A funny forward

————I didn`t write this————–

Boss says to secretary: For a week we will be going abroad, so make arrangements.

Secretary calls up Husband: “For a week my boss and I will be going abroad, you will have to look after yourself.”

Husband makes a call to his secret lover: “My wife is going abroad for a week, so let us spend the week together.”

Secret lover calls up a small boy who attends her private tution: “I have work for a week, so you need not come for class.”

Small boy calls up his grandfather: “Grandpa, for a week I don’t have tuitions ‘coz my teacher is busy. Let us spend the week together.”

Grandpa (the 1st boss) calls up his secretary: “This week I am spending my time with my grandson. We cannot attend that meeting.”

Secretary makes a call to her husband: “This week my boss has some work, we canceled our trip.”

Husband makes a call to his secret lover: “We cannot spend this week together; my wife has canceled her trip.”

Secret lover calls the small boy whom she is tutoring: “This week we will have class as usual.”

Small boy calls up his grandfather: “Grandpa, my teacher said this week I have to attend class. Sorry I can’t give you company.”

Grandpa calls up his secretary: “Don’t worry this week we will attend that meeting, so make arrangements.”
And it goes on…

Mobiles – still an enigma for most

A month back Rekha gifted her father a mobile and asked him to start using it right away. He had always depended on a landline that would stop working because of something as trivial as a neighbor`s fart (lose connections can happen when walls of the house shake!).

Rekha did mention to me that she had gifted her father a mobile phone but I didn`t pursue the case any further.

Today, when I called up my father in law, he started complaining that I wasn`t calling him up as frequently as I used to.

“But father, I did try calling you a couple of times….you weren`t home.” I tried to reason out. Why fight with somebody who holds the remote control of the person who holds your remote?

“Ohh come on. Stop lying. If I wasn`t home….why didn`t you call me on my mobile?”

“Your mobile? How stupid of me…I never asked for your mobile number. So what is it?”

“What do you mean ‘what is it`…weren`t you guys the ones to gift me the mobile? Wouldn`t you know the number?”

“Are you using the mobile that Rekha gifted you?” I inquired.

Did You Know?


(instructions as given on Pacific States Telephone & Telegraph Company directory in year 1906 A.D.)
How to Answer a Telephone Call

Remove the hand telephone from the hook and say “Here is Main 297” (or
whatever your number may be). The party calling should say “Here is main
298,” (or whatever the number may be). Much friction and annoyance will
be avoided if this simple plan is carried out.

“Yes. I charge it daily and always carry it with me.” I couldn`t doubt my father in law. He never lies to me, except that one time when he said his daughter was a good girl (I think this was before our marriage).

I thought for a while. In situations like this, it is the ability of Rajans (by this I refer to all generations before me) to think like Dell Computers Call center executives that has got us out unscathed.

“Father, let us start from the beginning.”

“Sure.” I loved the cockiness in my father in law`s tone. Perhaps, I will have it on the day I control the happiness of the person I am speaking to.

“Did Rekha gift you a mobile?”

“She sure did.” If my father in law participated in one of these quiz programs on TV, I am sure he would have won the buzzer round.

“Did you accept it?”

“I sure did.”

“Did you then charge it for one whole day, as is expected of the buyer when one buys a new mobile?”

“I sure did. Though I didn`t buy it but my daughter did.”

“That`s not a problem. And have you been using it reggggguuuuulllllllarly?” I stretched a bit so that he got my impatience.

“I sure do. I carry it with me everywhere I go.” He failed to get my hint.

“Ok…have you made any calls from this mobile?” My impatience grew but I didn`t stretch any word this time because couldn`t decide on the right word.

“No son. For all my calls I use my landline. I am using this mobile only for incoming calls.”

“Ok…so are you getting incoming calls on this mobile?”

“No son…I haven`t got a single call on this mobile, yet. Is it because I didn`t give the number to anybody?”

“Yes father! Why don`t you distribute it?” How much I wish I could tell him that writing his mobile number on the toilet walls of Cochin`s bus stand could get him a lot of incoming calls.

“But I don`t have it son. Your wife never gave me the number. She just gave me the mobile and asked me to start using it.” Smart chap….when a complaint is being lodged she is ‘your wife` and when she does anything good it is ‘my daughter`.

After twenty more minutes I figured out that my father in law hadn`t got a mobile connection – and was just charging the phone daily and carrying it with him expecting incoming calls.

I didn`t tell him there was something wrong with him – instead have told him that something was wrong with the mobile. Now, a friend of mine will collect it from him, sort it out and then give it back to him after a while. The only issue: The mobile bills will come to my Malayali friend`s house and I will have to transfer the money every month. But hey, my father in law is worth it.

Other Funny Reads

# Getting my hair cut under a tree
# Now I have a ‘study` of my own…
# How to get into a conversation with a girl
# Communicating a baby`s birth to the World

Categories
Family

Guess what we bought this weekend

My great grand father used to roam around the grass lands of Tamil Nadu with his 1000+ goats and sheep – exactly like the protagonist in Paulo Coelho`s book ‘The Alchemist`. I am not making this up.

The only difference between The Alchemist`s protagonist and my great grand father was that ….my old man traveled in a huge group of his family and relatives.

Times were good…back then the air was clean and sex was dirty (did George Burns say this?). Being a roamer, my great grand father and his family would sleep in a ‘Kudil`. In Tamil ‘Kudil` is the term given to a semi-circular contraption that you carry around to live in. Since there was no pollution and the biggest threat in the grass lands were snakes…life was a breeze for my great grand father and his family.

This is how a Kudil looks:

His son (that`s my grand father) didn`t like the traveling job and decided to settle down in a then prosperous village called ‘Maangudi`. ‘Maangudi` when broken up meant ‘an abode of deers`. Though, now the village is dry and its inhabitants are suffering due to lack of rains…back then it was a lush green village.

My grand father built a 300 square feet house first. It had mud walls, and low doors. Narrow wooden poles held up the thatched roof. Most of the time was spent outside the house – both the afternoon siesta and the night sleep was on the verandah. My guess is…the 300 square meters was used only for the intimate moments – which anyway lasted only 60 seconds. After all, men have been known to pull a fast one on the women for ages. If you know what I mean.

In effect, they enjoyed the benefits of nature and never felt the need for…what Rekha and I bought this weekend.

My father, who quit farming as a youngster, took wings in 1969. He joined the Indian Army and in the 32 years of his service (can you believe that he kept a single job for 32 years? I will have at least 20 jobs in that many years!) rraveled to different parts of the country. Just that he wasn`t herding goats & sheep as he traveled.

He was given huge houses to stay in. Since I was a kid back then……I would say the houses allotted to my father were at least 20,000 square feet big…it took me half a day to crawl from one wall to another.

There always would be a garden, and a few trees in each house allotted…which meant summers were spent in the shade. When we had to stay inside the house…the Engineer in my father would come up with an idea, which was left to us to implement.

Most Sundays were spent with the family of five bundled in one cot…with a thin, wet bed sheet on top of the mosquito net railings. This ensured a cool breeze from the fan. The only problem: Being the eldest, it was my job to wet the bed sheet every half hour in a bucket of water kept beside the cot…and then spread it on the railings again. In effect, I was my family`s air conditioner from 1985 to 1990.

After my father retired, and we moved back to Madurai…I was too old to be an air conditioner and too young to buy one for my room.

There were occasional air conditioner related disappointments – a visit to a friend`s place, an A/C advertisement, an old A/C in the junk shop….anything and everything related to A/Cs was disappointing. Probably because my father didn`t believe in A/Cs. He was of the opinion that if God wanted us to have A/Cs he would have attached one on our bums.

Which good son doesn`t have his father as a role model? I too grew up hating A/Cs and people who used A/Cs. It helped that A/Cs cost a lot and back then the disposable incomes weren`t huge either – the time when Dr Manmohan Singh hadn`t opened up the Indian Economy and five figure salaries were manna from heaven.

And then I got married. Every time Rekha suggested that we buy an A/C, I would say: “Why? My great grandfathers slept in the open…let us open the bedroom`s window. Maybe even leave the door open.”

After four years of marriage my wife Rekha decided not to take it anymore. So when I repeated the above statement, last Friday, she said: “Well, in that case…go sleep with your grand fathers.”

And on Sunday, we bought a cheap LG AC.

Moral of the story: When it is the right time to buy consumer durables, grand fathers can`t do a thing.

Other Funny Reads

# Entering a new house
# Of what could have been….
# Getting locked inside somebody`s washroom
# A south Indian family in North Indian winter
# CBI arrests Joe King; detains him for questioning

When deodorants got banned

Deodorants are very important in today`s World. In fact, when the first time capsule was buried 50 feet below the ground, during the World Fair in 1937, a deodorant can was one of the items kept inside. It was expected that after traveling a long way the Aliens would take bath, spray the deo and freshen up before sitting down for a dialogue. Just in case you believed me, I am kidding.

While reading this blog post further….think of me as an 82-year-old journalist writing a news item in the year 2057 A.D.

If you are as old as I am, you probably remember the days when one could use deodorants without the fear of being arrested. Back then, parents would gift deodorants to their sons on their 18th birthdays. Or sisters would take their brothers out for shopping so that they could select a good deo for their boyfriends. Or husbands would walk up to their wives and say: ‘Hey, you smell of onions and garlic. Here use this deo!”

If you don`t remember, let this 82 year old man jog your memory. In 2025 A.D Indian doctors identified eight dangerous compounds in deodorants and recommended that its use be banned. At first the Government didn`t take notice of the scientists` findings…but when the scientists proved that consistent use of deodorants on white mice resulted in infertility, they sat up and listened.

The Government discussed it in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, where the ban found 100% support. Some traced it to the fact that our MPs raise a stink because they don`t use deos….and perhaps that`s why they didn`t oppose when the bill on banning of deos.

Some of the deodorant manufacturing companies protested, but when the CEOs were asked to use their own brand of deodorants and prove that it wasn`t harmful…they all backed out. One of them blacked out.

Thus in 2030 A.D. deodorants were banned. Life wasn`t really affected much because people moved to perfumes. But in 2033 A.D. Priyanka Gandhi, the new Prime Minister of the country, banned perfumes too. She said she didn`t like Robert Vadra using it.

Ever since that day, Indians have been living a life without deodorants and perfumes. The outside world didn`t really notice, till Pakistan & Bangladesh complained that its citizens living on its borders were being affected. The stench was so bad that some of the kids born in the border areas were born with deformities.

On April 1, 2050 A.D. Pakistan raised a stink about the issue in United Nation`s Security Council and said that the lives of its citizens were being compromised. At first, the Security Council`s members laughed thinking Pakistan`s concern about the lives of its citizens was an April Fools joke. But when Pakistan`s Foreign Minister Iqbal (some say he got the name because he only had one hair on his head) insisted on the severity of the issue, the Security Council members relented and agreed to speak to India`s fourth Prime Minister from BJP party….Rahul Gandhi.

Many Indian thinkers, in jail for using smuggled deos on their armpits as a mark of protest, wrote to Rahul asking him to revoke the ban. The scientific man that Rahul was, he asked his scientists to check if the ban on deodorants had improved the fertility amongst the Indians and the population growth was back on track.

I remember the scientists` verdict coming in after a fortnight. It said: “The ban on deo usage has improved the fertility of the Indians…but our population growth rate is still going down.”

Can you guess why? If yes, please leave a comment.

Other Must Reads

# What if I was born in 2050 A.D.?
# SPAM = Somebody`s Patience Almost Murdered
# How life style changes after heavy rains
# Wasn`t cricket supposed to be a man`s game?

A lonely, desperate man

Have you ever been desperate? If you are a lady, you probably DON`T know how it feels…but a man will understand. A man, who is short, dark and makes no sense to pretty girls will understand it better. Just in case you don`t know, I am short, dark and make no sense to girls…somebody like GB Shaw. >> See his picture

GB Shaw

Gb Shaw

Some of you might argue that GB Shaw made no sense to the girls because he was intelligent. But that`s not the point I am debating here.

Anyway, I have been home alone for the last 25 days. Rekha has been away since April 12 and my girl friend has been away on assignments ever since (how I hate working girlfriends!). Thanks to these thankless souls I have been having a lonely existence.

Here is how a desperate, lonely man`s average day goes:

6.35 a.m.:
Get up and check the phone first. See if the girl friend called you while you were asleep. Why didn`t she call? Has she found a boyfriend? Check the missed calls. What if she called late in the night and you missed it? As a last resort, check if the wife has left any missed calls. Pointless, I know. Why would a wife leave a missed call late in the night? Wouldn`t she be snoring?

7.00 a.m.:
Check mobile again. What if the girl friend called when you were in the loo reading the newspaper.

7.20 a.m.:
Debate if one has to make tea. For it means, three utensils will get soiled and will have to be washed – the pan, the sieve and the ceramic cup. Eventually one makes tea and looks at the mobile again – this time for missed calls.

8.00 a.m.:
Sit in front of the desktop and see if there are any new mails. After the gmail account, try the hotmail account and then the Yahoo account. The last mail in Yahoo account is at 12.30 a.m., which you have already seen. It is the one about ‘how to give complete pleasure to the woman in your life,` and you had already responded saying there were none to be seen around.

8.15 a.m.:
Wonder if you really have to take bath because no one will know if you didn`t. Decide to just brush your teeth – and that too because Pepsodent Mint was bought yesterday and you are keen to know how it tastes. Try eating a squeeze of Pepsodent Mint tooth paste and find out that the froth (or is it foam?) is more than that in a Close Up paste.

8.25 a.m.:
Come out of the washroom feeling happy that you didn`t have to take bath. Dry the towel outside anyway because you don`t want the neighbours to suspect that you didn`t take bath.

8.45 a.m.:
Lock the door hoping to bring along a girl (or a boy) in the evening for some company. Before you lock and turn your brain lets you know that it is not going to happen. So feel sad and depressed.

8.50 a.m.:
Sit in the car and wonder who to call during the 10 minute drive to the office. Think of girls in previous office. Wonder if the girl reportee in previous job would be married or not. Wonder if her husband would end up pick up the call? Anyway, try her number and find out that she is already talking to somebody – her boyfriend perhaps.

9.05 a.m.:
Reach the office car park. Try hard. Anybody who can be called? Decide that even a boy is fine as long as he picks up the phone. He doesn`t pick up the phone. Console self that he must be driving.

9.15 a.m. to 7.30 p.m.:
Spend the whole day thinking if you will get somebody to spend the evening with. After 5.30 p.m. decide that even a man will do. After 7.00 p.m. decide that even somebody about 45 years of age will do. At 7.30 p.m. – when you are leaving office – realize that even a plastic doll will do.

8.00 p.m.:
While opening the door, wonder if it would have been better if you were a girl. It would have been child`s play to get a boy home. A nudge here, a wink there….that is all one would have required.

8.30 p.m.:
Wonder if you can call that girl who once said she liked your funny articles on Ouchmytoe. Was she married? Did she sound as if she was married? No idea. Plan dropped because didn`t want to be confronted by an upset husband/boyfriend.

9.00 p.m.:
Nothing like a Fosters beer to give you company. Two Fosters is even better.

10.00 p.m.:
See if the porn collection you have been building over the years still looks exciting. Find out that you have outgrown your collection and need something more contemporary. Age has mellowed you down and you are treading new territory – tasteful porn.

10.15 p.m.:
Find out a site called http://www.savitabhabhi.com (Don`t click if you are in office) – realize that this will be a sure hit among the Indian audience. Especially the male audience.

11.30 p.m.:
Realize that porn is a bad thing. Decide to have dinner instead and hit the bed.

12 midnight:
Hit the bed a lonely, desperate man.

Other Funny Reads

# Hosting a dinner at home
# Now I have a ‘study` of my own…
# Losing bets
# Train-ed Romance
# When you are in love with yourself…
# The art of shaving