Category Archives: Humor

Cesses in excess, mum on scams!

Posted on by Rofl Indian

First published on Tehelka.com

Must say, the nation has been ambling along fairly well ever since the days of the Preamble. Over the years we have fought and won many a sly battle, shot satellites into space (maybe some went precariously inches over the heads of neighbours, but that’s okay), exploded a couple of real indigenous nukes (not the cheapo Chinese types that the guys next door pointlessly threaten us with), built up an awesome military with kickbacking howitzers, commissioned (pun intended) dams, bridges, eight lane highways and industries, pushed through reforms, stashed away sackfuls of black money….well, the long and short of it is that we have succeeded in doing ourselves proud and turned India into a truly sovereign, socialist, secular , democratic republic where everyone is free to have his way.

Admittedly, none of such outstanding developments may have taken place had the country not been blessed by a bunch of really heroic finance ministers. Year after year they come up with formidable treatises on the nation’s economic health, crunching numbers in excruciating detail, the mystery heightened by elaborate literary embellishments in each subsequent retelling of the union budget. Amidst the matrix of baffling financial jargon, the common man sits dumbfounded like the Tusshar Kapoor of Golmaal, holding his breath, fearing the worst, and worried to death as to how he would make ends meet without having to sacrifice his smoke.

Perhaps the single most important factor of the budget is the tax. Somewhere down the line, the wily bureaucrats must have figured out that there are far more innovative ways to levy a tax without having to call the goon by his name. So they named it ‘cess’. Though I am no expert in etymology, I have firm reasons to believe that the word ‘cess’ surely comes from excess, which, by all means, sufficiently describes what a budgetary exercise is all about. An alternative theory traces ‘cess’ to Bangla’s ‘shesh’, meaning ‘the end’, which is when the villain shoots the hero dead in real life. Either way, the common man loses and more black money makes it’s way to the Alpine climes.

This is why there is all the more need to simplify the budget. With scams and embezzlements becoming the order of the day, the entire union budget appears to be an exercise in futility. Much like Om Puri’s role as a crook in Victoria No. 203. Doesn’t matter if you have never heard of the movie? Even I hadn’t until today.  The idea is, why burn midnight oil trying to figure out plan outlays and capital expenditure when you can’t stop billions leaking out surreptitiously.

Why can’t the government just admit that scams exist, and in acceptance of it’s legitimacy, charge a uniform 10% ‘disservice tax’ on the dough generated through this route?  10% of 10% amounts to 1% of the GDP, if you would get the drift. Simple calculation. Trust me, with this stunning masterstroke, the government will, in a single financial year, put together a revenue far in excess of whatever trickles in painstakingly through income tax, outcome tax, capital gains tax, service tax, business tax, wealth tax, health tax and sundry other complicated instruments in a whole decade. Consider the positive fallouts. All ambiguity in financial dealings will disappear. Business processes will be streamlined like never before, corporates will heave a sigh of relief and accountancy firms will breathe in a sunshine of transparency.

Most of all, the common taxpayer will be spared from taking his trousers to the tailor every now and then to get the burnt holes in his pockets patched up.  Good riddance.

 

Blunder On The Riddle Express

Posted on by Rofl Indian

This was first published on Tehelka.com

So the railway budget is back. Yet another opportunity for the political class to hide underneath the scholarly tomes of Tagore and Ghalib and unleash a barrage of utterly confounding arithmetic. I fondly remember the good old childhood days when the railway budget used to be a simple exercise in juggling a few fares here and there, with absolutely no interference in the way trains used to ferry man, cattle, cartons and cockroaches in the true national spirit. Train journeys were thrilling, and largely uncomplicated. Long travels usually involved buying a well thumbed novella or two at discounted prices from the ubiquitous Wheeler dealers. Patronizing ticket examiners gave berths to men, women and children in full public view, of course in exchange for a token ‘fee’. No one ever bothered to remember who the railway minister was, so long there was at least half a piece of potato meekly staring at you from the ‘thali’ served on long distance routes. In the potato’s absence, however, it was generally expected of the passengers to invoke polite references to the minister’s hidden anatomy and that of his immediate next of kin.

There I really admire Laloo Prasad Yadav. His legendary budget speeches, apart from being brilliant expositions in earthy financial rhetoric, were undoubtedly the true forefathers of the present day breed of self styled comedy circuses. From his very first day in office as the Railway Minister, Laloo Yadav regarded the Indian Railways as the nation’s biggest IIM, The Indian Institute of Mismanagement, and set about to transform the way the average passenger sipped tea like liquids while being shipped from Talcher to Thirunelveli. The Hero Potter of Railways, Laloo hurled the humble earthen kulhar to dizzying heights, and in the process, reintroduced the ‘can-you-throw-your-kulhar-accurately-at-the-opposite-track’ as India’s foremost ‘online’ recreation. Fodder for thought for gaming entrepreneurs, no?

If only Mamata Banerjee could rise up to the challenge! All she professed in her accented budget speeches was trifling narrow gauge agenda. With a slew of Kolkata specials, her the-bongg ways were nothing but a loco motive for winning the battle of the Writers’. Even this year, as she is happily ensconced in the Chief Minister’s chair in Kolkata, Mamatadi is busy scripting a derail budget for the poor beleaguered UPA.

Needless to say, this year the honourable minister of railways has his work cut out. Having just met with an ‘accident’ in the UP polls, the UPA is undoubtedly keen to introduce a slew of safety measures aimed at keeping the government firmly on track till the next general elections. Mamatadi, on the other hand, would want to learn a few ‘seat sharing’ tricks with a view to accommodate her in any future political rearrangement. A section of Karnataka Assembly MLAs might ask for 36-22-32 inch screens to be put up inside railway coaches. Ram Vilas Paswan might demand caste based reservations in Tatkal bookings. And Omar Abdullah, in agreement with Akhilesh Yadav, might want to move a resolution to equip train toilets with satellite linked touch screens having Twitter and Face book.

This brings us to the larger, and almost always ignored, question. What does the common man want from the railway budget?  A careful review of popular sentiment reveals that people simply want more ‘Fast’ trains to be introduced to keep corruption at bay. An Anna Hazare Super Fast between Mumbai and Delhi, in which passengers can pre-select between nimbu-pani and chhaas as a symbol of solidarity with the spirit of Anna’s movement, would go a long way in restoring the faith of the masses in our rickety political system. But till that happens, bon voyage.

Susie’s Follies.

Posted on by Rofl Indian

By follies, I mean mistakes. Not the Foley’s Catheter which nurses secretly enjoy inserting in a man’s, well, manhood. Susie is too young and inexperienced for that.

Truth is, Susie is beginning to lose her grip. No no, not on things you people are imagining. And so what if it’s Valentine’s Day today? Duh. It’s all about duty and care and responsibility, that sort. Tell you what, all those pearls of nursing wisdom that Susie had allegedly picked up at the Holy Mercy School of Human Nursing, Tellichherry appear to be getting squandered in a sea of sloppy neglect. Sigh.

My apprehensions have been confirmed. One day when, upon being asked to administer a gentle dose of soap water enema to an elderly constipated patient, Susie proceeded to launder his unsuspecting intestines with a deadly mix of Surf Ultra and, hold your breaths, lime scented caustic soda! Needless to say, a perfect catastrophe ensued, with the stricken patient slipping into coma and, spectacularly enough, working up a huge ball of foam every time he passed a gust of rectal wind. Of course it generated a lot of interest among fellow patients and their relatives who had never seen such a miracle in their lives, and brought me laurels as a doctor who treats patients by revolutionary methods, I secretly felt let down by Susies’s abject carelessness. More disturbingly, a nosy TV reporter swooped on the patient and started asking very uncomfortable questions. To allay his suspicions of criminal misconduct, I had to submit myself for a long chat with him over lunch. Two whole butter chickens and three whole sundaes later I could barely manage to convince him that this was every bit a variant of the Schulbaster-von Memmering syndrome, quite harmless by any standards. Whew! But just because Susie’s intentions were noble, and her charms nubile, that the day was saved for her. As for the horror the poor old soul endured, the less said the better. The moment he reached home, he saw the washing machine and collapsed in a heap. His neighbours, I hear, noticed that his distraught posteriors continued to smell of lime for quite some time. Sublime, as they say.

In another recent instance, Susie almost had me sent to the gallows. It so happened that the wife of the superintendent of police was referred to me for treatment of a stomach illness arising out of indiscretions she had indulged in, in a titty (hark! These typos) kitty party the day before. Having tried my best to console her insulted entrails with a few friendly pats here and there, I directed Susie to respectfully administer an antibiotic shot, specifically instructing her to use a thin syringe, and as gently as possible. As I came out of the room to afford them some privacy, a piercing shriek rang out, followed by a string of, let’s say, quite colorful expletives. Before I could rush in , the SP’s wife ejected like a shotgun slug, menace writ large on her vicious countenance. The long and short of it is that before leaving, missus SP threatened me with getting my ass suspended from the ceiling at the nearest police station and a round of sound thrashing by eager specialists in the trade. Things became clear in no time. Susie, it appeared, had stabbed the wasp with a stout 18G needle, the kind you prefer to use in buffaloes to inject those milking hormones.  There was hardly anything I could do except wait for the knock of a policeman at my door. Anyway, nothing much happened for a couple of days, and then one evening, I  received a call from the Superintendent himself, who thanked me profusely for showing the conviction to tackle his wife’s troubles with a ruthless, almost hit-man like, resolve.

It was then when I decided to call a spade a spade, and summoned Susie for an interview this morning, specifically designed to grasp her booty. Her mental booty I mean.

“What saar?”

“Sit down Susie. We need to talk.”

“Having headache saar?”

“No no, nothing is aching Susie. Just sit down.”

“Okay saar”. Susie adjusted her big, round pair of  spectacles as always and drew her chair close to me. She has this uncanny ability to throw my thought process off balance, you see. For a moment, I forgot why had I summoned her.

“Susie”, I began, as things settled down “I have noticed that you often forgetting things. What’s the matter?”

“No saar!” Susie promptly adopted a look that amply stated her disbelief at such an insinuation.

“Well Susie”, I said sternly “there have been many complaints against you.” When I am stern, I am an unyielding pillar of authority. Much like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. Even the hairstyle.

“O God saar! Totally forgot!” Susie stood up with a big, disarming smile on her face and rushed towards the door, seductively undulating her coconuts coconut oiled hair. “Wait saar. I have something for you…”

She appeared with a rose. Won’t tell you the colour. “Happy Valentine’s Day saar”. My heart briefly transformed into a fish and started thrashing about in a pond of love.

But then, I have a lingering suspicion that the rose arose out of Sebastian’s (the lab guy) undying love for Susie. Why, it even smelt of cigarette. Still, a rose is a rose, and Susie’s upbraiding shall have to wait.

Don’t you remember how she went about pinching pennies during the recession? READ HERE.

Why Must Prime Ministers Dance?

Posted on by Rofl Indian

The US First Lady has lately been electrocuting electrifying audiences all around the globe with her assuredly random dance moves.

It is widely believed that Michelle Obama’s laudable efforts have single-leggedly heralded peace in Afghanistan, eradicated insurgency in Iraq, promoted human rights in Pakistan, arrested fiscal collapse in Europe, popularized safe sex in Africa and checked mad-cow disease from spreading globally, not to speak of boosting President Obama’s chances of outstripping his rivals in this year’s US  presidential elections.

US First Lady seen uplifting humanity

In such brilliant exposition of stately skills, Mrs. Obama is certainly not alone. Closer home, the Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj recently demonstrated her astute saltatory abilities, and by extension, her unquestionable supremacy over Nitin Gadkari in terms of physical portability, by twirling away at Rajghat to the tune of ‘Mere Desh Ki Dirty Politics….’ etc. etc. Which brings us to the all important question – should dancing be made a compulsory activity for Prime Ministers and Presidents in absolute national interest?

I attribute India’s dismal show at every conceivable front nowadays to the pathetic inability of successive Prime Ministers to perform. Perform with their feet, that is. When was the last time you saw an Indian PM trot with the tribals of Nagaland or jive with the Jarawas of  Andamans? Such indifference towards the art is cultural insensitivity at the worst. The Jarawas would never have had to cavort before cunning western tourists had the government arranged for an exhaustive rendition of their art forms with the Prime Minister himself demonstrating the finer nuances of ancient Jarawa choreography.

Unfortunately, our Prime Ministers have lost the plot time and again and squandered golden opportunities to showcase India, if not as a gambling destination, then at least as a great gamboling destination. VP Singh, Indra Kumar Gujral, Chandrashekhar, HD Deve Gowda and PV Narsimha Rao, all erstwhile prime ministers, were never acknowledged as legitimate dancers. It’s entirely a different matter that we got to witness intensely emotional ‘dunce-dramas’  every now and then during their tenure. Poor Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the iconic leader of the masses, gave dancing a careful slip as he just could not lift his feet off the ground. His able successor, prime minister Manmohan Singh, was left dreadfully confused throughout his first tenure by two left feet, one his own, and the other being that of a wily Left prodigy called Prakash Karat. In his next tenure however, the respected statesman ominously developed what is widely perceived to be feet of clay, engineered by the artful compulsions of coalition politics.  That, and the cardiac odd-job have effectively put paid to the chances of ever seeing Manmohan Singh shaking a leg or two in the days that remain of his present incumbency.

PM Dancing - From Manjul's Blog

 

Think of it, just a minute or two of lively feet tapping by an Indian PM with the happy and plump tribeswomen of Arunachal Pradesh would not only have demonstrated our steely resolve to make the Chinese pee in their pants, it would also have silenced those silly international watchdogs who constantly niggle about petty advocacy issues concerning the North-East. The black money riddle could have been solved in a jiffy if any Indian PM had the spunk to break out in a sudden flash dance in front of one of the shady Swiss banks. And what could have been a better way to settle Indi-Pak differences once and for all than by having the two PMs dance together to A R Rahman’s free music at the Wagha Border? Alas, Pakistani PMs dance only to their Army’s tunes.

But then, that’s life. And we, the people, are the Jarawas.

Anna-lysis of a Ramlila

Posted on by Rofl Indian

What is puny and small in the beginning, but swells enormously when appropriately tickled?

Crowds, of course. And an indomitably spirited Anna Hazare demonstrated exactly this to the world with his usual aplomb during the Herculean fast which he just concluded amidst the humongous applause of freshly stirred countrymen. As speaker after righteous speaker at the Ramlila grounds performed ritualistic ablutions of the annals of UPA’s history (pun intended), the Kejriwals, the Bhushans and the Bedis wasted no time in handing out (t)issues to those who volunteered to wipe out the stink in the name of the great crusader. Media houses went berserk with the live coverage. Correspondents frothed at the mouth. Children struggled in the hot sun to revisit the independence struggle. Students bunked classes on no pretext.  And proud girls wearing the Anna cap rejected boyfriends who refused to wear the same, arguing that a reluctance to wear a simple cap today might portend a reluctance to wear the family planning gear tomorrow.  In short, humanity could barely be saved from the clutches of democracy just in the nick of time.

Which brings us to the larger question. Who gained what. Undoubtedly, it was yet again the irresistible Arindam Choudhuri of IIPM who came up trumps in counting the number of chicks in the batch. Remember the seminal treatise he wrote on self help ‘Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch’? Buoyed by the events, the wily mentor might now seriously think of putting in place a comprehensive pedagogy on civil society campaigns, smartly calling it the PGPPMM – Post Graduate Program on People’s Movement Management, with the punchline ‘Dare To Think Beyond The Shy Dry PMs”.  For budding PR strategists languishing in the shadows, as described by Surekha Pillai in her column in the DNA, he could offer a few exciting Management Development Programs like Lost-Cause Management, Charm-Campaign Management and Uncertain Venture Management, although he must steadfastly refuse to entertain any calls from across the border to initiate courses on Jihad Management at his Dubai campus. Helluva money there, but still. His detractors, a bunch of impetuous retards anyway, might provoke him by demanding a course on Unemployment Management, but Arindam, the eternally sedate and conscientious guy that he is, must brush aside such barbs with the contempt they deserve.

Om Puri, on his part, must be in a perpetual self congratulatory mode ever since he shook the nation with his hideous acts of non violence. Not his fault, though. He was asked to speak on the aspirations of the common man. But the single malts that he had so condescendingly agreed to imbibe for the larger cause tricked him into assuming that he was expected to speak on the common man’s ‘aspersions’. Let me tell you, the furore is needless. For his part, Om Puri attempted to give us an objective idea of how Bheja Fry 3 would eventually come out to be. So, the most appropriate recourse would be to continue to remember Mr. Puri for his stellar performance in Ardh Satya. Which brings us to the sacred memory of poor Smita Patil. Had she been alive today, she’d easily have ousted Medha Patkar and Kiran Bedi from all forms of civil unrest.

Words are woefully inadequate when it comes to praising the outstanding contribution of that holy shrine of healthcare, the Mecca of medicine, Medanta Medicity. But for the charitable cartel of cardiologists and physicians cordoning off the venue 24×7, Anna Hazare’s team wouldn’t have dared to push the old man right up to the brink. Okay, Medanta may have a few cruel taxes imposed by the government here and there and maybe a couple of sops would get suddenly withdrawn, but that’s a small price to pay for the ginormous free publicity that was garnered entirely at the expense of Times Now. Who knows, TOI might even come out with a spiritual CD on Effective Hunger Management with liberal scholarly inputs on urinary ketones by Dr. Naresh Trehan. That is, the higher the level of ketones in your urine, the closer you are to God. Here, it would be important to note that while setting up Medanta Medicity for a cost of a thousand crores, Dr. Trehan was entirely guided by a fierce set of philanthropic ideals.

That leaves us. You and me. With the hope that the next time a bribe is demanded, we will refuse to pay it for two days. Okay, three days. By then Anna will have shoved his cap up the rogue’s gaping conscience.

Sameguy

Posted on by Rofl Indian

The similarities are just too much to ignore.

  1. Old warhorses. One nearly exhausted. The other – too much exhaust.
  2. Medium pacers in reality, but can accelerate once in a while .
  3. Slowing down with age. Needs breaks every now and then.
  4. Only their backs visible while in action.
  5. In service for long.
  6. Prone to breakdown .
  7. Unpredictable average.
  8. Sometimes useful in crunch situations.
  9. Hypothetical strategic importance.

 

Case # 2

Same गाय

Similarities:

  1. Nice, plump and smiling.
  2. No leadership qualities.
  3. Very predictable on the field.
  4. Extremely prone to milking.

 

 

 

Google Chromosome!

Posted on by Rofl Indian

This post appeared among Blogadda’s Spicy Saturday Picks on July 3, ’10

Doctors are not too well known for their IT skills. We guys usually eye the computer with considerable unease and are known to invent elaborate excuses to avoid even having to go near one. If I may confess, most docs confuse the word ‘laptop’ with an attractive and youthful female having pleasing attributes and large, inviting lap. I have often thought of broaching the subject with Susie over a cup of coffee and seek her honest opinion on the matter of fully loaded, higher end laptops with plenty of giga bites gigabytes, but every time some or the other thing crops up and the issue gets forgotten.

Many practitioners, though, do keep a PC in their clinics. The rich ones like our Hospital Director keep a Mac. The aim is obvious. To snare patients and con them into thinking that the doctor is cool, trendy and upwardly mobile. Casting an impression on the opposite sex is an added benefit. Still, they try their best to avoid having to use the computer, except on a those occasions when the urge to watch a pedagogic DVD or two becomes really overpowering. May I, at this juncture, make it clear that a pedagogic DVD is a piece of hardware that contains loads of ‘visually stimulating’ material that is usually sneaked in hidden among the pages of Harrison’s Textbook of Internal Medicine.   Many a doc has been caught red handed by inquisitive staff members (and vice versa), lapping up such academic videos in the privacy of his darkened chamber.  Now, a doc may be as cool as a frozen Tuborg when it comes to cutting the stomach open and playing Twenty-20 with the intestines, but when confronted with the challenge of snap shutting a browser window, a doc usually plops  into a deep kind of stupor, bordering almost on coma. Even the Statue of Liberty would appear much animated in comparison.

The aversion of doctors towards information technology is rooted in their unique professional upbringing. The MBBS course is one of the toughest trainings ever designed to screw a half dead human being. When the blokes in the engineering or commerce colleges ramble around on Pulsars and Yamahas (the older ones roamed about on Yezdis) with gorgeous babes wrapped around them from head to toe, the medical guy loses his sleep over the harrowing details of levator labii superioris alaeque nasi and its nasty relations with other such stupid muscles. While the MBA geeks swim around in espresso coffee mugs with sugary belles clinging on to them in hordes, the bachelor of medicine buries himself deep into Gray’s Anatomy and sighs in despair while trying hard to mug the anatomy of the female breasts. Poor guy, he must learn to identify the breast as a ‘modified sweat gland’ if he has to pass the Ist term exams.

It isn’t that we guys do not try to learn a thing or two about the internet and things like that. One of my colleagues was so impressed by Google that he started prescribing ‘two teaspoons of isabgoogle at night with a glass of water’ to cure constipation. Another named his son after the search giant. Google Shukla.

In light of the above revelations, it appears that the medical fraternity is in dire need of professional assistance from the IT guys. Docs would welcome a short course on ‘How to download useful video clips from the internet and store (hide) them on the hard disk’  or ‘How to set up a chat without letting the wife know’. And Google would really do well to come up with a doctor friendly internet browser. They may name it Google Chromosome!

Susie Returns

Posted on by Rofl Indian

I apologise to my readers for having kept Susie off my blog for a considerable period of time.  She was indisposed for a while, you see, having contracted malaria first, and then a bit of gas, ostensibly from an overdose of medications prescribed by my dear friend Dr. Phadnis. Now she is fine, radiating from the glow of iron tonics and protein powders, that I had pilfered from the Hospital Director’s room and given away to her in an act of genuine benevolence. It’s an altogether another matter that the Director was mad the next day, he having milked the medical reps for the products in the first place, with the charitable aim to improve the general health and appearance of a certain Miss Priyanka, the hospital’s newest receptionist.

So, there she was, back in my room, sipping coffee. She closed her eyes, threw back her arms, thrust forward her large cookies (Susie was indeed having large coconut cookies with coffee, trust me) and yawned noisily. She was sitting just across the table and her carelessness allowed me to steal a quick glance deep inside her throat.  Just as I was contemplating whether to reach up to her and tickle her cute little uvula with a syringe, Susie shut her mouth abruptly.

“What saar! You ver lukking inside my mauth…?!”

“Oh! W..was I?” I quickly shifted my gaze and started drumming my fingers on the table.

“Yes saar. I saw you lukking inside me!”

Now that was a lie. I was in no way ‘looking inside her’ if you go by the strictest sense of the phrase. I agree I have briefly tried to look inside her (inside her soul, I mean) on a couple of occasions in the past, but most definitely not now. Moreover, her abrupt charge caught me in a fix. If I admitted to the act, it would risk a long session of verbal ping-pong with the nursey. If I rejected her allegations, she would invariably find other means to extract a painful confession from me. Once, despite no fault of mine, she had two of my teeth knocked out completely by a deadly combination of  thayir sadham and kappa vevichathu allegedly cooked by her humongous aunt. My only fault was that I had not informed her of an inspection by the Hospital Hardware Committee in advance, as a result of which she failed to produce two paperweights that the records showed to be in Susie’s possession. Now, Thayir sadham when mixed in roughly equal proportions with kappa vevichathu forms a deadly plastic explosive like lump that is unquestionably the sourest thing on the planet. Thank God the minions of Al Qaida are yet to discover the deadly side effects of Eliamma Aunty’s cuisine, or else they’d have unleashed a series of kappa vevichathu bombings across the world! And it was only much later that I realised that one of the anagrams of sourest is oestrus! Eliamma Aunty in oestrus…lethal indeed!

“Saar?” Susie nudged me with her eyes. “Tell me na saar…you ver lukking inside my mouth na saar?”

“Umm….yes. But just a little. I didn’t see much Susie…”

“O..ho! I was right saar!” Susie’s eyes brightened. “What did you see saar? Please tell me na…”

“I told you Susie….I didn’t see much..”

“Saar…” Susie bit her lip..”You are not being truthful….are you shy of me?”

“Why should I be shy of you? I’m not even shy of my wife!” I boasted, only to realise that the comment had gone a bit too far. A doctor ought to be of an inherently shy nature, I thought. Shyness confers a degree of immunity from locker room mishaps, something I had realised last year when three young, pretty and inquisitive OT nurses (I guess they were Julie, Rosamma and Annamma …maybe not Annamma, I’m not sure) had barged into the OT locker room while I was changing. What followed was a series of polyphonic screams from the three, followed by a melee and a mini stampede, as the three rushed out and thirty rushed in, followed by the OT incharge and a little later by the Director himself. From that day onwards,  I always pretend to be extraordinarily shy and close the locker room door tightly before even I take off my shoes. Anyway, more on that story later.

Susie was still looking at my face, perhaps expecting an admission of sorts.

“Susie, stop looking at me that way….I told you I didn’t see anything worthwhile…moreover, you look sleepy. Didn’t you catch enough sleep last night?”

“No saar…I was thinking of you saar…..” Susie laid her head on the table and said dreamily.

“What!” I suddenly felt like a brooding mother hen which had just discovered that one of her eggs had got really stuck down there. I had to fight to shut out suggestive visuals of Susie eloping with me with a tiffin carrier full of kappa vevichathu. What a scandal it would be!

“Susie….” I said firmly “…you should not think about me in the night. Er….by the way…..what were you thinking?”

“Nothing saaaaaw” Susie again broke into a noisy sigh. “I was thinking of inviting you to our house for lunch next week…..Eliamma Aunty is coming from Kerala….”

A chill ran down my spine and knocked my knees together. As Susie dozed off on my desk, I silently stood up and ran my tongue on the bare mounds of hardened gum where my two molars used to stand proudly. Nah! I had to plan a holiday to Shimla next week. You don’t get decorated with military honours for surviving Eliamma Aunty’s cuisine!