that nick-name. That was until one day he came up and triumphantly announced, "Papa, now I know why you call the uncle Mr Sharp Tongue. This morning, soon after he brushed his teeth, I saw him sharpening hid tongue with a plastic strip!"

DON'T SWALLOW!

Once a chemistry professor asked one of his students to name certain chemical compound. The student racked his brain for some time and then said, "I know the answer, sir. It's on the tip of my tongue and I can't get it out." To which the professor said with a wry smile, "In that case get it out fast and certainly don't swallow it. Because the compound happens to be Potassium Cyanide."

To be continued in the next post A Tongue Of The Slip

THE TAILOR IN NEW LIGHT

2010-05-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

(Continued from the last post On The Tail Of A Tailor)

Considering Param's personal history, I was at my wit's end when he appeared at my doorstep wearing a woe-begone face not with my shirt but with a request to use my(non-existent) clout with the President of a local Co-operative Society (a man as straight as a die and very antithesis of nepotism). He wanted me to secure a clerk's job at the for his daughter who had justpassed the B. Com degree with colours that were anything but flying.

Fear Of The Blouse

Fearful of the horrendous things Param could do to my shirt if I antagonised him, I meekly obliged by phoning up the Society's president with the entreary. True to his percieved image, the president tactfully ducked my supplication, stopping short of asking me to go and jump into the nearest lake. As a crest-fallen Param left, his eyes betrayed a firm determination to stitch me a tight fitting blouse(on which I could only wear a saree) that could per se have my humour club audience in stitches. I shuddered at the prospect of becoming a butt of jokes for the hoi-polloi.

Yet, on the eve of the D-day, Param re-appeared at my doorsteps and delivered, belying all my apprehentions, a well tailored shirt. He was cock-a-hoop about his daughter's appointment at the Society. And with a child-like exuberance, he narratedhow his friend Venky helped his daughter clinch the clerk's post. Then Param departed, chirpily humming the opening bars of 'Dum Dum Diga Diga.'

Venky And The Tigress

To set the record straight, I must reveal that Venky was a office attendant at the co-operative society in question with a reputation for clinging to people like a leech to achieve his ends. "If you want the tigress's milk, ask Venky, " was the common refrain heard on the Society's corridors.

Knowing Venky myself personally, I could well visualise a harassed tigress, confronted by an insistent hustler like Venky, lying supine asking him to squeeze out as much milk as he wanted just to see his back. The President of the Society was, after all, an ordinary human like you and me.

ON THE TAIL OF A TAILOR

2010-05-28T05:21:00.000-07:00

My eyes nearly popped out of my head when Param appeared at my doorsteps like the summer rain. It was as though an eel had developed amnesia forgetting all about being slippery and presented itself to be pickled and devoured. Why I am offering this parallel would become explicit if I furnished enough dope on Param's antecedents and idiosyncrasies.

EEL THAT TAKES TO HEEL

A tailor by profession, Param was no different from others of his ilk except in one small detail. He seldom, if ever, stitched at a stretch for more than a few minutes. He worked, like municipal taps, in short bursts. Being someone with itchy feet and perpetually parched throat, Param, after every 50 cms of frenzied sewing, went out for a cup of tea as though it were the elixir of his life. Normally his shop(a one-man show) wore a desolate look, like a town in the grip of a plague epidemic, while Param merrily downed his cup of stimulant in some godforsaken restaurant. On those rare occasions when he was at the post, he slipped behind the cupboard at the mere hint of a suspected client approaching his shop, morbidly scared of additional work that would hamper his periodic tea-drinking jaunts!

To me, unfortunately, he seemed nothing short of a sartorial genius and I always felt as though I were streaking on a nudist beach if I wore any attire not tailored by Param. But the biggest hurdle was tracking down my outwardly mobile tailor and the thought often crossed my mind that I should equip him with a radio-collar around his neck(like they do to keep track of tigers in the wild) in order to monitor his movements on my radar screen.

THE ELUSIVE TAILOR

So, recently when I needed a new shirt - I wished to appear chic wearing it at my forthcoming address to the local Humour Club - I launched an elaborate 'man-hunt' for my tailor, visiting tea stalls I never even thought existed. And finally *buttonholed* him at a nondescript cafe forcing him to take down my measurements in full view of the amused cafe's clientele. From then on, each time I caught him at his shop (or behind the cupboard), his stock reply was, "Only the buttons remain to be stitched, sir", even as the uncut shirt cloth winked at me from his shelf. And as the days slipped by, my patience, besides my new pair of shoes, began to wear thin.

(To be continued in the next post The Tailor In New Light
)

LUCKY TRUDGES ON

2010-04-29T06:29:00.000-07:00

(Continued from last post Lucky's Salad Days)

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

Lucky The Pious

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

And At Last..

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

Lucky Mosquitoed!

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

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

LUCKY'S SALAD DAYS

2010-04-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

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)