I forget

I forget. I forget to switch off the headlights of my car. I've had this car for less than six months. I have also dried up the battery three times in those six months. That’s about once every two months, in spite of being cautious and completely aware of my problems with lights. I know I forget, but I also forget that I forget.

The first time it occurred, it was ten in the night. Who in the right mind would forget to switch off lights in such utter darkness? I did, probably it was a full moon day. I called up the insurance company to fix the dead battery. The battery was not dead that it cannot come alive, the battery was just in a coma state, like those heroes in the tragic movies who wake up to say the final lines after the heroine shed drops of tears in despair. I waited for my car’s heroine to bring it out from coma. She arrived — the car doctor, in a funky car that shouted ‘I LOVE PINK and I'm blind to all the other colors’ and pulled out a red box much like a doctor’s defibrillator.

The car came alive, puffing, panting and ready to run around. Like any other car doctor, she advised me to keep the car running for at least twenty minutes before asking me to sign a bunch of papers. Then you tip her, attend automated phone calls to provide feedback hoping that the insurance company is tracking all your wonderful feedbacks that will eventually turn into a sizable discount the next time you renew. Or you’ll probably find them expensive and switch to a new insurance provider, who' will charge you for the crow-shit on the passenger side door-handle.

If I can forget to switch off the light at night, I can do it in the broad daylight too. To be really honest, there was n’t much daylight on that foggy, rainy morning. I parked my car under the usual tree that gave reasonable shade in the insanely hot parking lot. The office parking lot is humongous, and with all the cars humming all the time, it is no place for humming birds or human beings. It is so hot that you might wonder if the Sun is somehow closer to the parking lot than the rest of the places in the world. It is hot enough to turn an egg into an omelet if you don't mind your dashboard getting a little sticky and smelly.

On that rainy day, when my battery went into a coma state for the second time, I had borrowed a colorful umbrella from a colleague at office. That is also the day I understood the logic of why people buy kaleidoscopic umbrellas. I just had to say, “Look for a rainbow in the parking lot” to the car-doctor who had no trouble in finding me in that parking lot. He came in a flashy car, and he promptly finished his defibrillation even before I closed my flashy umbrella. Now I had to tip him. I wondered why I should tip a guy who came in a maroon Challenger when I rode a marooned so called car. Oh- what the heck, I paid him. You don't get to tip to people who are richer than you every day.

The third time hasn't occurred yet. But it has occurred many times within my subconscious. I wake up in the middle of the night, I ponder about the time I parked my car at the community where I live. I probably won't remember much apart from dinner. Anyway,I grab the keys from the porcelain bowl at the door and run to the parking lot only to breathe a sigh of relief. The car would be perfectly okay. I had switched it off when I parked it.

I know that it serves no purpose to get excited in the middle of the night, the battery would be either in a coma-state or in perfect condition, and it wouldn't matter much if I continued to sleep, but I forget. I forget that there is only a thin line between what you are aware and what you think you are aware.

Troublesome tables

There was this girl who worked with DBA team in my company. 

She was so bad at her work that she replied, 

‘I’m not good with carpentry,’ to a request for creating a simple table with five columns. 

 Her next question to the requester proved to be much more insightful about her capacity to surprise the most calmest, ‘Why do you need five columns in the first place?  The tables usually come with four legs.’ The requester is still rolling on the floor and has never been able to come out of the terrible trauma. 

  She was not joking; she also didn't realize that the joke was on her. Poor soul, within a week, she was so fed up with troublesome table related queries that she stopped eating on dining tables and decided to take her life standing on a large table. Regrettably, she couldn't even do that, for she forgot to commit the suicide.

Disclaimer:

It is just a joke. Please don't sue me. I have no tables at home.

The Pendulum clock - Part 1/2

  We have a new member at our house, an antique Pendulum clock-- if you can bracket fifty years under the term 'antique'. The clock is sturdy, and the clock led me to the history of pendulum clocks, and on how even moving a pendulum clock to a higher floor is bound to influence its accuracy. 

  Gifted by a very dear friend of my father, it is absolutely useless in terms of meeting the purpose of a clock, keeping accurate time; it goes slow by five minutes every eight and half hour. The lag-factor is accurate; calculated after intricate notes and calculation during the long sleepless hours I spent in my bed in the last two flu-struck days.

    Despite its flaws and the lack of purpose like most of us, what it does best is that it keeps chiming regularly, very  much like us. We do the same thing over and over without knowing why we are doing it or what we are supposed to  accomplish from whatever we are doing without knowing why we are doing it.

 There is a whole lot of difference between gaining three years of experience and having three years of one year experience - the latter is the type of experience we gain when we do the thing that we did in the first year for three years, and often is the type of experience most of us manage to gain - Just like the purposeless pendulum that chimes without proper rhythm.
  
 But the dear friend of my father came home to tell us the secret - The secret of the pendulum clock.

 --To be continued

A bit of history : If someone sells you a four hundred year old pendulum clock, beware, he surely thinks you are a fool. There is no four hundred year old pendulum clock; the oldest one would only be around 350 years old. 

Entrepreuners at the bus stand

    Waiting for the office bus is what I do at twelve in the Noon every day. A year ago, I waited for the bus near the Subway in DMS. Now that the Metro construction has submerged the subway, I have moved to the big tree near the Teynampet Fire station. The big burly fire engine at the Fire station is always ready for action. Held at its tires by two small stones on a sloping pathway, the fire engine can jump to action with the ease of dividing fractions. The old bus stop had one thriving business. A fruit seller selling gooseberries and guavas. With the new bus stop, came new business men.

1)      A lime soda seller

 The Lime soda seller has a blue three wheeler with the price of lime soda advertised all over it. Why are all the lime soda three wheelers blue in color? Probably to tell us that lime soda is cool. I might get into trouble if I say blue is the coolest of all colors, what if I hurt someone's sentiment. Or may be all the lime soda three wheelers actually belong to the same person who had stocked a lot blue paint to paint his porch. Or to paint as Lord Krishna during a fancy dress competition that did not happen. It might even be a big brand without a name, a nameless brand marked only by blue color.  

2)      A tender coconut seller

The tender coconut seller is never tender to any of his customers. He has a head like a shaved coconut, and he behaves as if the entire place is his own. I once bought a tender coconut from him, and he charged me an exorbitant 40 Rs for it. Probably because "Illichavayan" is written in italics across my forehead. In spite of the hot weather, I never felt thirsty at the bus stand again. Come to think about it, it is far fairly priced than the coffee I stopped drinking so long ago at Saravana Bhavan.

3)      An underwear seller

  The most interesting business enterprise in front of a Fire station should definitely be awarded to this gentleman. This underwear seller has a great affinity toward reading and applying daily newspaper in his everyday life. He makes use of the newspaper for everything in his little roofless shop. Every day morning, he sweeps his working area, a ten foot square foot area just in front of that huge Fire Engine, and rolls out two layers of newspaper on the floor. Then he goes about displaying his goods, the macho underwear in unimaginable colors and patterns, the hankies with myriad flowers, and vests as colorful as rainbow.  But what fascinates me most is the value addition of the quotes on the underwear he sells? 

Pearls of wisdom on your ass.  

Anguished English- Time to wear dirty clothes

  One of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Rightly subtitled ‘An anthology of accidental assaults upon our language ’, Anguished English is Richard Lederer’s collection of anecdotes and one liners from various facets of life. Wear old clothes while you read this book or even the excerpts in this article, you might dirty yourself rolling on the ground.

 Few of my favorites quips from Anguished English. They say, trying to dissect a joke is like dissecting a frog. It smells and the frog would probably be dead. So, I’m not attempting a dissection, but a commentary (in blue) to some delightful imagination.

Student bloopers from Anguished English:

 The below bloopers were performed by students with a different perspective on the World history. Just that they were blessed with an overworking imagination.

 The pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain. The Egyptians built the pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. – Obviously the students thought that the Egyptians could build mountains by watering huge triangular cubes. I think the triangular cubes are one of the extinct shapes like the extinct bird dodo.

It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper. - I always wanted to know the author of the bible. I wonder what circulated in the veins before the invention of circulation of blood. And Sir Francis Drake’s feat is definitely unique – an expert circumcision.

 Gravity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn, when the apples are falling off the trees.-  Probably why there are no apples in South India, too much of gravity too early.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between, he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present.- Did the musical composition create large number of children. He might have risen out of his grave to search the student who wrote this.

Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.-   Just another way to express death of great person.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign. – Such a genius. A genius is 99% imagination and 1% tomfoolery.

Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead. – How did B.Franlkin ride a horse with loaves of bread beneath his arms? He must have been in a tight spot. Did he eat them?  We have lots of cats in Tamilnadu, why can’t somebody rub cats backward and generate electricity. Apart from electricity, that would generate jobs too. Thank God Franklin is still dead.

 How I wish someone would publish the Indian assault on English language.  That will be revenge for the pathetic display of Indian cricket team against the visiting England team. What would they title it, Inflamed English?

Any contribution towards the revenge is welcome. This is your chance to take that revenge against English.

King and subject

Samuel Johnson once boasted to his drinking companions that he could instantaneously compose a pun on any subject.

 "The King," someone volunteered.

Johnson replied, "The King, sir, is not a subject."

Exceptional humor is the by product of simple surprise. Finding different meanings for the same word is a way to bring out that surprise. Here it is elegantly done by using the two different meanings of the word subject. 

Here's another one I heard somewhere,

We call our maid a commercial cleaner. Not the way you think but because she cleans only during commercials.

Good technique. Of course it is never easy to come up with original gags with just theoretical knowledge. Let me try to come up with one of my own. :)

Insurance agent

What is the worst thing that can happen to you at a funeral?

 Sense of loss, fear of death, deep depression? No. The worst thing that can happen to you at a funeral is - you meet an insurance agent.

Impeccably dressed in a green t-shirt and pink lungi with floral prints, the insurance agent walked up to me and said, ‘What an unfortunate day, it was so sudden. This can happen to anyone. That is why I urge everyone to take insurance and live in peace.’   

‘It wasn’t sudden. The dead man was ninety seven years old and bedridden for nine months.’ I thought.

Welcome to the world of Insurance agents.

On that funeral day, I endured his persuasion. I endured his pink color lungi with floral prints. His brochure could not allure to me to his obscure assured income and insurance schemes. Every scheme assured income –income to the insurance agent.

He had book in his hand, neatly covered with brown paper. I inquired, ‘What’s this book about? And why is it covered?’

‘Big secret. I don’t let other people know about what I’m reading. ’ He opened that book and showed it to me. It was a Malayalam version of Shiv Khera’s You can Win. 

‘I know this book, but the English version,’ I told him proudly.

‘These Americans, they are so quick. They have already translated it into English. That is why they win more medals than us in the Olympics,’ more explanation on worldly affairs.

‘I have a test tomorrow, I have to prepare,’ I said in an effort to escape further embarrassment.

‘Oh I had tests when I was in school, and they were all surprise tests.’

‘And then?’ I asked.

‘Well. I was surprised’

‘I’m not surprised that you were surprised,' I thought.

‘You don’t want to be surprised in life. Would you? I have a scheme that can help you cut taxes, save money and ensure peace for your family. ’

 ‘Don’t have to study! Well prepared opening bait. Caught the attention of the audience, and your victim in particular,’ the evaluators might say.

Few minutes later, I signed the dotted line - Insured for five lakhs. Coming to think about it, I will never see that money. Now I realize that I actually signed it not for the money but for peace of mind it offered.  -A peaceful life without Insurance agents bugging me.

How do you handle such insurance agents?  After a lot of research, I’ve found out a few ways to tackle insurance agents.

Now the first way is:

  Ask him to join a Multi level marketing meeting conducted by a friend. We all have such friends somewhere. The Agent will join the Multi level marketing scam and become insanely rich or completely insane that he will never sell insurance again.’  Just what you want, you have helped the world to become a better place to live with one less insurance agent.

The next way is asking questions like my cousin did.

My twelve year old cousin walked up to our dear agent and asked, ‘I’ve a coin, Can I insure that?’

‘Oh yes, Rihana’s insured her thighs why can’t you insure your coins?  Btw, how much is the coin worth?’

‘About a crore,’.

‘What a lottery? You have come to the right person.’

‘Yes it is a lottery,’ My cousin produced a twenty paisa coin from his pocket. ‘It might be worth a crore if you use it to scratch a lottery.’

A word of caution: Unless you are a cute twelve year old, insure yourself in case the agent has weak sense of humor. You might end up as the weak one in a hospital. Humor is the best medicine, Sarcasm is even better. But you can’t treat broken ribs with humor and sarcasm.