Legal Eagle

So, a while ago, I solemnly swore that I would tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on the matter in question yesterday. Was called in to give evidence for a sod who came in from the cold a tad too late for anybody to do anything about. It all began with a cop who walked up to me one morning and presented me with an arrest warrant in my name. Bailable with payment of Rs 500/-. Why? In order that yours truly doth show his countenance at the 2nd MM traffic court on such and such a date and time... "Where was the summons", I enquired. Oh we stopped issuing those. We find that a warrant makes responses quicker and you fellows also turn up only when threatened with arrest.Point.

So I landed up at this crowded courthouse and ambled around trying to locate my liason in the servers and protectors of society. Got accosted by three lawyers who wanted to represent me in whatever matter I was apparently caught up in before I made my way to the aforementioned 2nd MM Traffic Court and met the cop in question. About half an hour of roll call later I was asked to step up in the witness box. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, an actual witness box with a judge and a court reporter and evil eyed defence lawyers hanging on to my every word. So I told my story and was politely asked to exit stage right soon after. 

While I was pleasantly surprised about the speed of it all I was a tad disappointed that I wasn't cross examined and all that.

Anyway a good double lamb burger from ice and spice and all was laid to rest.

Brilliant how Ice and Spice has turned out be some really nice deli type place. Cheery interiors and a lamb patty and mayo to die for. 

I remember it being some bathroom tiled joint some many thousand of years ago with the same to die for lamb patty. 

Times and people have apparently changed so the place has a new look enveloping the old burger. 

Go try it. St Mark's Road, opposite the State Bank of India. Sandwiched between a wine shop and Noon Wines. 

Speaking of Noon Wines when one is feeling substantially brave and all that feel free to drop in and have that battery acid that he serves in the guise of "house wine". It's potent and honestly the fact that it doesn't taste like any wine you've ever had gets significantly blurred after 3 glasses. 

And then last week I decided that Ice and Spice is too far to get to for a burger and one happy day decided to try my hand at making them. 

Lamb mince, chopped onions, seasoning (whatever you want, I used salt and red chilli powder(yeah I toyed with saying paprika)), and egg and bread crumbs went in to a bowl and got shaped into patties and cooked on a skillet with just a little oil till both sides were wonderfully done. Buns sliced in half, lettuce, slices of tomato and onion, mustard and mayo and voila... 

Bon appetite.

Fwd:

So with all the criticism I'm trying to come up with something that's not minimalist, involves that neurosurgeron face, unispired in a good way, has blood gore and a drill. Reminds me of that Dilbert and Dogbert conversation regarding stringing together the top ten words that make funny jokes. Don't remember most of them but weasel was somewhere there. In the top 5.
Anyway since I've always believed in buying time here's a forward I got that I think is funny. According to which I'm sane, hard-working and mean. So you might want a pinch of salt.

Mijook...

... is the buzz word of the day. What is Mijook? you ask...
Turns out that many years ago when the world was young and crack was just a defect on a surface, the unopposed badshah of Bollywood music Bappida in an interview said that his "mijook" was inspired by many different things. As it would happen, in the unlikely-est of ways, a young not yet neurosurgeon (not me, thank you) happened to hear that and figured that this was the jargon discovery of the millennium. He christened the next post operative complication he got as a mijook case. Simply because it was messed up. Then the word, very literally, spread and even preoperative muck ups became mijooks.
A typical conversation would go thus - Chief what's the scene? Orre Mijook man, 2 cases in hypotension post op and one's refusing to respond to even deep pain. - And the initiator of the conversation would then sacrifice his night to the Gods of Complication and hope and pray that his pager died in the middle of the night or something.
So, one drunk night, one realised that there are more uses of mijook than just in the hospital. More alcohol later it started... the Mijook Series. They begin like most grammatically challenged jokes, with Confucius Say - and take full poetic license and humoral immunity. Examples follow...
If you leap and don't look.... your life will be mijook
While drinking and driving if the police doesn't let you off the hook... your life will be mijook
If you are not knowing every cranny and nook... your life will be mijook
If you answer a question correctly in rounds by fluke... your life will be mijook
If at chess you try to castle without a rook (for the more intellectual)... your life will be mijook
If after you pee you don't shook (well there is license isn't there).. your life will be mijook
If you are putting line and she doesn't give second look... your life will be mijook

And so on and so forth. Try it, it can be fun. I know you're thinking we don't have lives and our senses of humor suck.. I agree.

But that apart, life and work go on at their respective paces. More work than life.
Snatches of news that we get to hear, I heard we got trounced at cricket but the firecracker that exploded in close vicinity to the petrol tank of my car sometime ago makes me believe we won one too. Hooray. Now can we tax all those jokers please?

And turns out the rat pack that runs the state decided to pull a fast one on the other rat pack which was beginning to drool at the thought of being at the reins of the golden egg laying goose called Karnataka. While we are all going, "Great, President's rule. Pratibha Patil's in charge now." No seriously what was the BJP thinking? That that many months later the current rats would graciously step down and say, "Go forth my brothers! We have stood on your shoulders for so long, they must be sore. And all you have gotten are tit-bits of our corruption. Now it is your turn. Don't bother throwing us any tit-bits. We've made enough to live through 3 recessions and an Ice Age. Go on. We are sated with our plunder and aren't the kind to deny others a chance. Gentleman's agreement it was, wasn't it?" No it wasn't you lying, two-faced money guzzling bandicoots.
But all said and done we are glad that it's Mrs Patil right now and not either of the two factions.

I'm hoping the Left will get left behind and Mayawati becomes Prime Minister.

But then I also hope to eat three full meals and get eight hours of sleep a day. That ain't working.

Go listen to Alanis' cover of Crazy. Many thanks to the wonderful person who introduced that song to me.

I like.

You?

As usual I promise to write but as of now I can't think of much else to write about.

Dry Spells

No jokes.
Flashes of inspiration apparently come at all times, rather at any time. When least expected. And when there is no paper or pen to jot down the thought in an anal retentive way and speaking into a phone to record the elusive idea is a consummation I haven't devoutly wish'd for yet.
So as I was waiting for an Oncologist friend with a ward full of high profile cancers and thus a rather unpredictable schedule, I found myself seated on a pavement, helmet in hand. Having carefully juxtaposed myself between two dessicated betel stains on the sidewalk, I figured this could be a long and boring wait before we actually got off to watch 300.
Again.
No more movie raving and glorifying what I now call aesthetically appealing violence and bloodshed. I am a surgeon. Gore doesn't disgust me, at least not as much as Bush does. Make what you want of that cruel pun with substantial innuendo (it's bringing up rather disgusting interpretations every time I read it.)
There are things about Delhi I like. The Metro, the food (except when someone tried passing off some buffalo meat as tenderloin), the fact that if one has enough money to run the air-conditioner and refrigerator for 6 months and a heater and electric blanket for another 6, how women are out with summer clothing, the fact that I can get a vascular instrument set at 2AM and an extra ventilator or a contrast CT.
And there are others I dislike. A large percentage of the people, referring patients to SJH due to a lack of beds, fat men in tight flashy clothes, signs that one should not spit here - in English (why?) and hindi (what's the point?) surrounded by the aforementioned dessicated paan stains.
And there's stuff that I'm not sure about such as Dry days. Very ambivalent am I.
Alcohol in any form is only sold via government stores in Delhi. So every gazetted holiday (72 this year I think) there is no booze sold. The Government also randomly assigns dry days where one can't get a beer even at restaurants. Pre-elections is a good example. Delhi was dry from 5PM on the 3rd to 5PM on the 5th. And on Good Friday and today. Today to apparently allow people to count votes in sobriety. So that left 5 hours between 5 and 10 on the 5th where everybody decided to get drunk, fall off an assortment of vehicles, assault each other with a battery of weapons and land up at casualty making my night miserable.
The downside of course is that I can't obviously drink on such days unless I drive to Faridabad, Gurgaon or Noida. The good bit is that there's a statistically significant reduction in the influx of cases on such days.
Have been listening to Shine by Take That. Don't judge me. Listen to the song. Mike (I think) Owen's fronting them this time around. Welcome change.
For a parting bit of entertainment read this. And then this.

Branding

Because it fits well?



What will they think of next

Visions...

This is what happens if the flight gets delayed and one has no entertainment
What better advertisement can one ask for...


I think H2Go is a funny name. And it's a bitch to take pictures in moving objects
For those of you who can read this. there is nothing funnier.


Will have to dig some more up if I can find them.

Enjai

Just Jobless...

Ok so I was in Chandigarh for a few days for reasons I’ll elaborate on shortly. I’m still up north by the way, and all ye who believe that I’ve served my sentence; this would be a good time to actually get that petition up and signed. And may be even delivered.

Now Chandigarh is a joint that essentially survives because of the cumulative governance of the Punjab and Haryana State machinery. To that add the chaos of a Union Territory. And the extreme planning of Le Crow. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that place is the epitome of how one can make a city so monotonously well planned it creates a serious antithesis in the head whether one wants to live there or not.

Rediscovered a Single Malt(Whiskey, you Philistines) there called Ardbeg. In a failing attempt to not sound the male equivalent of la-di-da, it’s a pale whiskey with an incredible peaty flavour, best probably diluted with an equal amount of water. For a bit, sitting on a friend’s terrace in a Chandigarh winter watching the stars and sipping on a glass of Ardbeg felt like some Persian poet thinking Agar firdaus bar rooye zaminast to haminast, to haminast, to haminast. Though with a few modifications in time place and person it could be another Persian poet content with a book of verse and a jug of wine but there was no one singing in the wilderness.

The Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh is one of those institutions set up like maybe the Missionaries of Charity and Tihar, by an act of Parliament. Thus it enjoys certain privileges, one of which is conducting it’s own entrance. A sop that thankfully Tihar doesn’t have. It would be the end of world when a jail started choosing it’s inmates. With guys getting rejected if they “passed their morality paper” or “turned out just too smart for here”.

The PGI (as it is fondly referred to by friend, foe, employee, auto-driver and patient) entrance is not just a test of knowledge. It’s one of endurance, patience and sheer nerve. The application process is by far the most complex. And one is never sure till the last moment that one is eligible. Then every once in a while you can pick up the hall ticket at the exam hall ten minutes before commencement. The exam itself is at 8 AM on a winter morning. In a freezing classroom on desks and chairs made for ten year olds. It thankfully lasts for only an hour and a half. After that all there is to do is wait in the midst of all that winter for the results. And for those of you who understand it, full AJM happened. For those of you who don’t it stands for akkan just miss and no I’m not explaining that further. So I wrote AIIMS over the weekend and I don’t know yet but it doesn't look too good.

Had a discussion with an uncle of mine over a bowl of mishtidoi and screw you if you don’t like my transliteration; about life, the universe, medicine, music and food. This is the food bit. So chaats, it turns out have been destroyed by the Punjabis and us Southies by the simple act of adding onions to them. So the Original Hing (Asafoetida) based Chaats got overshadowed by the Onion based Chaat like items (paav bhajji, for example) which apparently are favoured by teenage females of the human ilk. It might even be that the predilection that the aforementioned teenage females have for such items is related to hormones and their swinging. Teenage males may also be found flocking to the centres that sell such onion based chaat like items resulting in the illusion that such tastes are not gender specific. However, one must realize that such selective migration of males could primarily be due to the presence of teenage females in those areas in the first place.

And we win a hundred points for sheer joblessness.

AIIMS results tomorrow.

For more interesting images of up north wait a bit… on a dial up and can’t upload.

Wisdom yet again...

Sources of Wisdom in the world are often not evident to the untrained eye. One must be a seeker of wisdom to find it. Unlike opportunity, this particular entity may not even knock. Take this for instance.

Picture taken with the w810i, somewhere in Bangalore.

Addendum : Too many people seem to be asking me this so go here if you don't know what the thirukural is or want to know more.

The Grim Irony...

... or how I may never see the light of heaven.

Despite all arguments that there may not be a heaven (though there may be a hell) or there may not be both and we all die only to be reborn as boll weevils or salamanders, or we just die and like Mozart, decompose or like Newton, disintegrate, let's assume for sake of argument itself and for sake of this post there exists a heaven and a hell, ruled by God and the Devil... respectively.
And that each of us has a personal heaven and hell, not the generic boiling oil-pearly gates pictures that some of us have been led to believe. For instance my heaven would involve wine, women and song and hell would be a joint filled with goody-two-shoes dressed in white with harps playing Coldplay or some such. I'm assuming the drift is being got. So this post deals with how contrary to everything I try I'm just not getting to my heaven.
Those of you who've seen the movie Constantine, where Keanu Reeves tries to play a exorcist who's sentenced to hell because he attempted suicide but was revived and the Good Book says that all suicides attempted or successful are condemned to eternal damnation without relief, would have realised that the movie was a waste of time. I didn't and am probably one of the ten people who actually dug (digged?) the movie. Anyway so he decides to become an exorcist to do God's work on earth and send every wayward demon back into hell so that he maybe allowed entry to heaven. Of course he also realises that if he fails, he's going to go to 'a prison where half the inmates were put in by him.' Life's a bitch, init?
In a very similar vein doctors I do believe have been sentenced to purgatory the minute they enter the hallowed halls of medschool. No amount of reviving dying people, wading through body fluids, staying up days on end, for pittance of a remuneration is going to change that.
Why? Simply because no amount of slavery can condone our inherent or developed insensitivity to the world at large. Our patients are the single largest source of humor in our lives. Well most of our lives, I have the Provider to give close competition. The jokes that get cracked when a patient is anaesthetised, being operated, in the midst of the OPD, being given CPR (yeah even then), while being discussed; are sinful in the average person's mind. That collective idea of sin overshadows the collective goodwill that we may ever get. The average person is often referred to in my book of life as the muggle or mudblood. Which in itself ensures a year or two of the rack. Let me show you how it works.
Take for instance the auto driver who was assaulted by 3 people for asking for '1 1/2 meter' post 11pm. He had a bottle of brake fluid (empty) stuffed into his nether. When he came to the hospital the first reaction was that he'd have put it in himself. The next reaction was that every nurse, ward boy, anesthetist who was involved in this man's surgery was laughing their heads off. Now if that wasn't bad enough his case with photographs and the bottle itself was presented at conferences and generated equivalent amounts of laughter there too. I could see the Devil ticking off names.
Or how one gentleman sauntered in to my out patient one morning and began to wax eloquent about how he was an Ayurveda specialist attached to ESI or something and he had this one wonder drug that would cure all kinds of colds, allergies, skin conditions, etc on daily consumption for 45 days. So after patiently listening for close to ten minutes at the advertisement I ventured to ask him what his problem was and he replies in the most sheepish voice I've heard, "Hernia." And I almost fell off my chair laughing. Not openly and though my initial response wanted to be, "Why don't you take your pill and see if it resolves after 45 days..." I ended up keeping a straight face and advising surgery.
Or the 23 year old with erectile dysfunction who was advised to watch porn and wank, or the 30 year old complaining of sterility when he hadn't been staying with his wife. Or the... these just go on.
So i wonder in the face of such terrible odds how can we ever be forgiven...

Obituary and obsession.

A 2L bottle of Sauza tequila in Houston can be procured for somewhere in the vicinity of $10 on good day in a good shop. That translates to roughly Rs. 500. Then why in God's name does every place in this city charge Rs. 200 for a 30 mL shot? Outside of Pondicherry where a bottle of some noxious drink that's labelled tequila except that it's distilled in an equally obscure chemical waste treatment plant can be got for the same price. The world isn't working quite the way I'd like it. There also exists in the good shop in interior Texas powdered Margarita mix. Just add water and tequila and aye caramba! One drunk night.
All that apart, it is with a heavy heart that I bid farewell to a friend of a few years. A comfort in loneliness, an entertainer when bored, a protector when vulnerable, this was one companion who almost never let me down. Outside of the time in hostel when a depression in the Bay of Bengal had knocked power out for 3 days but that was an act of God. But all things have a lifespan. And often not as long as Darwin's tortoises. Some they say are born to lead short lives, other's achieve it and some still have an early demise thrust upon them by technological advancement. My Nokia 3315 belongs to Category III. The world spun on it's axis and I find myself on the other side of the MS fence and in a position to claim the bonus of a new phone. So here I am the proud, new, obsessed owner of a w810i. And having spent two sleepless nights downloading themes and games and notorious Russian software to read the medical tomes in pdb and other unsupported formats I'm finally in a position to play Prince of Persia the Warrior Within and Sudoku. Joy to the world.
There is often a twist in the tale and occasionally a funny one at that. The Provider of food, shelter and technology also decided to get himself a phone considering the 3310 that he had and had just about come to terms with decided to start breathing it's last. And since presbyopia can be a bitch the obvious choice was a Samsung, wherein the text size makes children's books look like fine print. So the X 700 has an FM Radio, mp3 player, 1.3 megapixel camera and bluetooth to name a few. I still haven't managed to load sudoku onto it and have been promised much rewards when I do but that isn't the story. After the water filter incident the man's decided that maybe reading user manuals might just be a good way to start things (flight of ideas, start things - let's start the very beginning... - do re me fa so latte do, with credit to barista for coming up with that on their t-shirts). So after a day or so ardent perusal we find that he's caught someone to take a picture of him at work in the executive chair in all his resplendent glory and set it as his wallpaper. Also he's realised that the little silver disc above the camera is for taking self portraits and works reasonably well.
Apparently both a fondness for red meat and self-obsession are transmitted paternally so, in all likelihood are linked to the Y chromosome.

Nee Sandman?

All we read or get to nowadays is stories of how the kids just ain't right. And that some one's getting a face transplant. The last one got rejected on account of ugliness I think. It's interesting how medical research is funded. The first knee prosthesis released over a decade ago were simple hinge joints. In other words, they moved only in one plane and around a single axis. And cost the usual GDP of a tin pot little African country. The rich old men who could afford to both play golf and get their knees replaced realised that post getting enough metal in them to set of detectors in all airports except the ones in Bangalore, Delhi and Hyderabad, they couldn't play golf anymore. Not that golf is a game that requires one to be in the pink of health and prime of one's fitness but the issue here is simple - the swing, in golf, to be completed perfectly, requires a small amount of rotation in the joint. Now, the knee is easily one of the most complex joints in the body and though primarily a hinge, it does allow enough rotation to make Woods a Tiger on the fairway. It is also historically an extremely important joint and has been immortalised in the Tamil greeting "nee eppudi irruke". Digression apart, rich old men fuelled their rich old money into material research to give rise to this.

Miracle of modern engineering. And that's why as Chris Rock says we'll never find a cure for AIDS. Because then drug companies will go out of business. Then maybe they'll bring small pox back.
That apart been reading two incredibly creative and entertaining comic series - Fables and Sandman. More on them later. But this is a legend I read - every night as we tuck ourselves into bed, the Lord of Dreams comes along and sprinkles sand in our eyes. This makes us sleep (duh!) and the sand is what makes us dream. This also is why we wake up with a gritty, sandy feeling in our eyes.
So I did wake up with something that felt like sand all over my face for a long time. Maybe I need to start earlier. Circa 1980 when teak was actually available. So then the Provider decided to get himself some teak furniture that would look good and outlast us all. And in the midst of all the wood work were two beds. With proportions that required a custom built mattress (80"x30" - we were a tall thin race apparently). The headboards were out of a single piece of teak some three feet across, worth the GDP of a TPLAC (tin pot little...) in present day. And the years rolled on with little or no change outside of us becoming a tall not so thin race and the Provider's taste in wood changing. Albeit slowly but surely.
Then one fine shopping expedition a gargantuan bed with an intricately carved head board but with more acceptable proportions was procured and yours truly inherited the teak. The new bed though wonderfully carved is a dust magnet and if one is allergic the night is spent with the Sandman battling the Dust bunny. But that's not the story, is it? So the teak device was my place of somnolence for many a moon till I realised that I was waking up with the mother of all back aches every morning. And not because I was sleeping funny. Or anything. Investigation revealed that though the cool headboard was teak, the bed itself was plywood (incidentally invented by Alfred Nobel's dad). And teak lasts twenty years. Plywood on the other hand twists and turns with time and warps like the gravitational field of a small star.
The result is a morning-after back ache. The cure is to take the mattress and use it to soften the floor and enjoy a restful night or two. That's when the sandman came along with me waking to a faceful of dust. The legend we began to believe and dreams were in technicolour.
Till it all fell apart. The dreams, the legend and my mattress which was bought circa 1980. Made to order to fit the bed. It says Dunlop on top, like the tyre and over twenty years the rubbers becomes mud. Like the book says, "... and dust ye shall be." Looks like the folks got conned and got an adult rated mattress.
So it's now the not so soft floor. But I'll live. Looking for someone interested in buying the carved monster so that's one less piece of junk I have to deal with.

But on an aside on tyres, what do you do with 365 used condoms? Melt them down and make a tyre. Call it Goodyear.

Lusht For Life

After being inspired by Mohayana's bright gifting ideas I landed up at the Lush store at the mall with the plan of picking a gift for a friend who was getting married. Marriages in the friend circle are often trying times. Mom goes into some why aren't you getting married obsession and secretly harbors thoughts regarding exactly which way I swing. Once I'm done with fielding all her questions and convincing her that despite being straight as can be I still don't want to tie the knot so her grand children plans will have to be put on hold. On an aside I once pointed out that in the 21st century it isn't exactly necessary to be married to have children and got two weeks of nag-free time.
But a close friend's marriage can often be a trying time. Apart from the sudden change of heart they get towards sexist jokes, leching on the streets, random women, alcohol etc there's the huge immediate issue of gifts. Which is what this is all about.
Lush seems to be an ideal place to pick up stuff for friends who are close enough to accept a rather cheeky gift without either blushing to the point of bursting or wanting to kill you instead. So I have in my possession assorted items with chocolate including a massage bar, shower gel, soap, lip balm and just plain cocoa butter. We know what chocolate can do. They made an entire movie out of it. Other options included underwear dusting powders but I actually like the guy getting married.
The only problem with the store is the smell. Some would say aroma, I'm sticking to smell. It's appalling. Even cookie man is better. The other problem is the way the stuff looks. Charcoal bricks, alien slime, stuff out of horror movies and stuff that despite the vegan tagging looks like it's about to eat you. Of course if you're really unlucky one of the saleswomen will grab your hand and demonstrate how their glitter bar works and leave you disfigured for life.
Expensive as it is, Lush is a good gift buying joint. That's the bottom line.
The other bottom line is the joy of seeing a man-behind-the-counter's face when you ask for 5 packs for condoms of various types and then ask him to gift wrap it...
Need to ask the man to open his gifts in private. Wish him luck.

The search for Wisdom....

.. ends here.

A large part of humanity's evoluvtion and progression, if we may call it that from climbing down from the trees and climbing up escalators instead has been the quest for knowledge and wisdom. Great philosophers have theorised at length on the topic of where one can find wisdom.

From the foothills of the Himalayas in solitude or in Hawaii amidst a bevy a beauties and a coconut cocktails. From t-shirts to maybe even Bangalore Times. Here's the latest.

Been otherwise busy so the orkut bashing and other usual nonsense will return in some time.

We're back... and presenting The Arabian Frights

Public outcry and the swamping of my inbox with multiple instances of the same comment brings the blog back to where it was.
Aside: What did Heisenberg say? No same thing at same time in same place? I think my amateur html just proved him wrong. But hey, I'm not a rocket scientist.
And no I will not delete all the carbon copies of the comments. Let them stay as silent tombstones on my programming grave.
And finally as the crap said... oh it's carp on the comments of the previous post, Rest in Piece and Chait - another click and a window is the least you can do to be heard. Some less fortunate have to actually start a blog and update it regularly.
Word verification will be turned on if I get spammed. And I don't mean by T, V, Tan etc.
Now to business. The Dday for the exams draws close, my sanity quotient as I mentioned earlier is dwindling as is my threshold for the world at large. In times like these I resort to the giants, who before me have been there, done that and managed to write something about it. This weeks stress buster is Roald Dahl's (again? yeah but a different book... Read on) Revolting Rhymes. His take on the Fairy tales. Gruesome, twisted and with rhyme and meter that would make Vikram Seth lift an eyebrow.
Downloaded it off the net and laughed as I read and then some one was kind enough to lend me the book. Quentin Blake's illustrations do make it funnier. Lay your hands on it people, it'll be worth your while.
The usual profound brain-things inside my head started up after I read this and some delving in my cupboard, various inboxes and hard disk led to the discovery of an old poem I wrote. All ye who haven't eaten anything yet may leave for refreshments, the rest of you read on.

ARABIAN FRIGHTS

A land lies between east and west,
Where camels roam and flies infest
A land of beauty, a land of courage;
A land of harems and royal entourage.
A place of mystery in a mystic time,
Where death follows every crime
In the Royal Palace as days turned to nights
Here I present the Arabian Frights…

An intrepid sailor named Sindbad
Set off one day and all were glad,
He sailed around, his voyages numbered seven
Each with a mistress or two, a total of eleven
His ship now was a mini-harem
A sign read, "Girls, Beware him"
Encouraged the sinner picked up more
Every time he landed ashore
In time his boat was filled to the brim
And (Oh my God) you should've seen him
Too much sex had done him to the bone
Till one day his ship sank like a stone

In the land of the Arabs lived a man
Like most, of the princess he was a fan
Till the Caliph heard of his desire
And threw him in a quagmire

Alibaba was a young trader
A brilliant guy, straight A-grader
His family though had no sleep,
For they thought Baba was the black sheep.
Sure he was different, ugly and bald
And with 8th nerve palsy, he looked away when called
His teeth were like little chisels
And when he spoke, he did in whistles
Forty robbers he killed and lived in bliss
But the truth, of course, is Congenital Syphilis.

The Caliph sat brooding and sad
A feeling rose that he had been had
The Royal Dungeon had become an open shelf
For the locksmith was a crook himself


In the land of Agrabah lived a boy
Tall and strong but shy and coy
Until one day he lit a lamp
And joined the nearest nurses camp.
An instant hit was Alladin.
To celibate men he was joyous sin,
And when asked "Where's the Genie, I pray?"
He said, "I don't like him, he's not gay!"


In the Royal Garden she as she walked,
The princess was lost, deep in thought.
Her brave warrior love, no one could find
She figured, so what. Out of sight, out of mind

-- fin --

What to do...

Here I am again alternatively battling insanity and boredom as the exams draw close when life drops funny stories into my lap.
If any of you see a very mild mannered old lady in a train en route to chennai tonight or the return sometime next weekend, wearing your standard issue sari, bifocals, diamond earrings and grooving like there's no tomorrow to Semmangudi on a beat up Panasonic discman - That's my grandmom. Be nice and you might get invited for lunch and that's something you shouldn't pass up. It'll be vegetarian but worth every morsel.
Why the current obsession with the progenitors' progenitors? Just been spending time with them and realizing that apart from good food they make great company.
As long as one doesn't tell them that lunch involved some dead animal.
And beer.
Some theater company in Bangalore decided to stage Chicago the musical and inside informants have it that the costumes and choreography were lifted straight from the movie. Or are we calling it inspired these days? So this company in a whirlwind marketing drive put up a billboard the size of Liechtenstein proclaiming their venture with a panty-hose clad nymphet (cigarette holder included) in the middle of City Market.
Why?
Anyway the play's off. The reasons currently making the rounds in apocrypha are that they didn't get the rights (but it was only inspired... Same script, you idiot) or that the cops in Bangalore being what they are shut it down under the pretext that it was improper for our audiences.
And then it came to pass that the audience were again brought to the limelight when some public forum on one of the news channels (Aside : The ambiguity of time place and person reminds me of page three where people are partying in "one of the city's hip clubs with an open terrace and a greek flavour". Sheesh. But can't name the names can we?) decided to discuss KANK. With respect to marriage in contemporary society and if the movie advocated adultery, blah blah.
We were debating that in the 12th. Anyway about time I thought. Except that the panel consisted of 2 marriage counsellors, Shobha De (twice married, has to deal with your kids and my kids are fighting with our kids), the owner of Shaadi.com (yuppie NRI, unmarried is sitting on all his money and advocating marriage simply because it makes him more money) and here's the clincher Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan. For being the director and actor in the movie that 'dared to explore adultery'. There were movies down south (like really down south) that were exploring porn before either of them were born but that's another story.
The discussion we shan't go into except to say that K of the Koffee fame claimed that he was unmarried because he was too cynical to take that step after all the horror stories he's heard and seen. The grapevine thinks he's not married because of the guy sitting next to him.
So the debate is still on whether marriage is a relevant institution or not...
That brings us to another story involving the caste system. It's bad enough that it exists and now is a pawn in the great game of vote-bank politics, the funny things are the sub-castes that I came to know of recently. Details are too convoluted to put down and I don't feel like transliterating and translating terms of the aaru velu niyogilu ilk. But the fun bits are the intra caste anti-subcaste jokes that have been making the rounds for a few centuries now. Why this is seminal? Happened to see the monthly vernacular publication affiliated to one of the 4 mutts that are held sacred (page 3 ambiguity again... sorry) and the appendix is what was brought to my notice.
In a nice spreadsheet excel-esque format are the following columns -
Serial Number, the importance of which will be outlined
Name
SubCaste, note the readership of this magazine has to be pretty exclusive for them to have this column up
Gotram (trust them to do something like this)
Nakshatram
Date of Birth
HEIGHT (in inches)
Educational Qualification
Place of Residence/employment
Place of Origin

So there's lists of boys and girls with all the details filled in and a disclaimer that serial numbers n1 - n2 have been erased with time, considering they can't keep the same names on for months. (no that's not why the numbers are important.)
Here's the rub, in this age of communication, ready made stuff, shaadi.com and a reliance on the easy way out, a self-addressed envelope with a request for the horoscope of serial no 'n' would get you that horoscope via mail. Of course residents of Chennai (where else) would have to go and get the desired information in person on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.

There comes a time in every man's life when they wished they were born to a lower phylum. Today's mine.

Old is Gold.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Been doing some research on that and assuming it's a maxim (this is where I catch Sapru's attention) that involves a little lateral thinking before one starts hunting for some old St. Bernard to teach 'play-dead', I find that the older the dog is perhaps it's easier to get the occasional new trick in.
It so happened that due to a lack of a job and intermittent boredom from too many subway-esque sandwiches (bread, mayo, mustard, cheese, lettuce and assorted veggies, cold cuts, jalapenos, gherkins and olives) I've been feeding off my grandparents for some regular run-of-the-mill pulling-at-the genetic-roots food. In the course (usually the main one) of the meal I learn some classical music from grandmom, some stock market and investment gyan from granddad and I also learnt that you can teach an old dog yada yada.
Before we continue I have to mention here that grandmom solved the easy and medium sudokus with panache. Under twenty minutes and she solved them on a separate piece of paper and then enters the answers in so there is no overwriting invovled. Granddad thinks it's too easy so he bought a Sudoku book and solved the 16x16 grids with letters instead of numbers. Now he's on the crossword.
That brings you and I gentle reader to the main course of this post (all the preceding bit was hors d'ovueres. That one was for Mr. D and his obsession with saying that). First taught granddad the nuances of the Hindu Crossword. He now leaves some two and a half words for me to do when I go there, four if he's made a spelling mistake.
Then he decided one day that he wanted to learn how to SMS on his cool new phone. It's that 1100 made for India thing. Which brings us to an aside where he spent a week doing market research to find the cheapest and best service provider. He thinks it's BSNL. But the signal's not too strong where they live. So the SMS. Considered telling him to do it the old fashioned way but sheer boredom got me teaching him the nuances of T9. In the course of which we discovered that the first option for my mom's name 'Viji', is 'Ugli'. Don't worry I've already been disinherited. But he's the king of texting now. Just a step short from discovering smileys and that's when the world is sure to end.
Compare and contrast this with my Dad, fifteen years younger and thinks T9 is a mind control conspiracy.
Gave grandmom an mp3 cd player for her birthday. Took ten minutes to hook it up to her music system and five to point out the buttons and their function. She was skipping albums and reading into the id3 tags before I ran away.
Old people rock.
And make the best vathukozhambu in the world and are the best companions for a long walk. This one's for you thatha and pati. Happy anniversary (albeit a bit delayed...)

Butt of course...

This isn't going to be an assortment of rear end jokes, on the lines of arse if... much arse I like it or this puzzle is going to be difficult to crack. It's going to be a dedication to the best footballer of the year, or of the past four as the case may be, the possessor of the golden ball alongside the normal one, from humble beginnings in the beach front on Marseilles (why the French can't write as they spell, I'll never know (oops shud I have said no instead)), none other than Zinedine Zidane (pronounced zizou in French).

Now despite the economists who after much deliberation over statistics and other such nefarious methods decided finally to settle for France mostly because zizou was so "hot". We now think they had inside information considering Baldy's heat is not just a reflection of how desirable he is. But economists and bookies (how they must have made a killing when Brazil lost) notwithstanding, here is zizou using his head...

Now there are a few other variations of the whole thing, go hunt for them on youtube. There are also apparently flash games that one can indulge in at times of ennui. This is just one of them. But zizou giving head and using his head, and heading in the wrong direction jokes apart, there are things to learn from here. No matter what amount of nipple pinching, jersey pulling, ma-behen-biwi abusing that would happen in any sport (wonder why they call it sport then?) especially contact sports (now we know why they call it contact sports...) I think when one reaches the pedestal of captaining one's country (born to algerians apart) in an international match the maximum allowable show of emotion is, apparently this.
But the Provider seems to think it's an italian conspiracy. Like the church, pizza, robert deniro and perhaps mussolini. Dismissed that with an account of sledging in Cricket. Sad isn't it, with cricket... No jersey pulling, family jewel stomping, or even head butting. The gentleman's game... All they did before and now, sadly even after bodyline was stare them down the pitch or occasionally mutter, "I say, he's daft don't you think?"
Still think reacting to insult is worse than insulting. Not turn the other cheek, just score the goal and win the match.
My take. You're welcome to yours.

not so quietly amused this time

Found this on public display. And For Sale. Notice the zoom on the insignia.






















Then realised during the course of the day that there exist people who don't get why this is funny.

Such is life... That's his wife. (Don't bother asking)

Jose joga +10 bonita. Capisce?

That should mean, with enough leeway for my broken spanish, "Jose, play a beautiful +10 game". I have no idea why the +10 is there but Adidas wants it there. Just to make sure that I infringe copyright. Football fever, at least temporarily, has a few days left. This weekend should see the end of the world cup with Italy and France battling it out. Am I the only one who's reminded of world war II?

Well Puma, Adidas and Nike on full swing to market some ridiculously expensive football boots but this is one of the nice ads that I've seen. Courtesy youtube.

The song you hear in the background is eanie meanie. By Jim Noir. That's Black Jim. And depending on which side of the nineties you were born that could remind you of either Treasure Island or Pirates of the Caribbean. That's a good thing either way.

But the ad also shows one thing we haven't seen in the million or so world cup finals (why do they call the league matches that too?) Frank Lampard scoring. Not weed or women, I'm guessing he gets enough of both, goals. I have half a mind to give him my toric lenses and maybe a new set of boots from some rival sports goods company (Puma or Nike, in his case) to perhaps do better than he has. How many times has he gone wide of the uprights or above the straight or in the unfortunate event that he's between those, there's a goalie waiting for the ball.

Correction. He kicks the ball to them. And not just Ricardo (who's the man, by the way) but everybody else too.

Which brings us to my take on some of the many (or few) players that caught my eye. Wayne Rooney. If I was 19 and 5 feet nothing, I'd run from trouble. Considering Rooney has the speed he should be too. Instead of throwing some adolescent tantrum.

Becks. Still the best dead ball kicker around. Funky hairdo, hot wife and multiple children notwithstanding. Lampard, need I say more. Crouch. Will someone take that giraffe back to the zoo please. You can't have tall guys around in football just because they're tall. Man that doesn't even work in basketball. (see: Shaq) Astley and Jim Cole (unrelated) and Terry and Ferdinand made watching England worth while.

Christiano Ronaldo. Good skills. Bad attitude. Just a christian Ronaldo - Fat but still has the magic. That step over and the pirouette were the best goals this world cup. Ronaldinho should just play midfield. He's not a striker, he sets up like no one can so let him do that. Barca does and look where it got them. His smile is infectious. Kaka the man. As is Dida. And Cafu. And will someone tell me which position Roberto Carlos is supposed to be playing.

Who's left? Japan, Angola, Trinidad and Tobago, Togo etc can go back to whatever agricultural produce was running their economy, with the exception of Japan, who can go back to running ours. The Socceroos I guess are hopping mad. The Germans should have known that after the second war no one's going to let them win anything. The Azzurri might just win. But Economists' opinions or otherwise, I have to humbly say that Zizou is playing the game of his life. They should win. Much as I can't stand the accent.

So much for footy, it's as much as I can take. But the english league apparently starts next month. Damn.

Random thoughts that are otherwise bugging me are gym related. Saw some bouncer type people redefining pumping iron. How did I know they were bouncers? Big, ugly, same clothes everytime I see them. Call me vain and I'll defy you to find me a Quasimodo with attitude. In a gym at that.

Does the name Quasimodo ring a bell?

Now the bouncers are doing their thing alongside some chom boys struggling with some puny weights. The thought is considering the propensity these runts have for drinking and causing mayhem what if they ended up being bounced by the guy pumping iron next to them...

Just a thought.