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.

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.

At 44, Srinjoy had established himself as a successful businessman, running a company that manufactured transmission parts for a couple of well known automobile manufacturers. The growth of his business had been nothing short of spectacular. In a short span of seven years, Techmax Auto had grown from being a one-room venture in a seedy side lane of Delhi’s Khari Baoli to a Rs 170 crore conglomerate, a rise that even elicited a mention by the Chamber of Commerce general secretary in his annual address at the GBM. The meteoric rise had got tongues wagging, and Srinjoy had to contend with Sales Tax enquiries, whisper campaigns and annoying labour issues, which he privately attributed to the artifices of his jealous business rivals. Surprisingly enough for his detractors, Srinjoy never found himself in trouble and appeared to glide through the hurdles with consummate ease. And now, in his opulent Noida residence, life was affording him all the pleasures money could buy.

Dressed in a crisp business suit and doused in cologne, Srinjoy took out the new purse from his wardrobe. It was a beautiful ebony Viviene Westwood, an expensive piece of handcrafted buffalo calf. He then took his old wallet and stuffed both in his jacket. Picking up his briefcase and the neatly folded issue of The Economic Times, Srinjoy descended the stairs in a huff and climbed into the plush seat of his silver gray Landcruiser Prado. As the driver pulled out of the kerb and swung the car onto the asphalt, Srinjoy eased the two wallets out of his jacket and slowly began extricating the stuff from the old, worn out wallet. He had been using this one for close to three years now, and the slots bulged with paper slips and business cards of those he had long since outpaced on the road to success.

As the SUV sped through the Greater Noida Expressway, Srinjoy set about arranging the credit cards and the bank notes in the appropriate slots of the new wallet. Then he sifted through the pile of papers, carefully unfolding them and going through the scribblings, and eventually discarding the ones he didn’t wish to retain. He threw away most of the business cards, the ones that weren’t needed anymore, into a small waste basket kept near his feet. The old wallet was now an empty bag of worn out leather. Srinjoy looked at it for a few moments and then, as if chucking a Frisbee, tossed it out of the window.

And then it struck him. Like a lightening. The amulet. Where was the amulet? Srinjoy suddenly felt his knees go agonizingly numb. He had forgotten to remove the amulet from a side pocket of the old purse, where it had lay untouched for the past three years. The last couple of times he had changed his purse, he hadn’t forgotten to retrieve the amulet. But on this occasion, he had carelessly thrown away his lucky charm, along with the purse into the barren landscape adjoining the highway. Even within the climate controlled comfort of his car, Srinjoy started sweating profusely.

“Stop! Stop the car!” he yelled at Ram Singh, the driver, who almost reflexively brought the SUV to a screeching halt by the side of the freeway.

“Kya hua Sahib?” Ram Singh whirled around and enquired anxiously. “Sab theek to hai?”

With an ashen face, Srinjoy explained briefly what had happened and ordered the driver to turn back. Looking out of the window, he snapped his fingers in nervousness and cursed himself as Ram Singh looked for a cut to turn the vehicle on to the opposite lane.

Blurred images of the amulet blitzed across Srinjoy’s consciousness as his memories wafted back to that sweltry summer afternoon seven years ago. Those days, life for him was an epic struggle. To make ends meet, Srinjoy had to toil 18 hours a day ferrying auto parts from a dealer in Khari Baoli to a service centre in Karol Bagh. He had just set up Techmax Auto in a 20 ft by 10 ft rented cubicle in a side alley of a busy marketplace, where he had installed a lathe machine. A graduate in mechanical engineering, Srinjoy had quit his job a couple of years age over compliance issues, accusing his boss of graft in a tender scam, even testifying to the sleuths from a central investigating agency. Nothing came out of the investigation, his boss was eventually exonerated, and Srinjoy had to pay with his job. Since then, he had been scratching around, trying to start a business. He had just submitted a tender for supplying parts to a gear box manufacturer and desperatively hoped that something favourable would come out of if. To add to his woes, his cellphone had just gone dead.

That afternoon, he had parked his Maruti 800 near an intersection and was about to enter a telephone booth when he heard a strange voice behind him, “Bachcha! O Bachcha!”

Srinjoy spun around and was startled to see a dark complexioned sadhu standing very close, nearly right behind him. His lanky, undernourished frame was wrapped in a crumpled orange robe with a string of rudrakha beads coiled around his neck. His long, unkempt dreadlocks fell carelessly over his shoulders. A pair of eyes that shone brilliantly in a dull ash smeared face transfixed Srinjoy as he stood rooted to the pavement, staring at the mystic with a wooden gaze. The sadhu then abruptly raised his right hand and placed it on Srinjoy’s head.

“Bachcha, give me a 100 rupee note, bachcha!”

“What?” Srinjoy shrugged off the sadhu’s hand from his head.

“Quick. Give me a 100 rupee note. I will show you a divine miracle, bachcha” boomed the sadhu impatiently, repeating his demand.

Srinjoy felt as if he was being smothered by a powerful hypnotic force that was draining away his consciousness. With the sadhu’s piercing gaze boring deep into his psyche , Srinjoy slipped his hand into his pocket, brought out a 100 rupee note and handed it to the sadhu. The mystic folded the note a couple of times, placed it on the palm of his left hand, and clenched his fingers over it into a tight fist. His face contorted into a mysterious smile as he vigorously shook his head and let loose a string of indecipherable gibberish that purported to appease the gods and invoke the powers of black magic. And then, slowly, the ascetic released his grasp and spread out his fingers to reveal a small amulet with the impression of a deity inscribed on it. The 100 rupee note was nowhere to be seen.

“Bom bhole! Sukhi reh bachcha!” The sadhu waved his hand in the air, dabbed a little ash on Srinjoy’s forehead and prepared to leave. It was then when Srinjoy gripped his arm and forced him around.

“Where is my money?” Srinjoy demanded, having come back to his senses. A small crowd had gathered around them by then.

“Devi has accepted you offering, Bachcha! You shall have her blessings soon.” The sadhu answered.

“What? You cheat!” Srinjoy screamed, livid with rage “give me back my money, you thug”. He  gripped the sadhu by his arms and shook him hard. And suddenly, a folded 100 rupee note fell at the sadhu’s feet from somewhere among his robes. Srinjoy pounced on it and picked it up in a flash. The crowd gasped.

The mystic tried to free himself from Srinjoy’s grasp. “Let me call the police.” Srinjoy shouted, panting heavily.

The sadhu vigorously pleaded with Srinjoy to let him go. “I’m not a cheat, bachcha. Let me go. You have got back your money. Why do you want to call the police?”

“Rascal, you are not a sadhu!” Srinjoy yelled, “you are a petty thief who deserves to go to jail!”

A couple of onlookers came forward and implored Srinjoy to let the Sadhu go. Srinjoy sensed that the onlookers weren’t in a mood to earn the wrath of Gods by becoming an accomplice to an act of supposed blasphemy.  “Okay, I’ll let you go, but give me that amulet first”, he demanded, pointing to the sadhu’s fist.

The mystic shrank back and looked at Srinjoy with an expression of fear and desperation on his face. “No no, I can not give you that!” the Sadhu said.

“If you don’t give me that”, Srinjoy growled “I will call the police right here and right now.”

“I can not give you that, it is my lucky charm! Please, please don’t take it from me”, the sadhu begged.

“Okay, you won’t understand, eh? Let me call the police. You won’t know what it is to cheat a person unless you are thrashed soundly at the police station”

A sizeable crowd had gathered around them by then. Srinjoy could see a policeman approach from a distance. The mystic too had seen that. He opened his fist and offered the amulet to Srinjoy. “Okay, take this, bachcha, and let me go. But this was my lucky charm. It had saved me from all troubles all these years. My life depended on it. I don’t know why it failed today. Take this, and never part with it.” He placed the amulet in Srinjoy’s hand and quickly made his way through the swarm of onlookers, striding towards the traffic intersection at a frantic pace. Srinjoy looked at the amulet and slipped it into his pocket. The crowd was dispersing. As he started walking back towards his car, he heard a sharp screeching sound of a vehicle applying sudden brakes, followed by a loud thud. Almost immediately, he saw people running towards the traffic intersection.

Srinjoy reached the scene in no time.  A pick up truck was standing awkwardly in the middle of the road. And before it, in a pool of blood, lay the body of the sadhu, his lifeless gaze fixed at the fathomless horizon. Srinjoy felt a surge of nausea overwhelm him and he dropped to the ground.

The following week, Srinjoy came to know that he had won the bid for the contract.

“Sahib!” Ram Singh’s voice pierced his daze as the Landcruiser came to a stop. “Sahib, can you remember where you threw the purse, sahib?”

Srinjoy alighted from the car and looked around in bewilderment. The landscape had swallowed his talisman.

Bowing to public demand and a large number of requests and DMs on Twitter, I am hereby putting up the official version of Dhoniface (reasonable quality JPEG) here. Downloads will be appreciated. Mentions are optional.

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.

That evening, Tarachand just didn’t feel right. He couldn’t put his finger on where the ailment lay, but he was convinced that not everything in his body was working as efficiently as it had been for the past many years. It was a vague uneasiness that gave him a mild headache and took away his appetite. Could be a bout of gas, he reflected, as his wife brought him his dinner. Three chappatis, a bowl each of dal and vegetable curry, and a teaspoon of his favourite lime pickle. He ate just one chappati, and a few sips of the dal. The rest, he pushed away, nauseous and wary. Then the pain came. It began just after he had ambled off to the wash basin to wash his hands. The dull ache that seemed to originate in the pit of his stomach gradually worsened into a vague, uncomfortable heaviness that enveloped his entire chest. Tarachand vomited once, and felt better.

“Let’s go to the doctor”, his anxious wife suggested, picking up the phone.

“Aaah!”, Tarachand protested, wiping off beads of perspiration from his forehead with his shirt sleeve, “why bother him so late in the night? I’m fine”

His wife would have none of it. She spoke to Dr. Verma, who urged her to reach a nearby nursing home. He’d examine him there, he told her. An autorickshaw was summoned, and soon Tarachand found himself lying on a funny looking stretcher in the Emergency Room of the nondescript WellCure Nursing Home.

Eloquence was not a virtue that Dr. Verma was bestowed with. During his brief visit, he spoke only twice. Once, when he demanded his modest fees of five hundred rupees the instant he entered the room, and then a couple of minutes later, when he handed Tarachand’s wife a lengthy prescription. “Admitting him…severe acidity”, and throwing a brief glance at the rather stern faced nurse, “sister, tomorrow morning….tests.” Tarachands wife wanted to throw a question or two at him, but decided against, trusting the sagacity of Dr. Verma to relieve her husband’s agony.

Dr. Verma left as purposefully as he had arrived. Tarachand was shifted to an adjacent room which bore the letters ‘D lux Ward’. The ‘e’, it appeared, had jumped off plate and escaped long ago. The nurse, then, happily set about perforating Tarachand’s veins one after the other in an attempt to set up an intravenous line. Half an hour later, she let go, registering her success with a final needle jab on Tarachand’s aggrieved buttocks. “Go to sleep”, she demanded of the patient and exited the ward, flicking off the lights and bidding his wife not to disturb her at any cost during the night.

In the dull red glow of the night light, Tarachand could hardly make out the details of the room. There were three cots, with him occupying the one closest to the door. His wife sat on a wooden bench kept between the first and the second cots. In the melee of the past hour, she had forgotten to eat her dinner, and now she was exhausted, more sleepy than hungry. Next to the bench stood a small wooden cabinet. It was unlocked, and the doors were left a little ajar. A queasy smell of disinfectant hung in the room. The overhead fan screeched monotonously and the dark heavy curtains on the window at the farthest corner quivered every now and then as if gently shaken by an unseen force. Though the dull ache had subsided, the gloomy atmosphere within the room left Tarachand ill at ease. Thinking of his son, an engineer who was posted at a distant city, Tarachand fell asleep.

In the middle of the night, Tarachand woke up with a start. A monstrous, crushing pain engulfed his entire chest, and flowed across to his left arm, numbing his entire upper torso. In a wave of insane panic, Tarachand realised that he was unable to cry out, his voice throttled by the searing agony that appeared to squeeze his lungs into a lump of dough. He instantly knew he was going to die. As his consciousness began to wane, a sinking sensation gripped him that forbade him that the end was near.

That was when he heard a deep, husky voice floating up to him in the darkness of the room. “Get up, hey, get up!”

With a punishing effort, Tarachand turned to face his interlocutor. His wife was nowhere to be seen, and his gaze fell upon the huddling frame of an old man who was sitting on the adjacent cot. Despite his excruciating torment, Tarachand startled. He hadn’t seen this man when he was brought to this room. Must have been admitted later in the night, he thought.

The old man now looked directly at him, raised his wiry hand and pointed a finger at his direction. “Get up, yes…you…”

Tarachand was wet with perspiration. What sort of a joke was this? There he lay, possibly dying, and the old coot, instead of summoning help, was ordering him around!

With a painful grunt, Tarachand implored in a feeble voice “Help….please. Call my wife…please….I am dying…..”

The fan made a sudden screeching sound as a gush of midnight air rushed into the room, making the curtains flutter wildly. The old man appeared to shift on the bed, and lunging towards the wooden cabinet, he spoke again in a steely sort of voice “See…I am too old to move about. Get up and get that pill on the upper shelf of the cabinet. Get it fast….”

Tarachand could not comprehend what was happening. Possibly this man knew where the sister had kept his medicines, and was only trying to help. He tried to get up. The agonising throes of pain wrung his heart relentlessly, and his head seemed to swim in a vacuum.

“Get up..quick….the bottle on the top shelf…take it now….” The old man’s voice was devoid of every shred of emotion.

Tarachand summoned all his strength and sat up on his bed. He immediately clutched his heart. “Aaaaaahh!”

The man seemed to move closer. A sudden gush of air slapped Tarachand into momentary consciousness. The man’s voice was ringing in his ears “…the bottle on the top shelf…” Tarachand reached for the wooden cabinet, but crashed to the floor in a thud. He was choking. The breath was now coming only in gasps. Then he heard something fall. A small plastic bottle fell close to him. He reached out and grasped it instantaneously.

As Tarachand lay on the floor, he thought he saw the old man’s face hovering above him. “Open the bottle, Tarachand….” he spoke clearly, almost in a whisper.

With a violent last effort, Tarachand uncapped the bottle, emptied the contents on the floor and grasped a few of the tiny white pills. But before he could pop them, his face contorted and his eyeballs gauged out as he suffered a massive heart attack. Tarachand gasped and passed out.

********

Two days later.

Tarachand opened his eyes. He found himself in an ICU, with countless monitors beeping around him. There were scores of tubes and catheters jutting out from all parts of his body. His chest was tightly bandaged. Oh God! He was alive, he thought.

His wife was allowed in a couple of hours later. She cried hard for sometime. When she left, his son was allowed in. Tarachand’s eyes turned moist. “Cheer up Papa. You won the battle!”

Tarachand’s eyes wandered across the ICU. His son continued “Ma saw you lying on the floor. She was sleeping outside on a bench as she found the room dark and unpleasant. There was a bottle in your hand, and pills were scattered all around you. There were even a few in your mouth…”

Tarachand felt a lump rising in his throat. His son continued, “Ma raised an alarm. The hospital people arranged an ambulance and you were brought here. The doctors did a bypass operation in the night itself.”

“Papa, what you did was a miracle”, The son patted his arm lovingly. “The doctors here are full of praise for you. You did the right thing by popping those sorbitrate pills. How did you know those were there papa?”

Tarachand grappled with his thoughts, trying to remember the events on that fateful day. Then, suddenly, everything flashed in his mind like a lightning. The old man, the dark windy ward, the excruciating agony of a failing heart. He remembered falling on the floor and uncapping the bottle, but he failed to recall if he had put those pills in his mouth.

Tarachand was breathing heavily. A chill ran down his spine. Haltingly, he whispered, “…the old man…”

“Yes…yes….I know” his son nodded. “Dr. Verma told me all. That bottle belonged to an old man who died in the same ward a couple of days ago. When his body was taken away, the relatives perhaps left the bottle in the cabinet.”



1. #InSomalia They serve Kentucky Afraid Chicken.
2. Jacques Kallis, Bappi Lahiri & Adnan Sami have been the greatest all rounders since the past 20 years. Adnan has lost his form of late.
3. Shoppers Stop is a stop where top shoppers stop to shop.
4. Girls gorging on junk food and cola would end up ruining their waste to heap ratios.
5. The social ladder is a ladder one can climb without having to remove the stilettos
6. As you sow, social you reap
7. What do you call the Chief Statistician of the Family Planning Programme? Interpreter of Mala Ds
8. Every time Wen Jiabaos, does Manmohan Singh have to bow too?
9. What would you call a Japanese godman with magical powers? Bon-Sai Baba
10. Avoid too much of junk food. Your stomach isn’t a place to stow-muck.
11. Girls looking for jobs are candidates in the morning and candy dates in the evening
12. The relationship between a cow, cow’s urine and a naturalist is explained by Pytha GORAS Theorem
13. The best meat dish in China – Dragon Josh
14. The only way Mark Zuckerberg can get seriously injured is if Rajinikanth pokes him on Facebook
15. If Bobby Deol’s career doesn’t soar after Yamla Pagla Deewana, he can change his name to Lobby Deol and become a successful PR lobbyist
16. In Bollywood, there are many ‘Couching’ Tigers and hidden dragons.
17. How many corporate lobbyists does it take to change the light bulb? Actually none. They don’t want people to see the light!
18. What do Garry Kasparov’s aides do when he faints upon losing to Anand? They carry gasp-arov.
19. #WhyWomenFallForShane Because he turns it bothways and occasionally lets one slip through.
20. Diggy Singh – “A woman chief minister called me up today and vehemently claimed that Sheila ki Jawani was based on her life!” #diggyleaks
21. 800 new Radia tapes? How much Radia-activity did she spread?
22. Who says women are discriminated against in work places. Don’t BPO jobs for women come with a lot of STALK options?
23. What is Sensex? Putting an X sign on your SENSE.
24. Would data about stools be called scatistics?
25. Never judge a butterfly by its looks, a book by its covers and a girl by her T shirt message.
26. The 2G spectrum begins with shades of gray and ends in pitch black.
27. James Bond’s status message “The girls are lovely, dark and deep. But I have appointments to keep. And miles to fly before I sleep..”
28. Among other news, Osama bin Laden, inspired by Harry Potter movies, insists on being called the HAIRY PLOTTER henceforth.
29. I am convinced that Salman Khan’s blockbuster movie ‘The-Bongg’ is a timeless tribute to Bengalis…
30. On a scale of 1 to Keshto Mukherjee, I never get drunk more than Dharmender level.
31. Having seen Jab We Met three or four times, I’m now curious to see Jab We Mate
32. NDTV’s status message: The Buck Stops Here. Arnab’s status message at Times Now: The Bakra Stops Here
33. What do you call beautiful Hyderabadi girls? Charmi Naari?
34. Pamela Anderson and Ashmit are easily mistaken for Pamela And-Her-Son.
35. An iPill a day, keeps the gynec away! #modernproverbs
36. A Raja was last seen drowning his sorrows in a bottle of spect rum.
37. ‘Aap QATAR mey hain-’ loosely translates to ‘You are in KU-WAIT’
38. What do you call a lump of despair wrapped in a crust of deception? Ferrero Rocher
39. Scams come to light when shit hits the fan. There must be a mechanism to detect shit moving towards the fan.
40. Girls with names like Preeti Hotchandani shouldn’t complain if guys call her Pretty Hot for short.
41. In a world where everyone wants everything lengthened, URL shorteners come as a welcome change.
42. People living in GLOSS houses shouldn’t throw STAINS on others
43. “Whining isn’t everything…. It’s the only thing”.
44. Traveling in a low cost airline feels exactly like traveling in AIR FARCE ONE.
45. Kentucky Freud Chicken is nothing but Jung food!
46. You become bisexual once you cross sixty, i.e., you say bye to sex.
47. The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful, and has nobody to thank!
48. The fellow who laughs last may laugh the longest, but he definitely gets the reputation of being very dumb witted
49. Doc to Margaret Mitchell – Do you still have stomach ache? Mitchell – Nah! Gone with the wind…
50. Whereas a well endowed woman will cause a ‘Grand Maal’ seizure in a man, a slender lass will cause a ‘Petite Maal’ seizure!

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!

]]> http://roflindian.com/2010/06/28/google-chromosome/feed/ 30 Rofl Indian lap_pillow01 http://roflindian.com/2010/06/19/susie-returns/ http://roflindian.com/2010/06/19/susie-returns/#comments Sat, 19 Jun 2010 13:21:27 +0000 Rofl Indian http://roflindian.wordpress.com/?p=915 ]]> 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!