Jai Ho Big Bazaar.
Mar/095
Understanding women
May/084
Looking for work
An interesting forward I received by email some days ago…..
A Japanese doctor said, ‘Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks.’
A German doctor said, ‘That’s nothing, we can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks.’
A British doctor said, ‘In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half of a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks.’
A Texas doctor, not to be outdone said, ‘You guys are way behind. We took a man with no brains out of Texas , put him in the White House and now half the country is looking for work.
Dec/075
My Sore Back
Iodex and some hot water bag massage all did very little to help. Enduring my pain we finally got back home at I was prompt to reply "You underestimate how much I can do with a Broke Back". Oooopsy said wifeee .
Dec/076
Bridge over troubled waters ;)
Here I am back to narrate yet another incident ' only this time from my school days. It was in
A year rolled by very lazily and finally we made it to the twelfth phew. Towards the end of the academic year we decided that we would go spend a night on two rafts on river Kwai and all through the night we would drift down stream. Now the Bridge over river Kwai makes its place in most History books because it was an important bridge during the Second World War. The movie for those of you who didn't know was not shot anywhere close to the real bridge. If my memory serves me right it was shot in
Any way so River Kwai rafting it was and it had been agreed almost unanimously. Although I had been to the bridge once before rafting was definitely new to me and it sounded exciting. Finally that day dawned when we all hopped on that bus to ride up to Kanchanburi province only after briefly stopping at a war memorial and burial ground close by.
Having reached there many of us decided to walk the entire length of the Bridge getting as close to Burma as one could and get back while the accompanying teachers got busy tying up for the raft man etc etc. While I did my walk on the bridge I remember standing by the edge of the bridge and enjoying the spectacular sight of the scenery around and the water below. With the sun up in the sky, a lot of light simply reflected off the leaves and twigs and other things that floated by and from where I stood they seemed to sparkle like Gold.
A few hours went by and we found ourselves on the raft and the last of the mooring ropes were let go. In no time we were going downstream gently carried by the flow of the river. Out of sheer curiosity many of us dipped our hands in the river and God it was freezing cold. Amongst us was a lady Physical Training teacher and her male counterpart Mr Nipon. Now Mr Nipon's English was definitely not one of the best I had heard. And its not surprising cos he is half Japanese and half Thai.
Popular as he was he would often pick on students an make fun of them saying "This one the bad one the father good, the mother good .the child come out Bad… vely vely Baad" Anyways there we were - a few of us sitting around Mr Nipon on the edge of the raft, when one amongst us felt thirsty. Mr Nipon was quick to suggest drinking the water straight from the river. On seeing our hesitation about drinking the muddy brown water, Mr Nipon took a glass dipped it into the water and the next thing we knew he was going Glug… Glug… Glug.
Then some kid came up with a bright idea "why don't we take a dip?" he said. With very little fat on me I was not too keen but seeing the number of guys who wanted to, I was tempted to jump in as well. Mustering all the courage I had I quickly changed and jumped in. When I surfaced we had just drifted past a place where big pipes were emptying dirty water into the river. "Terrible" I said to myself " but still much better than the Coovam river in
I took another dip and when I surfaced I was closer to a lot of mass that floated around me and God!! It all came back to me. These were the very things I had seen from atop the bridge. These were not leaves or twigs and NO!! this was not better than the Coovam river for here I was surrounded by human excreta.
A classic case of "All that glitters .." L
Dec/079
Subbu Outwitted
One of them was Mr Subramanium or Subbu sir as we fondly called him. Subbu sir was from Tamilnadu but he had lived in Lonavala long enough. Now Subbu sir had a pronounced Tamilian accent (No offence meant to any of my fellow Tamilian ILANDers .and for what its worth I did 80% of my schooling in Tamilnadu and I have a great affinity to that place ok??) Subbu sir taught us Electrical Engineering and boy he knew that 1500 odd pages of BL Thareja text book like the back of his hand. If there was one thing that irritated Subbu, it was students sleeping through his lectures. Having said that, it took a lot not to fall asleep during his lecture since he went like a bullet train. So if you missed a line it was next to impossible to catch up with the rest of the class. If there was another thing he disliked it was students going to him after they had failed asking for grace marks to pass. It so happened one day Sarabjit Singh fell asleep and sure enough a piece of chalk aimed at the right projectile hit him on his forehead with adequate force to wake him from his slumber. Pasted below is the kind of conversation that went on between them: Subbu: Stand up you rotten fellow (He loved calling people than and belittling them as much as he could) So Sarabjit stood up promptly and Subbu fired at him : Whats your name? Sarabjit Singh sir came the answer. Subbu: Where are you from? Sarab: Sir, Subbu: which college did you pass out of? (there were some who had come after completing a few years of BSc) Sarab: LU sir Subbu: Sarab: No sir Subbu: Then say so rotten fellow rotten man you good for nothing fellow sit down. On another occasion Sarabjit who had slept through most of the session naturally failed the test and quite predictably went up to Subbu to beg for grace marks. Sarabjit needed just 5 marks to pass. The minute Subbu saw him he started off : What have you come here for rotten fellow? To ask for grace marks?? Rotten man. Say I am a fool and I will continue to be a fool and then I will give you five grace marks. Sarab: Sir I will say I am a fool and I will continue to be a fool twice, will you give me ten marks. For once Subbu was left dumbfounded.
May/0715
College days - Down Memory Lane
Reading one of CV's latest posts, I was reminded of times from the days I was doing Engineering. I thought I will put down a short post.
Quite unlike the Malayalee professors CV describes in her post most of the ones who taught me were Tamilians and some of them were so intelligent to the point of being eccentric 
.
One such professor was one Mr Subramanium 'Subbu as he was fondly called- who had this pronounced Tamilian accent and was from many years of teaching an authority on the subject he taught best ' Electrical Engineering.
A thick book titled Electrical Technology by BL Thereja was the bible of the subject as we regarded it, and Subbu knew every problem in that book like the back of his hand.
Now this college where I did engineering was being funded by the government for whom I now work. So to make the subsidized course worthwhile and to ensure they turn out quality engineers there was a huge penalty imposed on failing a term end exam. And for those who did exceedingly well, the incentive was there in the form of being selected for a Masters course at one of the prestigious IITs. Therefore failing was one situation that everyone wanted to avoid.
One day whilst he was busy taking the class he caught one of the students sleeping. Stopping momentarily he broke a piece of chalk and threw it at him. When the student awoke he said "Stand Up .Where are you from?" to which the student answered "Ludhiana". (many of the guys had left their Bsc degrees half way through to get into an engineering course)
"Where did you finish your basic studies from?"
"LU sir"
"London University ??" Subbu was quick to ask in a sarcastic tone
"No sir Ludhiana University"
"Then say so you rotten man" and just then the whole class would break into giggles watching Subbu rip the sleepy head apart.
Some months went by and we were in the thick of preparation for the exams. Some days later, it was with great anxiety that we looked forward to getting our test papers back and when we did to his horror, this guy from Ludhiana had failed by a few marks ' 5 to be precise.
So just after the class got over, he went up to Subbu. Now Subbu was no fool. He had been teaching in this very college for a very long time and one look at this student and he asked "Yes rotten man what have you come here for?" .as in a rhetorical way Subbu went on to add "for grace marks I am sure Rotten man"
Subbu had a sarcastic way of belittling you and crushing your pride and hope completely before extending you a hand to help. And this time was no exception. "Say I am a fool and say I will continue to be a fool and only then I shall give you the 5 grace marks you so badly need" he added.
Knowing fully well that a failure might mean losing an entire academic year, the student was so desperate that he blurted out "Sir if I say ‘ I am a fool and I will continue to be a fool ‘ twice will you give me ten marks?" 
Apr/0711
Cows in Kollywood
Reading Budhoose Kanjoose’s (BK) Post Leelamani and Sundari, wherein he says cows eat anything they were offered, reminded me of some cows I have seen during my school days in Madras (now Chennai). I used to stay in Chennai's 
A new poster would definitely catch the attention of many a common man, pedestrian and cyclists. People just stood and gazed at their favorite heroes and heroines. I mean no disrespect to any of my Tamilian friends and truth be told I spent very many of my formative years there too aping Rajnikant myself in that age of no reason but pure fun.
To watch Rajnikant play Indian cowboy in an Indianized Western Movie and go after the guys to avenge his parents was very different from the usual themes of the Tamil movies then. To have him dress like Clint Eastwood in The Good 
, The Bad
, The Ugly 
' with a stubble, a wrap around shawl in the peak of summer all booted up with spurs et al also seemed to give it an authentic touch.
All good till the directors stretched it to a point where Rajni is shown stopping at a thatched shop selling Beedis (Indian cigar - albeit much smaller - to chew on like Clint did) in the middle of the desert (supposedly shot in the Marina beach) and then go on to order a glass of buttermilk, tip his hat, pull out his revolver as if to shoot the a bunch of ruffians hanging around and then use its barrel to stir his buttermilk. Surely that's an original even Clint would not have thought of. 
Any way such were the kinds of movies that were produced. With 5 studios in a 5 km radius churning out movies every four to six months, there was no dearth of movie posters. In fact I used to wonder whether those old dilapidated walls that lined the roads were held up in place by these posters much more than cement and concrete for there were layers upon layers of posters.
Any way to cut along story short, Chennai cows in summer - when the grass had turned brown and dry and the leaves had all withered away - out of extreme desperation and hunger were known to eat these posters stuck on the wall. Luckily the local newspaper never had to carry a news that read "Cow eat posters and wall collapses on surprised cow".
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