Fastest Centuries in World: Mohammed Azharuddin from 64 balls. Virender Sehwag from 60 balls. Sanath Jayasuriya from 48 balls. Shahid Afridi from 37 balls. Dritharashtra from 2 balls.
*Dritharashtra of team Mahabharata
I really loved Elizabeth Taylor. I would have married her but I didn’t want to be the ninth guy – that would have really upset my parents.
But you got to give it to Liz Taylor for her taste and ability to identify the right people. All her eight husbands attended her funeral. Known for being late… Liz Taylor lived up to her reputation and arrived 15 minutes late to her own funeral.
A popular Hollywood director has announced a biography tentatively titled: 8 weddings, 16 honeymoons & a funeral. A rival director has decided to do one better and just focus on her early years in Hollywood trying to get work. His movie has been tentatively titled: Forrest Hump.
Quite a pity Liz Taylor had to die so soon…I mean she had it in her to marry three more men and introduce an IPL team of her own. Elizabeth’s XI they would be called. And the kids? Well, eight more kids and we could have had a regiment.
My heart goes out to the lady. There she is…in the middle of a cemetery….sleeping alone….for God knows how long. Her death is a huge lesson for us all: Inside of a coffin there can only be one good sole so don’t buy a new shoe just before your death!
Having witnessed a magic show in a recent birthday party she attended, Rhea is becoming better and better at magic. She runs three shows a day sometimes.
Pakistan vs West Indies – World Cup Quarter Final: Pakistan played like it was the FINAL. And the West Indies like they each had a QUARTER before.
I was born on 26 April, 1975 – a bad time to be born. Indira Gandhi was to announce Emergency in India on 21st June, 1975…but my mother beat her to it by a couple of months and delivered me at the Army Hospital, Jamshedpur on 26 April 1975.
I say a bad time to be born, because 26 April always fell during the summer vacations. As a result I never got the privilege of celebrating birthday in school. My birthdays were either celebrated in trains, with a plate of bread omlette or upma-vada (depending on which state the train was passing by) or in our relatives house where nobody cared.
As a result I have always been envious of people born during regular school days.
Not just my classmates, but the whole school would wear colored clothes to school on their birthdays. Guess, this helped the teacher identify whose birthday it was and remark as soon as she was finished taking attendance: “Ohh…Himanshu, it is your birthday today!”
The sheepish, shy yet proud classmate would then give the stock reply: “Yes, mam.”
I gather, the only time when any of my classmates said “No, mam” was when they were asked if they did the homework. For everything else, it was “yes, mam.”
The class teacher would then respond with her stock second question: “So, how old are you now?”
Gosh! You should be in the class to note the pride in the boy’s or girl’s voice when he/she mentioned the age.
I detested all of this, because I never got a chance to express my pride of being one year older than the previous day.
After the formal talk, the classmate would say: “Mam, I have got chocolates.”
The distribution started with the teachers and those with lucky kids took handfuls to take home.
Depending on how rich their parents were, my classmates would fill their lunch boxes with either Lacto King, Mango Bite or Eclairs and go around the class distributing.
I vividly remember, spending a whole period wondering if it would be morally right to pick up two lacto Kings instead of one when the guy came around. But I always picked one, promising myself that next time I would definitely pick up two.
The best part of celebrating one’s birthday in school was that you never got scolded by the teachers. For somebody like me who got scolded everyday, this meant a lot.
So, why are we talking of celebrating birthdays? That’s because, today Rekha reminded me that Rhea’s birthday was fast approaching and we needed to prepare for the D-day on 29 March.
“So, what are the plans?” I asked.
“Hmm…we need to plan for her class, day-care and her friends in the apartment complex,” Rekha replied.
“Wow…isn’t that too much? Can’t we just give her two lunch boxes full of Lacto Kings or Mango Bites and she could distribute them in her class and her day care?” I couldn’t think beyond Lacto Kings or Mango Bites.
“Did you hear what you just said?” Rekha knitted her brows and asked me.
“Why what is wrong? What did you have in mind?” I responded with the same indignation I reserve for the times when Rekha suspects me of smelling of a girl’s perfume.
“I have made an excel sheet. Let me show it to you.”
Before I could recover from my shock, Rekha left me standing there and headed for the room in which we have our desktop. She fiddled around for a while and opened her excel. This is what it said:
I think I came around after ten minutes of water splashing on my face, and a few tight slaps from my father-in-law.
Instead of asking the filmy question “Where am I?” the first thing I asked was: “Rekha, do you know how extravagant this is…any idea how many kids are there in total?”
“Well, if we have to play it smart…we need to have the cut off age for the party as 8 years. If we do that, it will be 16 kids at the party at home.” Rekha had done her math. But had she done her math for the expenses?
“And how much will it cost us for this whole show?” Since Rekha had only recently quit her job, I was a little concerned about the expenses.
“Rajan…why you talking like this? She is our daughter.”
“I know she is our daughter. When have I questioned that?” I shot back. For a couple who had spent only Rs 150,000 on their marriage and only Rs 100,000 on their marriage reception…this was going to be a big expense.
“If you remember right, you have questioned that many times before saying her eyes were too Chinese to be YOUR daughter. But let us leave this out of this discussion.”
I didn’t persist either. Though I still wonder how Rhea, our four year old daughter, got her Chinese eyes.
“OK fine…so what do you need from me?” I asked, trying to close the discussion.
“I will need Rs 20,000. You don’t need to do anything else…I will manage.”
We Rajans are a unique breed. We use humor to tide over difficult times…so I asked my wife: “Do you accept cheques?”
Unfortunately, having spent the last eight years with me….the same attitude has rubbed off on Rekha too. She replied: “Not out-station ….I accept only local cheques.”
With the tension defused, we walked our ways. Now I need to figure out how to handle 16 kids, a puppeteer, a magician and a Hitler-of-a-wife on 29 March.
Note for Rhea when she grows up & reads this: If you have grown up and are reading this (considering ouchmytoe.com manages to remain alive for another 20 years!) let me assure you I want you to have the best of birthdays. And that’s why I gifted you the wooden wall clock yesterday.
The latest news is that .XXX domain extensions have been approved for the porn sites. Read about it here.
Why should a funny site get excited about this? Answer is simple: Because it is funny.
I am a little unhappy with this decision because soon enough, it would be impossible to fake ignorance. Connoisseurs like me won’t be able to say: “What? This is a porn site? I didn’t know!”
Corporate who today try to book the domain extensions like .com, .biz, .in, .net will be in a dilemma. Should they go ahead and book .XXX also for their domain? For example, should Infosys & Wipro book Infosys.XXX and Wipro.XXX? If they don’t book these domain extensions…wouldn’t a porn site book them and direct traffic to their sites?
This decision by ICANN also gives raise to a few more ideas. Shouldn’t they be introducing two more domain extensions – .XX for gay & lesbian porn category and .XY for straight porn?
I also see quite a revolt amongst the Questions & Answers sites like answerbag.com, quora.com, blurtit.com & answers.com – now they will start asking for the domain extension .YYY
Not to mention the revolution I foresee amongst the Optometrists, who might end up rooting for the .III domain extension. Has ICANN thought about these potential repercussions? I doubt it.
Just in: Apparently, Osama is planning to change the Taliban’s porn site’s name from www. Ji-STRING-had.com to www.Ji-STRING-had.xxx
Contributions from: Navin Kumar & Sumeet Salhotra
Two buttocks cannot avoid friction. – Old Malawian saying