Friday, February 19, 2010

A whole year at it!

Well, well – ‘Wanton whimsy’ was started upon a whim, and lo! It’s one year old already.

I hope a lot of you folks will say ‘Happy Birthday, and many happy returns’.

One thing I can vouch for: it’s hard work, no matter who you are, to be funny and off-beat at a stretch without being merely vulgar and fatuous. Even with help. So I need more help here. Not only by way of encouragement from my followers (may their tribe increase), but with frequent inputs of good stuff.

And also, I need more comment. In contrast to my other blog, my readers here are strangely silent. Feeling shy? … by the way, the best comments I have got in this one year are the one which was a witty rejoinder to something I had written, and the one which said this blog had completely restructured the mental image of me that the writer had built up on the basis of hearsay about my reputation.

Since this is a ‘whimsy’ blog rather than merely funny, I am also open to suggestions about new directions in which it may venture. Meanwhile, I’ll think of things on my own, rest assured. I remember Holmes telling Watson with a touch of pride in his voice, quoting Shakespeare, ‘I trust that age doth not wither, nor custom stale, my infinite variety’.

For now, I sign off with a little poem about one of the founding fathers of modern economics, Adam Smith, written by Stephen Leacock, who like me trained to be an economist, but later became a writer of humour. This has been quoted in Amartya Sen’s latest opus, The Idea of Justice:

Adam, Adam, Adam Smith

Listen what I charge you with!

Didn’t you say

In a class one day

That selfishness was bound to pay?

Of all doctrines, that was the Pith.

Wasn’t it, wasn’t it, wasn’t it, Smith?

In a rare lapse into elitism, Sen quips, paraphrasing Shakespeare from Twelfth Night, that ‘while some are born small and some achieve smallness, Adam Smith has had much smallness thrust upon him’. I leave my more erudite readers, especially the economists among them, to figure out what Sen means!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Egad!

Just saw a sign on a college-goer's T-shirt:

Save petrol, avoid girls.

What is the world coming to, when this kind of opinion has become so widely-held that it is being publicly proclaimed?

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Anniversary coming up

This blog will be one year old in a week's time. Any comments/suggestions/requests/words of advice from readers who have stuck with me all this time?

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Authentic Valentines

With tomorrow in mind, I was musing with my daughter that I first met her mother on a certain February 14th. And I am glad I did.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Little boy in love

A 15-year old took me aside to ask how they say 'I love you' in French. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The fellow writes the kind of English I did when I was in class 2... not that that is an uncommon thing these days, but imagine him trying to be amorous in French to impress his girlfriend!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Mysterious universe and some fun

The scientifically minded (who also have a sense of humour) might enjoy these doggerels.

The first, in praise of one great scientist,

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night.
God said 'Let Newton be', and all was light.

The other, written much later, is a wonderful riposte:

It couldn't last - the Devil, howling 'Ho!
Let Einstein be,' restored the status quo.