What a lovely friday, not only does the weekend beckon with smiling face and outstretched arm, ford and dent have finally realized their life's aim!!!
A new blog which, dear reader is linked to the beside of this blog...is what i refer to. A collections of ramblings of Mj and Self, which is one of the new things happening these days...
Some repeats, and hopefully the writing skills shall be excercised till our trained senses tell us that we have excercised enough!
Here goes - http://www.deathlyhellos.blogspot.com
And that, is how the chocolate melts!
*Clink!*
Friday, September 07, 2007
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Bridging the generation gap... ho ho!
The G gap. Its the chasm, amorphously situated in time and space that separates those who have grown and those who will one day fill their shoes (or at least their socks, as the former may hope). I have heard, and spoken of this chasm whenever I have run out of words during some sort of debate between me and the pater and mater, or a debate which concerned paters and maters from the world over. On most occasions these minor 'chirkut' debates go in the directions of how the generation gap has expanded and expanded, with no effort being made from either side to bridge it in any way. But heck, I'm now looking back at whatever little past I have to look back on, and I realize that my dad is one of the sweetest and most sporting men of his kind alive on the planet today... :) Of course, he isn't one of those dads who has 'never ever let the generation gap bother his relationship with his children' or the type of dad Fardeen Khan's is. (Who went on air and told everyone that he even talks sex with him.. (really, why would anyone want to know that?))
Till a few years back, one of my major disappointments in life was that dad hardly ever spoke to me about anything, apart from how my studies were going. "Koto duur egolo oi onko ta?" or "porikkha kemon holo?" and other such similar hair raising questions used to be the order of the day. Mom and I, on the other hand would talk about perhaps sixty percent of all things under the sun. Among this sixty percent, was the issue I refer to above. And apparently, the news reached the good ears of Dasgupta Senior. That, precisely forms the basic reason why I ever got the chance to sit and write this piece of blog.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of a good man like my dad. Being full of love and concern for the way you bring up your two brats, you don't want to be too forthcoming... but lay in front of him the evidence of these same brats not being too happy about choice of conversation topics, and the hour will come!!
Which is to say, cometh the hour, cometh the man!
The particular day I refer to is a day on which both ma and I had the day off from school and college respectively, and the dad was across the table finishing his breakfast, and behind his glasses was the slight twinkle which said that there was something twinkling in his mind and was about to shine forth in all brightness...
"Let me tell you about an experience I had when I was in Canada in the seventies", he started. I started too, but that was because I was enganed in chewing a pensive idli, and generally concentrating on nothing at all.
"Eh? Oh, sure.."
"We had a group of Indian friends while I was in Canada. I was supposed to visit a friend's family for christmas and we had hired a cab to go the distance. There naturally was a fair bit of luggage, and we were wondering how to manage the whole lot in the car. Thats when one of my friends said 'Lets carry a few bags with us inside the car, the rest can go in the dicky!'. This seemed to be a fair enough idea to us.
"But not to our driver. The blessed man clutched his sides and started laughing like a madman! He kept pointing at the guy who offered the suggestion and kept laughing his head off. Can you guess why?"
"Why?" (By this time the mater was in audience too, listening with rapt attention; apparently she hadn't heard this before either)
"In US slang, dicky is the word they use for penis".
It is a known fact that people respond differently to same stimuli, and though the audience was restricted to the wife and son, there was some variety in response.
"Cheee!", went the mater and sailed off into the kitchen.
I started again. My eyes probably started from their spheres too, but it didn't matter, thanks to my sturdy spectacles.
I looked carefully at the man sitting in front of me. This couldn't be dad. No, he couldn't bring himself to say something like that in the house, at least not in front of me.
"Heh?", I grinned inqiusitively.
There followed what Shakespeare would have called a *pregnant silence*. What this pregnancy would cause, I didn't know. I could sense a little red about to enter the face from all sides... :) Finally the labour was over. We both burst out into the loudest guffaws I have ever heard in the house! More so because my dad realized by now that I always know what the slang for the word in question was!
"You knew?" he asked, wiping a tear from below his specs.
"Of course I knew!" I announced.
"But still".
"You bet!!"
And there we went guffawing again...
Then in his face I saw, that this wasn't just a random conversation. You could say taht I realized that my old mand didn't have tomato juice in his veins! He probably knew that I already knew what 'dicky' meant, but all the same the laugh we shared sure broke a few slabs of ice :)
This wasn't the only time the generation bridge appeared in the haze. Here, I recount another incident. About a three years ago we had an aunt visiting us for a couple of weeks. The normal drill with visitors is to take them around to the places Kerala is most famous for. The beaches, the backwaters the greenery and other such and of course, the much famed cape(though not quite in Kerala heh).
This time, an inspiration dawned on dad, and he announced 'Ernakulam!'.
"What? Why?"
"Its a beautiful place. We're going there tomororw. I'm going to arrange a taxi."
"But how come we've never gone there before?"
"But we're going now!", he answered, with the air of one who has set all doubts to rest.
That was my dad. A goner for sudden inspirations :) Morning came, and the taxi arrived on the dot. It was a spotless white ambassador. The kind Kerala is famous for! The driver looked a little sour though, perhaps not unlike a pissed off slab of gorgonzola. It didn't matter, though. We all stuffed ourselves in the car. Mom, Aunt and Gran in the spacious back seat, dad and I on the driver's sofa up front.
We're bongs, by the way. And one thing bongs are famous for, besides the craving for fish and baying for Sourav Ganguly, is loud laughter. That too at shield shattering levels! We proudly observed that characteristic, the gorgonzola was probably getting pissed off even more. My guess is he never ever saw or heard women laughing their hearts out at something which sounded greek to him anyway!
Ernakulam is about 5 hours north of Tvm, and about three hours into the journey, my dad answered a call on his cellphone, and replaced it in his shirt pocket.
I am a jet age kid. At least jet age enough to have read all sorts of emails that tell you what cellphone radiation can do to the human body, and hence I said instantly.
"Dad!"
"Hmm?"
"You should't put your phone in your shirt pocket"
"Why not?"
"It affects the heart and all"
"Oh I see", said he, without argument and proceeded to take it out of shirt and place it in his trouser pocket.
The moment of reckoning came.
"Err... Dad! "
"Hmmm?"
"You shouldn't keep it there either."
"Eh?"
"You shouldn't. "
"Why so?"
"It reduces... errr ah... "(How the dickens could I explain, with all the ladies sitting right behind?! Complete with Gran and Aunt and all!!! )
I waited tactfully for the next peal of laughter to ring out from the back, carpe'd the opportune, and muttered in his ear, "They say it recudes sperm count if you keep your phone in your trousers!"
Then erupted the loudest spate of laughter I have ever heard dad emit. "Ho ho ho!!", he went; and that was loud enough to make the ladies at the back sit up and take notice.
"Why would I need any more of them?! I don't need any more of them!!", he laughed helplessly. "Two.. ho! ho! ... two are more than what I can handle!!!". I saw the funny side now, and joined in with him!
"What? What happened? Why are you two laughing?" said the back seat.
"Nothing. Nothing at all", dad grinned at them. (He's rather cool, heh)
To this day, my mom wonders why we broke into such helpless laughter, and why we kept chuckling the rest of the two hours of car ride to Ernakulam! *guffaw*..
Ah well, it was nothing, really!! :D
Till a few years back, one of my major disappointments in life was that dad hardly ever spoke to me about anything, apart from how my studies were going. "Koto duur egolo oi onko ta?" or "porikkha kemon holo?" and other such similar hair raising questions used to be the order of the day. Mom and I, on the other hand would talk about perhaps sixty percent of all things under the sun. Among this sixty percent, was the issue I refer to above. And apparently, the news reached the good ears of Dasgupta Senior. That, precisely forms the basic reason why I ever got the chance to sit and write this piece of blog.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of a good man like my dad. Being full of love and concern for the way you bring up your two brats, you don't want to be too forthcoming... but lay in front of him the evidence of these same brats not being too happy about choice of conversation topics, and the hour will come!!
Which is to say, cometh the hour, cometh the man!
The particular day I refer to is a day on which both ma and I had the day off from school and college respectively, and the dad was across the table finishing his breakfast, and behind his glasses was the slight twinkle which said that there was something twinkling in his mind and was about to shine forth in all brightness...
"Let me tell you about an experience I had when I was in Canada in the seventies", he started. I started too, but that was because I was enganed in chewing a pensive idli, and generally concentrating on nothing at all.
"Eh? Oh, sure.."
"We had a group of Indian friends while I was in Canada. I was supposed to visit a friend's family for christmas and we had hired a cab to go the distance. There naturally was a fair bit of luggage, and we were wondering how to manage the whole lot in the car. Thats when one of my friends said 'Lets carry a few bags with us inside the car, the rest can go in the dicky!'. This seemed to be a fair enough idea to us.
"But not to our driver. The blessed man clutched his sides and started laughing like a madman! He kept pointing at the guy who offered the suggestion and kept laughing his head off. Can you guess why?"
"Why?" (By this time the mater was in audience too, listening with rapt attention; apparently she hadn't heard this before either)
"In US slang, dicky is the word they use for penis".
It is a known fact that people respond differently to same stimuli, and though the audience was restricted to the wife and son, there was some variety in response.
"Cheee!", went the mater and sailed off into the kitchen.
I started again. My eyes probably started from their spheres too, but it didn't matter, thanks to my sturdy spectacles.
I looked carefully at the man sitting in front of me. This couldn't be dad. No, he couldn't bring himself to say something like that in the house, at least not in front of me.
"Heh?", I grinned inqiusitively.
There followed what Shakespeare would have called a *pregnant silence*. What this pregnancy would cause, I didn't know. I could sense a little red about to enter the face from all sides... :) Finally the labour was over. We both burst out into the loudest guffaws I have ever heard in the house! More so because my dad realized by now that I always know what the slang for the word in question was!
"You knew?" he asked, wiping a tear from below his specs.
"Of course I knew!" I announced.
"But still".
"You bet!!"
And there we went guffawing again...
Then in his face I saw, that this wasn't just a random conversation. You could say taht I realized that my old mand didn't have tomato juice in his veins! He probably knew that I already knew what 'dicky' meant, but all the same the laugh we shared sure broke a few slabs of ice :)
This wasn't the only time the generation bridge appeared in the haze. Here, I recount another incident. About a three years ago we had an aunt visiting us for a couple of weeks. The normal drill with visitors is to take them around to the places Kerala is most famous for. The beaches, the backwaters the greenery and other such and of course, the much famed cape(though not quite in Kerala heh).
This time, an inspiration dawned on dad, and he announced 'Ernakulam!'.
"What? Why?"
"Its a beautiful place. We're going there tomororw. I'm going to arrange a taxi."
"But how come we've never gone there before?"
"But we're going now!", he answered, with the air of one who has set all doubts to rest.
That was my dad. A goner for sudden inspirations :) Morning came, and the taxi arrived on the dot. It was a spotless white ambassador. The kind Kerala is famous for! The driver looked a little sour though, perhaps not unlike a pissed off slab of gorgonzola. It didn't matter, though. We all stuffed ourselves in the car. Mom, Aunt and Gran in the spacious back seat, dad and I on the driver's sofa up front.
We're bongs, by the way. And one thing bongs are famous for, besides the craving for fish and baying for Sourav Ganguly, is loud laughter. That too at shield shattering levels! We proudly observed that characteristic, the gorgonzola was probably getting pissed off even more. My guess is he never ever saw or heard women laughing their hearts out at something which sounded greek to him anyway!
Ernakulam is about 5 hours north of Tvm, and about three hours into the journey, my dad answered a call on his cellphone, and replaced it in his shirt pocket.
I am a jet age kid. At least jet age enough to have read all sorts of emails that tell you what cellphone radiation can do to the human body, and hence I said instantly.
"Dad!"
"Hmm?"
"You should't put your phone in your shirt pocket"
"Why not?"
"It affects the heart and all"
"Oh I see", said he, without argument and proceeded to take it out of shirt and place it in his trouser pocket.
The moment of reckoning came.
"Err... Dad! "
"Hmmm?"
"You shouldn't keep it there either."
"Eh?"
"You shouldn't. "
"Why so?"
"It reduces... errr ah... "(How the dickens could I explain, with all the ladies sitting right behind?! Complete with Gran and Aunt and all!!! )
I waited tactfully for the next peal of laughter to ring out from the back, carpe'd the opportune, and muttered in his ear, "They say it recudes sperm count if you keep your phone in your trousers!"
Then erupted the loudest spate of laughter I have ever heard dad emit. "Ho ho ho!!", he went; and that was loud enough to make the ladies at the back sit up and take notice.
"Why would I need any more of them?! I don't need any more of them!!", he laughed helplessly. "Two.. ho! ho! ... two are more than what I can handle!!!". I saw the funny side now, and joined in with him!
"What? What happened? Why are you two laughing?" said the back seat.
"Nothing. Nothing at all", dad grinned at them. (He's rather cool, heh)
To this day, my mom wonders why we broke into such helpless laughter, and why we kept chuckling the rest of the two hours of car ride to Ernakulam! *guffaw*..
Ah well, it was nothing, really!! :D
Monday, September 03, 2007
When in Rome...
Punning is a good disease to have. What ho, its an addiction you wouldn't put someone in rehab for!! Its the sort of thing that can keep you laughing the whole day, if you aren't careful!
Mj and I were at it again, the whole of saturday went in outshining the other at every opportinuty that placed itself in the way :) Here's an excerpt of an epic roman saga that was brought to sms!
The context would be more complete in formation of this particular blog, if we included some of our earlier freak inspirations... such as 'When in Rome, do the Romans', or 'To do a Roman, you'll need to do a little roman around before you get one!' and things like that... The following occured after they were doing Rome on the Travel and Living channel :) you know, the colloseum and all the throwing to the lions and all that...
Mj - Just for this, I want to make a bee-lion to the colloseum some day!
Kz - You know, the boyfriends in the ancient Roman empire probably said to their
respective grilfriends:
"I'd walk the lion for you"
Mj - Hmm, if the girlfriends were imperious enough, they'd probably make the young roman
scallwags toe the lion, not withstand the veni-vici'ing!
Kz - *wipes off a tear of laughter* Whoopie! and the Roman singer would go:
"I drew a lion,
I drew a lion for you,
oh what a thing to do;
and it was all yellow! "
Mj - And she said -
"For yellow lion drawings I do not care
Show me some real gladiator fare! "
Kz - To which the singer cried -
"What is this life
So full of this fare,
You have no time
To stand and pair? "
Mj - To which she shot back -
"Julius, to win with me a date,
Prove to me you're truly great"
and that my friend is the tale of how Julius decided to become the emperor :)
Kz - Julius' repartee -
"Fight my Roman ass off to win a date!
Roam through countries, is that my fate?
Not on your life! ", say he to her,
Living up to his name, he sieze her!
"Prove yourself Julius! ", when impore she,
Utter he, 'Veni, Vidi, Vici!! "
We hit the ceiling then, i guess... neither was able to continue the roman
exchange... Well, more communciation, more posts! more come up shortly hopefully... :) Happy reading!
Mj and I were at it again, the whole of saturday went in outshining the other at every opportinuty that placed itself in the way :) Here's an excerpt of an epic roman saga that was brought to sms!
The context would be more complete in formation of this particular blog, if we included some of our earlier freak inspirations... such as 'When in Rome, do the Romans', or 'To do a Roman, you'll need to do a little roman around before you get one!' and things like that... The following occured after they were doing Rome on the Travel and Living channel :) you know, the colloseum and all the throwing to the lions and all that...
Mj - Just for this, I want to make a bee-lion to the colloseum some day!
Kz - You know, the boyfriends in the ancient Roman empire probably said to their
respective grilfriends:
"I'd walk the lion for you"
Mj - Hmm, if the girlfriends were imperious enough, they'd probably make the young roman
scallwags toe the lion, not withstand the veni-vici'ing!
Kz - *wipes off a tear of laughter* Whoopie! and the Roman singer would go:
"I drew a lion,
I drew a lion for you,
oh what a thing to do;
and it was all yellow! "
Mj - And she said -
"For yellow lion drawings I do not care
Show me some real gladiator fare! "
Kz - To which the singer cried -
"What is this life
So full of this fare,
You have no time
To stand and pair? "
Mj - To which she shot back -
"Julius, to win with me a date,
Prove to me you're truly great"
and that my friend is the tale of how Julius decided to become the emperor :)
Kz - Julius' repartee -
"Fight my Roman ass off to win a date!
Roam through countries, is that my fate?
Not on your life! ", say he to her,
Living up to his name, he sieze her!
"Prove yourself Julius! ", when impore she,
Utter he, 'Veni, Vidi, Vici!! "
We hit the ceiling then, i guess... neither was able to continue the roman
exchange... Well, more communciation, more posts! more come up shortly hopefully... :) Happy reading!
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