42 Quirks

f u cn undRst& dis para, u cn stop readN hre – dis isn’t ment 4 u. f u didn’t undRst& it, wel, YKW u r…
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I am convinced that all Hindu weddings are a massive exercise in classical Pavlovian conditioning.

Any utterance of the words “Shubh,” “Mangal,” and “Saavdhaan” in any order will automatically cause the akshataa in your hand to be flung in the general direction of the stage/podium where the ceremony is happening.

Sirs and Madams of the world,  we’ve been royally trolled.

O_o

“Psychics can make vague predictions and later claim credit for anything that was near the mark. The media tells the story of the fascinating successes and ignores the failures as being not newsworthy. The public gets the impression that psychics can locate dead bodies with regularity. In fact, such cases have been rare and probably a result of geniuslevel pattern recognition, or luck, or simple exaggeration.”

- God’s Debris by Scott Adams [PDF] pp. 81

This is how most conversations on the Internet (especially in the comments page of a most popular blogs/sites) eventually turn out:
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(Image found here. Copyright Unknown)

“Did you know that our staple food is also our currency?” Andy said as he took a big bite of his Big Mac.
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Once upon a time there was a boy named Baba.

Baba was born into a family which was quite poor. They were so poor that the only birthdays they celebrated were when they were born. Obviously, none of them remembered any of it. In fact, they were deemed socially poor BECAUSE they were economically poor and that bothered Baba a lot.

However, that did not deter Baba from wanting to get educated. He studied wherever he could – under the street lights, in the midst of a noisy crowd. All he needed was a little bit of time & a little bit of space. Such was his thirst for knowledge. And it paid ample dividends.

Baba became one of the most well-read, well-educated & well-respected people in the country.

He went on to write a very important book. The book was so important that it was read by everyone, everywhere in the country and referred to at all times. They referred to it when the country was at war, they referred to it when the country was at peace. They referred to it when the country needed guidance, they referred to it when the country didn’t need it at all!

They first referred to it when the rulers of the country changed & have been referring to it ever since…

One very important part of the book that Baba wrote involved a series of statements that went like this:

• To become socially rich, one must become economically rich.
• To become economically rich, one must be backed by the socially rich.
• The only way to break this vicious circle is by ‘booking’.

The ‘booking’ concept was quite radical. You book certain seats in the socially rich section for the socially poor & help them become economically rich and thus, socially rich. Once enough among the socially poor become socially rich (ergo economically rich) you stop these ‘bookings’ & let things go back to their previous state of affairs.

Baba was quite happy with this state of affairs & believed that the entire ‘reductio ad absurdum’ would now mean that nobody would be socially poor!

But where there’s a flight, there are hijackers waiting to usurp control.

This radical concept of ‘bookings’ was clearly a flight of fancy & hence it was duly hijacked & redirected on a direct collision course towards the twin towers of Equality & Justice. And that’s how both of them crashed to the ground.

Thus, as a direct result of the bookings, the socially poor got economically richer, the economically rich got socially richer & the socially rich weren’t the least bit bothered – since it was no skin off their nose, anyway.

One eventful result of this radical bit of thinking was that it earned Baba a lot of followers – some even crossed the line to become his ‘disciples’! His teachings weren’t exclusive but they took the plunge anyway. His disciples ensured that Baba was accorded the respect he always deserved wherever he went – not that anybody wasn’t willing to give it – but they went ahead and stamped their authority anyway; for want of better things to do in life.

Had Baba known, he would certainly be offended about it. But he was long dead by the time this happened. Dead people take no offense, you see, so all was well with the world.

The disciples sang his praises, erected shrines for him, celebrated his birthday year-after-year – they did everything he had always wanted to do, but couldn’t do for various reasons. There wasn’t a handbook to follow per se, but in retrospect, they thought they had managed it quite efficiently & they happily went about patting their backs.

And so it came to be that the boy named Baba, who had NEVER seen a birthday cake in his life, saw his birthday being celebrated with huge processions from point A to point B, with ‘walls’ of loudspeakers blaring the latest popular hits – all done with the sole purpose of ‘ keeping his memory alive’.

- The End -

PS: A few people wondered whether memory & loud-speakers were really connected. Extensive research was conducted into the correlation between memory & loud-speakers, but nobody was able to come up with a satisfactory explanation. Also, it made the disciples unhappy & the subject was dropped anon, without any further explanation.

—
Disclaimer: The fictional nature of this post is directly proportional to the readers’ inclination towards irrational fundamentalism. Cheers.

In the land of Book,
Where people lived by the letter,
There was a Small Nook,
Which, well, could’ve been a lot better…

The people of Small Nook
(Weird looking people, those!)
They wrote in the Big Book
Sonnets & essays, poetry & prose.

One among them,
Was V. Tiny Tot.
He didn’t write much,
Just scribbled a lot.

In all the land of Book,
To write was to score!
You were a schnook
If you didn’t write anymore!

So they gathered around in a council
Decided to set the record straight,
Threatened V. Tiny Tot with a big, fat bill,
And dire consequences to his fate!

Pretty satisfied with that,
They all went back!
And they hoped it would get
V. Tiny Tot properly on track!

What they didn’t realize was this:
V. Tiny Tot’s aberration wasn’t ad-hoc,
That he didn’t write was no fault of his!
After all, he lived in Writers’ Block!
—

Another poem. For obvious reasons – heh heh!

:D