More and more of the same old crap...

Who needs twitter? As if sms text messaging with mobiles wasn't bad enough? Or is it that the whole world has gone crazy, and will lap up any 'cool new app' just for the heck of it? Is there one human being on this planet, who, despite having a laptop and/or a good mobile phone, and constant messaging and email facility at hand, still 'cannot do' without something as utterly witless and non-new as twitter?

Laugh for the day

A good friend sometimes sends me hilarious stuff for posting on this blog. Here’s another installment.

These howlers are supposedly from a book called 'Disorder in the American Courts' and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had to suffer the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the circus was in town I'm going with male.

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's twenty, much like your IQ.

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
W ITNESS : Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney.

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practising law.

P.S.: If someone like Khushwant Singh is happy to take inputs from friends who write in, I shouldn’t be embarrassed. Do send me things you have really enjoyed, readers, if you want me to publish them on my blog.

Books, anyone?

The teacher was expounding on the myriad benefits of reading, and trying to get his class of very young children interested. ‘Every one of you has books at home, don't you? Try naming some...’

Every child named a few, only little Johnny at the back of the class kept mum. ‘Hello, Johnny, what about you? Don't you have any books at home? Of course you do... try hard to remember,’ encouraged the teacher.

Little Johnny’s brow puckered with furious concentration. A few seconds passed, then his face lit up. ‘Yes, there’s one,’ he cried, ‘the telephone directory!’

At a more ‘high-class’ level, the affluent housewife goes shopping for her husband’s birthday gift. After-shave, cuff-links, sunglasses, ties, whatever the shopkeeper tries to tempt her with, ‘He’s got one of those,’ comes the dissatisfied reply. On the verge of giving up, the man suggests ‘Why don’t you give him a book, then?’ Pat comes the reply, ‘Oh, but he’s got one of those too!’

I used to think that these were wicked exaggerations, but then I read about a woman coming out of the cinema after watching Tagore’s Chokher Baali, and commenting to her friend, ‘Did you know that the book version is already available?’ And I meet such people all the time these days… the same people who are very proud of being ‘highly educated’, and who have hardly ever read anything in their lives except textbooks and crambooks. How easy it has become to be educated these days. Used to be a time, not too long ago, when no man dared to give himself such airs before three or four decades of concentrated reading…!

Brilliant!

I just heard that the honourable minister for health in our government of West Bengal has been boasting that our government hospitals routinely accommodate three patients to a bed, besides dozens lying on the floor, so great is the demand for their services - which, according to the minister, only goes to show how wonderful the state health service must be.

I suppose it takes a minister in India to be that blase and shameless. I put this in the humour blog because if I don't laugh, it can only make me cry!

General knowledge

A young unemployed man, terribly frightened of violence and bloodshed, is forced by his father to apply for a typist's job with the army. The recruiting officer hands him a sheet of paper and asks him to show what he can do. He sits down at the table in one corner of the tent with a typewriter on it, and deliberately types as slowly and messily as he can, so that he might be rejected out of hand. To his dismay, the officer takes one look at his handiwork and barks 'You're hired'. Flabbergasted, the lad asks 'But why ... how...?' In reply, the officer says, 'Son, I've been looking at applicants for three hours now, and you are the first one who knows what a typewriter looks like! That's good enough.'

Then there were the two country bumpkins who had been invited to dinner by the lord of the manor, known for his cultured tastes. They try to be on guard, lest they should make a gaffe. Everything goes smoothly until after dinner, when they settle down with coffee and cigars. 'Tell me, my good men, how do you like Shakespeare?' asks the squire, by way of making conversation. 'Not after dinner, sir,' blurts out Jake, and gets kicked sharply in the shin by Tom for his pains. He clams up for the time being, but asks on the way home, 'Why did you kick me so hard?' 'You fool,' roars Tom, 'you nearly spoilt everything with that stupid remark. You think Shakespeare is a kind of cheese, don't you? - Well, as a matter of fact, it's a kind of wine!'

I often tell these jokes in class. Always in context, of course, only when my pupils give me the right cues with strokes of sheer brilliance. The occasions are all too frequent these days, despite the fact that many of them routinely score very high marks in school examinations...

A funny poet

Ogden Nash cheers me up whenever I visit him. Here's a sampling of his poetry for those who do not know him already: click here. Tell me how you liked them.

Is all 'fun' funny?

Several young pupils had written letters for homework, describing a supposedly ‘funny’ incident at school. I was dismayed to read, in letter after letter, how they had hugely ‘enjoyed’ themselves and laughed uproariously at some classmate who had got accidentally hurt (such as by falling down the stairs), or at some teacher who had been inadvertently embarrassed. Is that the sort of thing that should cause us to laugh, instead of commiserating and trying to help out the person in distress? In the same vein, college seniors claim to be having fun ‘ragging’ juniors in the most humiliating and cruel manner. I have seen mobs having fun lynching helpless innocents, beating them to bloody pulp, burning them alive. And I can hear echoes of the jackboots at Auschwitz… is it only when we ourselves become victims of such fun that we remember ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’?

Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple used to say that human nature is the same everywhere, in all its pettiness, crookedness and viciousness – that is why, despite never having left her little, remote, ‘uneventful’ village all her life, she could so easily see through the motives of sophisticated criminals and unravel plots that baffled the best city-smart brains. I have been a small-town teacher for the biggest part of my life, and I can see how right she was. Also, since I deal with young people, I keep worrying, being constantly troubled by the adage ‘Morning shows the day’. The Nazi killers were schoolchildren once. So also all vicious thugs everywhere else...

Sane weirdos

It is sometimes awfully difficult to deal with madmen, they can sound so rational and self-possessed and plausible - upto a point!

A man rattles the knocker at the door of the warden of the lunatic asylum at dead of night. The poor warden, rudely awakened, peers out of his window and looks down: ‘What is it, my man?’

The fellow cringes and replies, ‘Please Sir, I am so sorry to disturb you, but my folks threw me out of the house, and told me to find shelter here if I could’.

‘Why, what on earth have you done to upset them?’ asks the warden.

‘Please Sir, I haven’t done anything. I only keep telling them I like socks.’

‘You like socks?’ asks the warden, puzzled. ‘What’s wrong with liking socks? I like socks too!’

‘You do, Sir, really?’ the man beams with pleasure. ‘and do you like them with tomato sauce?’

Gender bender

I keep wondering from time to time how much more weird common English usage is going to get. In connection with politically correct gender-sensitivity, they started saying chairwoman instead of chairman when women became increasingly more visible in high places. Then they decided it would be more convenient (or egalitarian) to write ‘-person’ instead of ‘man’ and ‘woman’, so we stopped hearing of chairmen and chairwomen, and grew familiar with just plain chairpersons.

Then somebody somewhere may have started wondering what to do about postman and milkman, and even hu-man… would it be okay to write that we are all huperson beings? By and by someone came up with the really brilliant idea to drop the suffix altogether. So these days we hear that Dr. So and so is the Chair of the department of economics or physics in such and such university. Fancy that it should be considered a great step forward to reduce a person to a thing! The chair sits on a chair, I suppose, but which is which? I’m sure a Martian newly introduced to the charms of the English language would tie him- (it?) self up into knots puzzling over it.

And yet we still hear that Congresswoman Ms. X has just given a fiery speech. How long before she is referred to as just plain Congress?

You can't call anybody a moron these days

[A friend sent me the following delicious piece which I want to share with my readers (especially those who enjoyed the post titled ‘The death of Common Sense’). You can do a google search on Stella Awards yourself; I do not vouch for the authenticity of the contents here. Some of them do strain one’s credulity, although God knows I have encountered enough morons in my own life, and I know that silica gel sachets that come with things like cameras carry the warning tag ‘Do not eat’!]

It's time once again to review the winners of the Annual "StellaAwards." The Stella Awards are named after 81 year-old Stella Liebeck, who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonald's (in NM). That case inspired the Stella awards for the most frivolous, ridiculous, successful lawsuits in the United States. Here are this year's winners:

5th Place (tie): Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded$80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson's son.

5th Place (tie): 9-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.

5th Place (tie): Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic dooropener was malfunctioning. He couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut.The family was on vacation, and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner's insurance, claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.

4th Place: Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor's beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams who had climbed over the fence into the yard and was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.

3rd Place: A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carsonof Lancaster, Pennsylvania $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

2nd Place: Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of a night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms.Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.

1st Place: This year's runaway winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mrs. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, (from an OU football game), having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go into the back & make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mrs.Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising her in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded her $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons around.

Recession laughs

A friend sent me the following bits of humour generated by the ongoing recession. It is good to see that some people can still laugh over what is putting creases on so many foreheads. If I am unwittingly infringing on someone’s copyright, do tell me and I’ll take this post off the air:

Ali Baba and the forty thieves are now Ali Baba and thirty thieves. Ten were laid off!

Batman and Robin are now Batman and Pedro. Batman fired Robin and hired Pedro because Pedro was willing to work twice the hours at the same rate!

Iron man is now "air-pooling" with Superman to save fuel costs!

A director decided to award a prize of Rs.1000 for the best idea for saving the company money during the recession. It was won by a young executive who suggested reducing the prize money to Rs. 100.

Women are finally marrying for love....and not money!

The only "deposits" being made on a Ferrari are the ones made by birds flying over them.

Q: With the current market turmoil, what's the easiest way to make a small fortune? A: Start off with a large one.

Q: What's the difference between an investment banker and a large pizza?A: A large pizza can feed a family of four.

Q: Why have Dubai real estate agents stopped looking out of the window in the morning?A: Because otherwise they'd have nothing to do in the afternoon.

Q: What's the difference between an American and a Zimbabwean dollar?A: In a few weeks... nothing.

Q: What's the difference between a bond and a bond trader?A. A bond matures.

Q: Did you hear Goldman Sachs has a new cafeteria?A. It is called the Warren buffet.

The broker told him that he has been sleeping like a baby. "Really?' replied the customer. "Absolutely," said the broker,"I sleep for about an hour, wake up, and then cry for about an hour."

Recession Bumper Sticker: The recession is worse than a divorce. You lose half your fortune and still have your wife.

The Difference between Communism & Capitalism: In communism we nationalise the banks and then push them to bankruptcy. In capitalism we push the banks to bankruptcy and then nationalise them.

A priest, a rabbi, and a mortgage broker were all caught in a shipwreck. Sharks are soon circling around. The sharks eat the priest. The rabbi starts praying fervently, but to no avail, as the sharks eat him as well. The mortgage broker is really getting worried, as a shark is coming for him. But, instead, the shark puts him on its back, carries him to shore, and lets him off. The mortgage broker asks, "How come you didn't eat me too ?" And the shark replies, "Professional Courtesy!"

The laughter of the wise

Genuinely humorous people, you will notice, have the rare ability to laugh at themselves. The reason most people cannot do that is that they take themselves too seriously. That is a common affliction not only of saints and statesmen, but also, I have noticed, of government clerks and schoolteachers, newspaper editors and run-of-the-mill parents! If you instinctively believe (though you might never admit it) that the world revolves – or ought to revolve – around you, you cannot make fun of yourself now and then.

 

Birbal – the fabled courtier, not necessarily the character in history – was supposed to have been one who could pull his own leg sometimes. On one occasion he is supposed to have put Akbar at position number two on his list of the biggest fools in the kingdom (and he gave the emperor satisfactory reason for so doing, seeing that his head didn’t roll, but that is another story), and placed himself right on top of the list: because he was fool enough, he said, to make a career of humouring such a foolish overlord!

 

There have been honorable exceptions among saints, philosophers and statesmen, of course. Some of my greatest heroes are among them. Socrates, who had a shrew of a wife, sagely observed that a man who finds a good wife becomes a householder, a man who is not so lucky has to find solace in philosophy. Abraham Lincoln, when called ‘two-faced’ by a critic in Congress, pointed at his own face and remarked – ‘Look at this mug! If I had another face, would I use this one?’ When someone bowed low before Vivekananda and addressed him as god incarnate, he is supposed to have pointed to his midriff and said ‘You think God has a pot belly?’ And Mahatma Gandhi often had his audience in splits by lampooning himself. When someone asked him if he did not feel ashamed to present himself before the King-Emperor clad only in a short dhoti, he shot back ‘Why? The king was wearing enough for both of us!’

Good stuff!

Click here if you are keen on reading some really fun stuff regarding words and their wonder, a subject of which I am just as fond as this writer is.

My town is blazing and I am reeling in the heat and praying for rains. I don't dare to pray simultaneously for inspiration for some new blogpost here at this point: the gods might get angry at my importunations. So if you are visiting often in search of something new, do please bear with me for a while.

Dennis the loveable 'menace'

I have always been fond of comic strips, and Dennis the Menace has ranked consistently high on my list of favourites. The precocious child is not only always good for a laugh, but again and again a thousand times over he forces you to take a good hard look at yourself – through his own naughtiness and folly, he keeps telling you ‘You are just like me, only maybe too timid, too boneheaded or too lazy to express yourself the way I do!’ And he makes you think that the world might have been a much better place if more of us were as honest and frank and lively and loveable as he is.

One of my perennial favourites is when he asks his mom and finds out that his dad and she and he were born in places far away from one another – ‘Funny how we got together, isn’t it?’ And another where the long-suffering neighbour Mr. Wilson tells his wife ‘What frightens me, Mary, is the thought that that boy could grow up to be the President of the United States!’ And all those numerous occasions when he has given his parents and neighbours and ‘Ol’ Margaret’ and the parish priest and shop attendants red faces or left them gasping at his careless insouciance. As I saw in the strip in my newspaper this morning: A couple have come visiting, and he takes one look at the lady’s skirt and exclaims ‘Hey Dad! I thought you said she wears the pants in this family?’

If you cannot laugh with Dennis, you are a bore. If you dismiss him as merely a child, you are a very shallow person. And if you merely laugh and do not take a few moments off to ponder, well, God probably didn’t give you much of a brain…

The death of common sense

An old boy emailed me this delightful (and heartrending, if you read it the right way) article which I thought would be appropriate for this blog:

London Times Obituary of the late Mr. Common Sense - Sunday, 31st March 2008

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: "knowing when to come in out of the rain"; "why the early bird gets the worm"; "life isn't always fair"; and "maybe it was my fault".

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or a band-aid to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.
Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers: I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I'm A Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

Admission time

The time of admissions to my tuitions is not merely hectic and strenuous for our whole family but a time when we can collect hilarious howlers observing the silly things people do and say. Right now I am in the process and it will take some time to wrap up still, but let me mention one or two things that might raise a laugh among my readers …

One of my old boys, now in college, was helping us out, holding back the crowd (everybody being terribly busy and clamouring to be served first!). Somebody asked him who he was and what he was doing, and, on being told, asked ‘Is Sir teaching ex-students too these days?’

My daughter (tall and solemn and businesslike and busy as she was) has lost count of how many ‘tiny tots’ two years her senior addressed her as dada or didi while she was telling them the rules and helping them to fill out their forms.

And (though this is not really funny) one mother came to declare that she had enrolled her son last year, and she lives right next door to X (one of my ex-students, who, she has found out somehow, remains a favourite) – so will she get a concession on the fees?

Five-line rib tickler

Humour is not the first (or even the usual) thing I look for in poetry, but one particular type of poem has always tickled my fancy. It’s called the limerick, supposedly taking its name after a little village in Ireland, a five-line doggerel with an aabba rhyming scheme, and it can deal with any subject under the sun, so long as it is at least vaguely funny (some can be wickedly so). Here’s a sample of hundreds that I have enjoyed:

A woman who isn’t too stunning
Competes in marathon running.
She really enjoys
Being chased by the boys:
Is she sporting, or just quite cunning?

If you share the same kind of taste, send in your favourite limerick. Only, not too very naughty ones, please – we have to keep in mind that a lot of teenagers with clucky parents read this blog, and my daughter does, too!

That thing in your ear...

The mobile (or cell phone, have it your way) has spread like wildfire all over this country since 2000. The newspapers inform me that India has now emerged as the second biggest cell phone-using country in the world, having recently surpassed the US (given the population it was, of course, only a matter of time, some will say!), and at the speed with which it is growing, it may soon overtake China. It generally sounds good when you hear your country is tops in something, but is this one a dubious distinction or what?

At first (only about ten years ago, actually, but for today’s young that’s prehistoric times…) cell phones were very expensive and pretty useless (you could hardly get a connection), so they were (predictably) flaunted as status symbols by that tiny class of people who have too much money and no idea of what they can do with it (and would die if you suggested charity, or even buying good books). Then connections improved dramatically and prices fell through the floor (the set that cost Rs. 25,000 in 1998 would go for Rs. 1,500 today and won’t find buyers, it’s so out-of-date), and it could hardly serve as a status symbol any longer, seeing that every maidservant and railway coolie and rickshawwallah had one – but it happened so fast that the hip and happening crowd couldn’t give up the habit of carrying around their phones in their hands fast enough (ever wondered why people need to carry their mobiles tightly clasped in their hands or hanging from their necks as though it were a lifeline or something? I have been using one for six years now, and it has never been a bother hiding in my trouser pocket!)… and of course, a few phone makers are doggedly trying to keep prices up by advertising their gizmos as must-haves by getting them endorsed by celebrities and bedecked with diamonds and scented with rare perfumes and what have you. But a wag has already suggested that pretty soon the real status symbol will be not carrying a cellphone for all to see (and folks like me will at last heave a sigh of relief)… ‘Look, I don’t do what the riffraff does’!

But what are so many people doing with so many mobiles? The advertisements seem to suggest that you can’t even express to your loved ones how much you love them any longer if you don’t call or message them: just sitting down beside them and telling them face to face or giving them a hug or a kiss has become so passé, so uncool! I can see boyfriend and girlfriend by the score sitting on roadside culverts, engrossed in punching keys on their separate mobiles. Scientists have observed that after a million years of practising the use of the index finger, which supposedly separated us from the apes like nothing else, we have been persuaded by the cell phone in two decades flat to make the thumb the most-used of fingers, and I have grown so visually used to people with mobiles stuck to their ears that I actually started on seeing a man passing by merely scratching his ear instead of talking (or listening) on a phone: surely such people should be put in museums?

Stories of people being so engrossed in phoning that they are run over by cars and trains no longer raise eyebrows, and watching a man taking instructions from his wife on the mobile about what to shop for at the vegetable market made me wonder how we and our fathers coped without these gadgets for so long. Soon, they say, you won’t be able to drive without the aid of your GPS-enabled mobile. Listening to people’s choice of ringtones gives away more about their personalities than they would ever care to admit: my girls snigger about what they hear when their teachers’ mobiles suddenly go off in class. Mobiles are already offering radio, camera, email, TV and canned music in addition to phone and messaging facilities: how much longer before they start wiggling appendages and giving you services of a more intimate sort, and people gladly give up jobs and spouses before they part with their mobiles?

Pretty good doctor...

Medicine remains one of the few professions which I deeply respect. Females of the species, especially the contemporary young, urban, ‘educated’ kind, who think even hotel valets, airline stewardesses and call-centre operatives are professionals deserving of admiration, and believe that women unlike men ought to make money primarily to splurge on themselves, on the other hand, and working women who imagine they have a special right to make nuisances of themselves in public with their loud gossip on mobile phones and rudeness with fellow commuters or pedestrians, I regard with disdain.

At a major new private hospital in Kolkata which I happened to haunt morning and evening for a few days recently, I was pleased to find, therefore, a lot of smart young women – doctors as well as nurses – who knew their jobs well, and were doing them with the utmost sincerity, yet with ever smiling faces.

And I fell in love with a very pretty young thing whose smile was as bewitching as the seriousness with which she attended to her medical rounds. Very young, indeed – she could have been my pupil eight years ago! What stole my heart, though, was the fact that being very short (and unwilling, for some reason, to wear high heels…) she stood on tiptoe every time she wanted to peer through the glass into a patient’s room. I could have lifted her up in my arms, telling her I was daydreaming that I was doing it with my daughter in mind, but I resisted the temptation!

A good father?

To those who have been readers of my blog(s) for some time, here's a question. What kind of a father do you think I am? Is my daughter lucky or otherwise?

I am not really being facetious here. Unlike most parents I know, I did not convince myself the moment my daughter was born that I was the best thing that could have happened to her. And I have never stopped wondering...