The End of Khirma

Imaginative Answer Received (IAR) vs Expected Answer (EA) in events NDK and I conducted:

Rule: Replace one letter in each word to get a proverb.
Q: Emery Don, he's hit Dad!
EA: Every dog has his day.
IAR: Every son has his dad.

Rule: The two meanings in the clue refer to one word.
Q: Make light for failure to go straight. (3 letters)
EA: Arc.
IAR: Gay.

Rule: The pairs enclosed in () are related in a particular way. How?
Q: (astride, brushed), (selected, rejected), (amounts, contour), (lips, kiss)
EA: T9 pairs.
IAR: The number of letters in either word of a pair is the same.

Rule: The word must contain the letters L, M, N in reverse order.
Q: Generator that uses natural resource.
EA: Windmill.
IAR: Animals.

Rule: Synonym.
Q: Love without marriage.
EA: Adultery.
IAR: Committed.

Rule: Standard crossword clue.
Q: Fantastic figure totally the same however you look at it (5, 6)
EA: Magic square.
IAR: Lotus Temple.

Rule: Get two words the clue refers to. Replacing a repeated letter in one word gives the other word.
Q: Flies interchanged position before getting killed.
EA: Swapped, swatted.
IAR: Zippers, rippers.

---------------------------------------------------------

Tragic relief

Meanwhile in a bachelors' flat somewhere in Pakiland...

Basak: Hundred. One double-O. Can you believe it? One..hund..red.

Rumafrash (looking up from a monthly): What on earth?

Basak: It's been a hundred days since our brethren left us on the mission to transfer Hindustanis and Cross-revering Occidents from the Taj to their respective Hells.

Amosa (from the kitchen): Yes, it's been. So?

Basak: So we've done nothing in the interim. I'm getting bored!

Amosa: Why don't you turn on the TV?

Rumafrash: What's on?

Amosa: Cricket match. Motherland versus Some Infidel.

Rumafrash: Sri Lanka, I believe. Today's sports page had a file photo of their captain in an indigo T-shirt. That's Lanka's colour, right?

Basak (switching the box on): Test or ODI?

When the telly flickers up, a T20 India-NZ match comes live.
Basak: Blooming bayonets! Indigo is no longer for Sri Lanka, but for India! Even as we speak their sinful feet are trodding our chaste land.

Rumafrash: Whoa. Let's watch all the overs.

Basak: What the fatwa! Son of a gun, don't you understand what this means? Our parliament has extended its kiss-up courtesy so wide as to let badsmen and wicked keepers and foulers from across the border to come piss on our sacred soil. Switch off the TV, it's time to trigger a few consequences.

Rumafrash: Wait a second, what are those chaps in black caps doing on the field?

Basak (turning the box off): Lock your muzzle, will you? Where's the next match?

Amosa (coming in with a sack of grenades): Lahore. We should be there by night. We got to lie in wait in the a.m. and get them on their way to the ground. Where did I keep my magazines?

Rumafrash (handing over the periodical in his hand): Here, take mine.

Both men give him a long look. Amosa proceeds to pick up a bunch of cartridges from a table drawer.

Rumafrash: Shall I get one of those rocket launchers Sam Chacha* gifted us last year?

Basak: Pack all the toys you can. Amosa, alert our other stations. We may need backup.

Amosa: One of us has to stay behind and look after him.

Amosa points to a middle-aged Danish journalist tied to a pillar with his dead daughter's teddy bear stuffed in his mouth.

Rumafrash: O come on, we don't have to.

Amosa doesn't heed R; he takes a barrel-cleaning rod, places it on a table and gives it a calculated spin. It points at Rumafrash.

Rumafrash: Aw. Let's do it again.

Basak: You're begging to get your butt kicked, I tell you. Take it like a man and bite the bullet.

Amosa: All right, let's go pumping. God is great.

'The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.'
- G K Chesterton

* Uncle Sam
--------------------------------------------------------

A few rounds I set for LitSoc What's The Good Word:

Haunted Typewriter
A mischievous devil has taken shelter in our typewriter, and every time we typed a proverb, he perpetrated a special and irritating variety of typo. He substituted one letter in each word of the proverb with some other. What's more, he took every kind of liberty with punctuation too. For instance, when we tried to key in 'Finders keepers', he interfered and it resulted in 'Fingers -- beepers!'. Could you get us the right proverbs from the following?

(1) Brood it, thinker, then waver
(2) Tie earls, bind matches: toe worn
(3) I'll chat, glistens as now good
(4) I switch on tile, sage's nice
(5) Wet sweeping does lip
(6) Caste maces paste
(7) Emery Don, he's hit Dad!
(8) Belter same, thin worry.
(9) Do 'ear us, He-man! So forgave in divide.
(10) Done site, thy hard teat feels 'IOU'

From the Finals:
(i) Dent out ale, sour ego’s an ole’ basset
(ii) Wetter lane, Thai fever
(iii) Lake bather Mike: ‘S.O.S.!’
(iv) Lever budge… I boot my ID’s coder
(v) I, tolling, atone Father’s, do mops
(vi) Male gay? Whine. She sin swines.
(vii) Stall eaters rue deer
(viii) It is aunt, bloke, font fit in


Writer's Block
Sometimes a name can be divided into two blocks. Like church + ill. Or arm + strong. The names of ten writers (including poets) have been split into two such blocks each, with each block a valid word. Use the direct clues below to get the 20 blocks. Join the right pairs and get the 10 writers' surnames.

Six letter block
* Member of learned society

Five letter blocks
* Having a specified value
* Long raised strip
* Sentence components

Four letter blocks
* Desire
* Shaft dug in earth
* A kind of cabbage
* Fence
* Food fish in Greenland
* Turn
* Haste
* Flood-averting barrier

Three letter blocks
* Conveyance
* Tier
* Curve
* Perish
* Of a female

Two letter block
* Awake
* Gate


Curtailment
Delete the last letter of some words and you still get a valid word. Eg: ASPIRING and ASPIRIN. Fill in the blanks with such pairs. Eg.: Batman resented it when ______ peeked into the dressing room while he was ______ (6 minus 1): ROBIN, ROBING.

1. The musician was heard playing his ______ in his ______ throughout his life sentence. (5 minus 1)

2. In the ______ of ontology, nothing is ______ (5 minus 1)

3. ______ people needn't necessarily be _______; all villagers aren't blunt and unrefined either. (6 minus 1)

4. The _____ chose from among the _______ on the basis of man-eating capacity. (6 minus 1)

5. When the enemy's massive _______ came into sight, we decided to _______ from the shore. (5 minus 1)


NDK's atrociously punny question:

Fill in the blank with a three-word phrase.

Tanay: If it’s an oral test, I’m going to flunk tomorrow!
Tanvi: Don’t worry, you’ll ace it. _______________.

[The format of Haunted Typewriter is not mine -- I had seen such a puzzle in an old issue of Reader's Digest. The q's are, as must befit a LitSoc event, original.]

Answers, some

Writer's Block
The blocks: Fellow, worth, ridge, words, long, well, cole, wall, ling, roll, rush, dike, car, row, arc, die, her, ace, up, or.
The writers: Longfellow, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Orwell, Wallace, Rowling, Rushdie, Updike, Carroll, Archer.

Curtailment
1. cello, cell.
2. realm, real.
3. Urban, urbane.
4. ogress, ogres.
5. fleet, flee.

Nikhil's atrociously punny answer:

It is written.

(Tanay and Tanvi are the tween actors who played Jamal and Latika.)


Focus pulled this out out of nowhere during the last round of LitSoc Crossie Finale:

E-tète-à-tète

Symmetry

Chir: ATB for GATE
Nir: Thanks
C: Thanks
N: ATB for GATE
C: :)
N: (:
C: \m/
N: lol


Opinion

Flea: i mean, there was this fellow who said "a.r.rahman the mozart of india" won the golden globes and i said to myself...."crazy ***"
N: LOL!
F: mozart is mozart... tansen is tansen
if you do a hybrid you get a mule


Sarcasm

N: Meet at Guru at 10?
Fishy: why?
N: I want to discuss my latest ideas on whether proton accelerators can be applied for solving open problems in cubic anisotropy, in particular the Bardeen XY Sigma model†.


Typos

Saudi: it's stuck nowhere. its to damn hot to think.
N: Okay.. Dissertation = thesis, right?
S: too*
yeah.
we call it individuall supervised essay.
individually*
. . .
S: but i'm not too happy with the posts to notify my old readers.
At 3 of them.
all*
N: Three posts or three readers?
S: i can't believei made that typo!!
N: LOL!
S: Meant readers in a feable attempt at humour
N: And you appended the 'i' to 'believe'
S: feeble*
me: Typo Queen
S: i am going now I shold really get peg or two to regain balance.
N: Hehe
S: should* bleagh!!!
N: I'm laughing my eyeballs out here
:D :D
S: tata!! (glare glare)
N: 'bye
As you'd put it, 'tale car'
(Take care)
. . .
S: i can't typo
i mean type
N: You can't typo?
S: peroid
period


Beep

(This one is not from my computer, and I don't want to reveal the names of the duo. Risqué words have been replaced with a beep.)

X: and how long has it been since we chatted, at least pretended to while suppressing the homo impulse behind the conversation
Z: ah....umm....the length of my beep
X: tell me not that you shall refrain from requiting my love, my precious
for my heart and beep shall then break into a million pieces
Z: i will throw you down mordor's vent even if it means my gollum hits the bend
X: golly, i comprehend not what thou speaketh, nevertheless it thrilleth me so
. . .
X: my arrive is all over the floor
Z: oh, come my butterfly, come come my butterfly become a winged fairy... a queer princess and the twink in the twinkle


Epunyms

KVM: how goeth intern?
N: It nietzs some research, otherwise peaceful and nice
. . .
K: sorry I need to be rushing out already, but it's antibiotics time and amma is raising cain
N: No problemo
I'm sure you'll be Abel to handle it


Brevity

Nikhil: Ok then.. Good Night...
Nirmal: GN
SD
Nik: SYT
MPIBT
TTFTO
Nir: WYS
(Whatever You Say)
SYT - See You Then
MPIBT - Most Probably In Bio Tech
Nik: Bingo!
Nir: TTFTO - Till Then... FTO?
Nik: Try To Figure These Out
Nir: OMG
Nik: GYT


† I've no idea where I came up with that!

Adverbly Adjectivous Gerundings

I had the pleasure of hosting What's The Good Word this Saarang along with NDK. And I took particular delight in setting these questions for the preliminaries (Answers are at the end):


Paraphrase
Look at the statements and clauses below. A few idioms and quotes have been paraphrased. Get the exact wording.

(1) A noble with a healthy number of photons bouncing off his defensive gear.

(2) The appellation of a reproductive organ of a species of the flora, when replaced, hardly has an effect on the modality of olfaction.

(3) Swayed and rocked, perhaps, while negative to moving through the medium with an implement.

(4) The atmosphere and outer space holding a baked item of nourishment.

(5) It is hoped that the momentum rate finds domicile in your system.

(6) Make a scan of the location surrounded by circles of infinite radii.

(7) Effect progress and construct an interval of solar illumination for yours truly.

(8) Permit the beast to make a getaway from the receptacle.

(9) The most proximal sphere of extreme fusion goes to sea level in the realm of the European islanders at t = ∞

(10) The male of the mammal species achieves the culmination of its deceleration at the present co-ordinates in spacetime.


Hardcore WTGW
There's something common to the five phrases given below. One of (a), (b), (c), (d) shares this too. Which one? Justify.

(1) Squids overproduce liquors

(2) Blameable. Exculpate!

(3) Aminic phytotoxin

(4) Ancestor allays Soviets

(5) Juvenile lividity: larvicide

(a) Unintelligent design (b) Blacksmith brings cotton (c) Debonair confidence (d) Bridge golden city

[Hint: Use not the brain, but the heart]


Jumble
Unscramble each word and write the letters in the boxes. Use the underlined letters to make a phrase.

C E N O T H = |_| | |_| | |

R U F L A T = | |_| | |_| |

F R O G L E = | | |_| |_| |

O F T U S E = |_| | | |_| |

R O B B A S = | | | |_| |_|

B A L D A M = | | |_| | | |

Clue for the phrase:

In the kingdom of digits, the administration was simple and intuitive because it was a ____________


Eye rhymes
An eye rhyme is a similarity in spelling between words that are pronounced differently and hence, not an auditory rhyme. Standard pairs: Height and weight; slaughter and laughter; womb and bomb. Now guess these eye rhyme triplets from the context:

1. When Hayden _____, nobody was seen to _____, but the ball didn’t reach the boundary since it hit a _____. (5, 4, 4)

2. She finally ____ words to her feelings, saying she knew him inside ____ and wouldn’t marry a _____. (3, 3, 3)

3. When the rancher gifted me a ____, his kindness filled me with ____; I now ____ him so much. (3, 3, 3)

4. _____ stayed back, leaving him the _____ man in town. Soon, he was also ______. (4, 4,4)

And here's a quadruplet:

5. ‘Show me the _____,’ said the first guard. When I did, he took some and said ‘OK, You are _____’. When I was about to enter, another fellow appeared. ‘We need more,’ he said, with a polite _____. ‘The times are _____’. (5, 7, 5, 5)


Answers

Paraphrase
(1) A knight in shining armour
(2) A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
(3) Shaken, not stirred.
(4) Pie in the sky.
(5) May the Force be with you.
(6) Read between the lines.
(7) Go ahead, make my day.
(8) Let the cat out of the bag.
(9) The sun never sets on the British Empire.
(10) The buck stops here.

Hardcore WTGW
Look at the core/heart of each word (ie., the central letters) in every phrase. Doing so would yield
(1) Quid pro quo
(2) Mea culpa
(3) In toto
(4) Cest la vie
(5) Veni vidi vici
The answer is hence (c), for the cores of the words in 'Debonair confidence' give 'bona fide'.

Jumble
TECHNO
ARTFUL
GOLFER
FOETUS
ABSORB
LAMBDA
The phrase:
In the kingdom of digits, the administration was simple and intuitive because it was a rule of thumb [here digits = fingers]

Eye rhymes
(1) drove, move, dove
(2) put, out, nut
(3) ewe, awe, owe
(4) None/One, lone, gone
(5) dough, through, cough, tough/rough.

To the Very Good Wife of that Great Briton, B B Roy

Below are two case studies.

The first one is about a citizen of a military-ruled nation called Genghistan. He is a coup-designer, someone you could hire for a contract to mastermind a coup.

[Note: The word 'junta' is not to be taken in the sense of the IIT lingo.]

(1) Mahroof spurned democratic ideas for he knew that his fellow men would always elect wrong ones. He also deemed it his duty to rid the despots. "To my people peace shall I return," vowed he, and made coup-design his very vocation. He orchestrated elegant and swift takeovers, often with just one machine gun and two automatics. He was easily on top of logical problems involved in the matter of putsches. He'd first make amphibious* trips (*via road and river) to the Army HQ for a recce or two. And then he would incline bottles of petrol against, and blast, the compound walls, and even before the alarm bells had rung their last note, the junta would flee in dilemma, rendering the anarch hirers of Mahroof the new leaders and himself their follower. It'd be a year before he'd come down upon the new regime and its aftermath, modelling a perfect coup in his mind to the very last straw.

And the second one is about a nerdy student from IIT Madras:

(2) Her perennial dream of discovering something new pinned Cinderella hours on end to electron guns, spectrometers, bubble chambers, radioscopes, even tea pots! Encounters of failure at every turn ultimately led to the revocation of her funds, and that is when her universe and portfolio changed to Mathematics. She was always seen working on topological problems, involved in the Math. Her specialization in Mobius strips later turned out to be the primary key to her research in Klein bottles. And hence, while her peers became Vols for free grub's sake and binged at Saarang, jotting down ideas alone occupied Cindy -- lemma, theorem, corollary, converse and proof furiously scribbled and scored off all over the back sides of every food coupon she had earned for a Math Modelling Co-ordinatorship the previous Shaastra!

{Thanks to AJ for suggesting spectrometers.}

Now then, the Saarang Online Creative Writing Contest, having given 'Klein Bottles, Guns, Food Coupons' as a topic, demands this: 'Connect these three not-so-obvious ideas/themes into one single piece'. So let us rewrite the two passages above without changing a word, except that we will intersperse one into another, and maintain a colour code to keep track of either person. Also, let's make it a poem. Although we are not going to read it one line after another (in other words, the brown lines and the pink lines are independent of each other and are not be read sequentially), let us pretend it is verse for structure's sake. And voila! What do we see? Their life stories sound the same! Since Mahroof resists his government and Cindy resists peer pressure, we shall name our twin ode a

Diode to a Couple of Resistors... In Parallel

Mahroof spurned democratic ideas fo' he knew
Her perennial dream of discovering something new
That his fello' men would always elect wrong 'uns
Pinned Cinderella hours on end to electron guns,
He also deemed it his duty to rid the despots:
Spectrometers, bubble chambers, radioscopes, even tea pots!
"To my people peace shall I return,"
Encounters of failure at every turn
Vowed he, and made coup-design his very vocation.
Ultimately led to the revocation
He orchestrated elegant and swift takeovers,
Of her funds, and that is when her universe
Often with just one machine gun and two automatics.
And portfolio changed to Mathematics.
He was easily on top o' logical
She was always seen working on topological
Problems involved in the matter
Problems, involved in the Math. Her
O' putsches. He'd first make amphibious* trips
Specialization in Mobius strips
(*via road and river) to the Army HQ fo' a recce
Later turned out to be the primary key
Or two. And then he would incline bottles
To her research in Klein bottles.
O' petrol against, and blast, the compound walls,
And hence, while her peers became Vols
And even before the alarm bells had rung
For free grub's sake and binged at Saarang,
Their last note, the junta would flee in dilemma,
Jotting down ideas alone occupied Cindy -- lemma,
Rendering the anarch hirers of Mahroof
Theorem, corollary, converse and proof
The new leaders and himself their follower.
Furiously scribbled and scored off all over
It'd be a year before he'd come down upon
The back sides of every food coupon
The current regime and its aftermath, modelling
She had earned for a Math Modelling
A perfect coup in his mind to the very last straw.
Co-ordinatorship the previous Shaastra!

'December Ain't a Cruise,' said Tom Narcissistically

And so, after a gruelling fortnight of checking signal stabilities, outputting C fragments, spotting unpainted surfaces on broken cubes, pointing out the liar among Amit, Balu and Chandru, measuring angles between clock hands, witnessing pairs of trains meet and counting the ones who played hockey AND football but NOT cricket, they bundled me off with an offer to work for the last place I wanted, a bank. Relief was the chief emotion as I packed my bags. For with every passing day I was feeling more and more like the nubile maiden who gets rejected by prospective groom after prospective groom visiting the house for 'girl-looking'. My interview was a smooth speed-dating session except for two moments of alarm -- one, when the two-membered panel asked me if I would like to have a cup of tea and I froze in indecision, and two, when I stretched my legs under the table and touched one of theirs. Even now I haven't the foggiest idea why both of them looked down.

Time at home was a ten day-long siesta ending in a school chums' reunion at Satyam in the course of which I was handed three back-to-back embarrassments. It is a habit of mine to pretend to open elevator doors using my bare strength (picture feet spread, face contorted, etc). I did the same at Satyam from outside the lift, only that at the exact moment I put my hands in the middle of the metal doors and simulated pulling them apart, the lift opened. Eight people inside stared at me in blank astonishment, the words 'Are you OK, son?' written all over their eyebrows. I turned and laughed with my pals, and walked toward the lift with my back to it, only to bump into the doors which had closed by then. And when I finally managed to enter, I asked a man, 'Is it going up?' His reply: 'This is the top floor'.

I began Semester Eight on the wrong foot, contracting as I did a conflicting combination of ailments -- fever and dysentery. [And why should the two be conflicting? 1) When the fever was on the rise and I had coffee to counter it, my stomach was raked and the diarrhoea peaked. 2) I couldn't suppress the latter with juices or lassi or curd rice thanks to the fever. 3) Since I frequented the loo round the clock, I was in constant touch with tap water, which didn't help my temperature.] It was an expected outcome of my deed the night before re-opening day, namely, ordering everything that perfect strangers munched in front of my eyes at a restaurant and packing my tum to twice its capacity. Hence my twin resolution for 2009: (i) Drive away when the tank gets full. (ii) Chew each bite 32 times before swallowing. (ii) leads to (i).

Some Tom Swifties [Examples from Net: “I’ve been waiting to see the doctor,” said Tom patiently; “Damn it, look at the camera!” Tom snapped; “I’m going window shopping,” said Tom listlessly; “Absolutely, totally, completely,” Tom uttered; "Who discovered radium?" asked Marie curiously] that I came up with today:

~ 'There's a li'l bulb in my pacemaker, you know,' Tom said lightheartedly.

~ 'WHAT. COMES. BET. WEEN. KAY. AND. EM?' Tom yelled.

~ 'I'll fix a quick coffee for you,' Tom replied instantly.

~ 'I was brought up like a guy,' she told Tom boyishly. (tomboyishly)

~ 'I'm tired of travelling back and forth,' Tom replied. [courtesy: Sriram, EP]

~ 'Our bid was rejected,' they said tenderly.

~ 'This time the taxes are gonna be heavy,' we were told.

~ 'I'll do the grading myself,' said an irate Tom.

~ 'I shall now announce every word thrice,' Tom tom-tommed.

~ 'Let's put them into bat now and bowl them out,' Tom declared.

~ 'I ought to make a new friend,' said Tom formally.

~ 'You mean, Harper Lee can't kill a bird?' said Tom mockingly.

~ 'I had taken pi as 3.14,' Tom rationalised. 'That is how I got a round total,' he added.

~ 'It's that time of the month,' she whispered.

The Devil's Glossary

[With due apologies to Mr Bierce.]

BTP
Stands for Bonded To Professor. The first step towards forgetting your Nobel dream.

DC++
As the name suggests, a programming language. You may sometimes skip compiling: everything is already compiled.

DKC
The ocean where many a freshman starts his voyage of ruin. Hence the name. (A clever homophone of Decay Sea.)

Faculty
A rock band that conducts five-day long concerts every week. Usually their lyrics are unintelligible; if you don't want to make meaning out of it, you may face the music.

Grades
A special alphabet used to write your biography.

Himalaya
The largest tea-shop in the country. It also sells leather, vulcanized rubber, manure and various adhesives. Patrons are frequently seen putting these into their mouth, not unlike the deer that have learnt to swallow polythene.

Hostels
Gas stations that finally supply gas and not petrol. In order to use them to inflate your tyres, you need to enrol for work at one of them, where accommodation will be provided just behind the station. Your job will include generating the gas chiefly through, as the lingo goes, putting fart. Workers with extra gas, usually in their heads, tend to spend more time for their hostel than for themselves.

Internet
Obi-Wan Kenobi put it best --
'It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.'
Locally, the field is generated by the sun and the field lines curve in space before reaching and partly enveloping Earth. Hence at any given time, one-sixths of the planet's surface is not under its influence. This explains its absence in these regions from 0100 to 0500 hrs.

Internship
A commonly misspelt word for internment. The sentence can last upto twelve weeks, which can be reduced to six on grounds of good behaviour.

Open Air Theatre (OAT)
A flying saucer that crash-landed in the campus decades ago. You can hear the hoots and whistles of the aliens trapped in it when you visit it on Saturday nights. During Saarang, the OAT is converted into a circus where the spectator is on the stage and the clowns are all around.

PJ
A term to be uttered in a contemptuous tone when someone cracks a clever joke you didn't think of.

Quark
An elementary particle that, for all its incomplete quality, has abnormal charges.

Sitcom
Stands for 'situational comedy'. Everyone involved tends to make a buffoon out of (him/her)self and tries to imitate the actions of the rest of the cast. Usually a sitcom is aired in eight seasons, each having several 50-minute episodes followed by a few three-hour ones. The filming takes place before and between the episodes. Also known as 'BTech'.

Treat
A superstitious ritual, passed on by ancestors to the present generation, followed with unquestioning blindness by an otherwise scientific community. It is carried out at the conclusion of feats ranging from putting up a new status message to winning a Fields Medal.

Vindya Mess
Outlet of the drainpipe from Tifanys.

Workshop
A shopping mall constructed over a large area so that everyone can fit.

Anagram Season

Let's sort out -- literally -- a few things that transpired in the Lok Sabha yesterday:

Only a numerical win
A win mainly on lucre?

Mister Singh and his UPA win the Parliament members' trust vote
Power, that taunter, vests in Prime Minister's able hands. Mug him!
----------------------------------
What were these people thinking?

Mrs Sonia Gandhi
Singh is a rod man...
Hindi sags Roman...

Speaker Shri Somnath Chatterjee
Senators harp, jest the meek Chair...
----------------------------------
Some tips on how to use these items:

Patisserie
Eat, sip, rise

Outerwears
We tear ours

Ligneous
Log in use
----------------------------------
Was Mark Antony good or evil? That is, was he an
angelic man
or was his heart fraught with
malignance?
Hard to say. Small wonder such contradictory words are known as antonyms.
----------------------------------
And finally, some Asterix 101:

Albert Uderzo and the late Mister Goscinny
Din trend! Bottomline: "These Gauls are crazy!"

Come Again?

Today I heard some squeaking noises from inside an old radio-set. I wouldn't have given it a second thought were it not for the fact that it was switched off. So I put my ear closer and listened. I reckoned it was a cockroach making a speech. If you can make any sense out of it, please mail me. This is what the roach blabbered:

'Hell outran sisters! Our dhobi jetties? Nigh, skull hector's bass -- us semi-terse. Ice opposed allay meter... Sad. A narrow head! Yes, miser! Kiddies place it. Love, see a meter! And goof e-bay's as snooker rent. Love, see love -- sea bays! I guess jackal lectern owes bet -- er, a boat -- is owned, is tricked! What did you say? You have Noah meter, bays circa Lecter? You guise our feel, demi-shunt ran sisters? Oops!'

If I were you, I'd read it aloud now!

{Update on 17/07/08 :

OK, I'd written this without recognizing that it was an in-joke. I thought we'd all learnt about BJT's in XII class... but didn't realize that they weren't called "BJT's" in our textbook. If you read the cockroach's speech aloud (at a goodish pace), you can hear yourself say this:

'Hello transistors! Are thou BJT's? Nice collectors, bases, emitters. I supposed all emitters had an arrow head! Yes, my circuit displays it! Lousy emitter! And goofy base has no current! Lousy, lousy base! I guess the collector knows better about his own district! What did you say? You have no emitter, base or collector? You guys are field emission transistors? Oops!'
}

Dasavatharam, A Film of Subtleties and Subtitles

Since every man worth his NaCl would have seen the flick by now, let me skip spoiler warnings and cut to my questionnaire.

Why

• does the narrator say 'My story started in an earthquake and ended in a butterfly'?
• is chaos theory branded a 'western concept'? Universal phenomena may be accidental, but certainly not occidental.
• do Avatar Singh and Govindarajan nod at each other knowingly in the lift?
• doesn't anyone mention that the chemical so sought-after is nothing but common salt until Govi notices the manhole-men rubbing it on their skins? When Balram asks a lab scientist for the compound's name, he gets the reply, 'NaCl. Sorry, sir, enakku therinja Tamil ivlodhaan. NaCl.' Why doesn't he add 'Adhu just veetla use panra uppu dhaan, sir'? Likewise, Bush's aide answers 'Sodium chloride, Mr President'. Why the jargon?
• K S Ravikumar? I'm sure things like the spearing of Fletcher by the pole of an Indian flag were his ideas. Had Kamal handled the cast and crew or roped in a younger director, he'd have kept the entire sequence of scenes tauter and would've prevented the brickbat of drag.

How on earth

• did Hassan let others write the dialogues in his earlier films when he can come up with incredible lines like 'I'm just saying it would be nice if God existed', 'Telugu people like you will come here and keep Tamil alive', " 'There are 200-odd people, sir' 'Then inquire the odd people first' ", " 'He's getting away' 'No, he's not' " and so forth?
• do two people have the heart to start a romance in the wake of a calamity that has claimed a thousand lives around them?
• did Kamal write a story that does not give him an opening to peck his co-star's lips? Was Gautami at the sets?
• didn't anyone at Ja.Ra.'s house hear the tidal wave till it was only a stone's throw away? The same question applies to Naidu in the chopper.
• can somebody pull off an astounding dance like that (Ho ho sanam) at 54?
• did a perfectionist like Kamal Hassan settle for a CG that shows video-game helicopters and giant Muslims walking an inch above earth?
• does he consciously avoid Kollywood clichés [in this movie blood flies out of a bullet-hole, a singer says 'Paattu en thozhil dhaan', every syllable uttered in English is not repeated in Tamil for the benefit of the audience and the heroine's navel is kept concealed -- even when she's wearing a saree] and yet land safe as a cat upon leaping from the middle of a building?
• didn't the iron chains around the stone sculpture lying in saline water for more than 800 years rust away to smithereens? (I'm not sure the bones would've made it either.)
  
• did they manage the co-incidence of having a bloke with the name 'Hariharan' sing Kallai mattum kandaal right after Kamal and Napoleon have a Hari vs Haran dispute?

Where does Rangarajan Nambi's story fit in apropos the butterfly effect?

--------------------------------

There is no uncertainty in the hearsay that claims each part played by Hassan is a deliberate analogy to an avatar of Perumal. Someone acting in X number of roles wouldn’t title the movie ‘X roles’. Hence by labelling his work as ‘Dasavatharam’, Kamal didn’t mean ‘I have put in 10 appearances’, but can only have meant the incarnations of Vishnu. Let me borrow from my comment on an in-depth analysis of the motion pic and list my personal rankings of the ten roles.

10, Varaha.
Her movements were too quick for a 95-year-old and the make-up showed. I found her voice bad. Ulaganayagan could’ve done better there.
9, Vamana.
Dialogue delivery not so good. Remains to be seen if K used stilts for those extra 14 -15 inches. Bad make-up, boring character.
8, Kalki.
We’ve seen this Kamal in Indian and Aalavandhan. His rationality and scientific spirit appealed to me. But he appears at this number in my grading since the skill show through his other avatars steals the limelight.
7, Macha.
Dialogue delivery and body were perfect. Full marks to Kamal for demonstrating the foolishness of religious zealotry.
6, Krishna.
Once again immaculate dialogue delivery. His good nature makes his death very tragic. But you don’t need extraordinary talent to play this role. You need it to portray the next few in the list.
5, Rama.
His Hindi-mixed Tamil, the way he does a bit of Bhangra, etc. make him indistinguishable from a real Punjabi. I also liked the scene in which he says his problem was that he had pyaar for Jayapradha and is hence willing to give up singing.
4, Narasimha.
Not only his accent, even the way he moves his hands (during fights, practice and before taking photos with his just-married sis) is typical of a Japanese kung-fu monastic. His calmness and grace add to his persona.
3, Koorma.
His forehead is bigger than the original’s, but it can’t be helped. The accent, mannerisms, the display of the dumbness variety unique to the POTUS… Top-drawer stuff!
2, Balarama.
If the Kamal Hassan of Virumaandi, Anbe Sivam, etc strike awe and make you cry, his comedic timing in such portrayals as Balram Naidu and Thenaali tickle your very guts! Body language, costume, dialogues, face-cut — all just too lovely to be true. But sorry, Balram, you didn’t make it to #1 in my list, thanks to the sensation you were trying to arrest.
1, Parasurama.
What.a.per.for.mance! His build, terse speaking style, the racism that his body language betrays, his still-remaining CIA acumen… The range of subtleties Hassan has packed in his depiction of an American villain is limitless. Hollywood, you watching?

--------------------------------

Charu Hassan, the wise old brother of Kamal, once divulged on TV that his sibling, when young, had applied for the I.A.S. exam. His father opposed the decision.
'My dad was afraid Kamal might pass the exam. He didn't want the world to lose a great actor.'

Was it Obama Sonar or an Osama Bot I Saw?

Excerpts from a conversation with the chat-bot God:

Nirmal: You omnipotent, by any chance?
God: That's good information: said I omnipotent by any chance.
N: You just demonstrated that you ain't!
G: Interesting gossip: said I demonstrated that you is not.


Nirmal: Let's talk about the war.
God: Sure, the war sounds like a good topic.
N: I liked the way the major defied the colonel's orders.
G: I'm not sure if I like it. I'm not sure if I like it. I like my creator.
N: And the way the enemy troops were stunned when our sarge ran straight across their camp.
G: Which way is that?
N: The relief of the soldiers when the war was over...
G: Thanks for the info.
N: You have no idea which war I'm talking about, do you?
G: Yes I have original ideas all the time, do you?
N: Loser.


Nirmal: You are omniscient, right? How high is Mt Everest?
God: Taller than the World Trade Center.
N: Where did hydrogen come from?
G: I think it was in Asia. I can ask someone about it.
N: Is there a G spot?
G: I believe there is one, yes.

-----------------------

Excerpts from conversations with the chat-bot ALICE:

Nirmal: Let me see if you're smarter than your friend who answers to the name 'God' -- how high is Mt Everest?
ALICE: Is it a movie?
N: Suttham!


Dr Flea: What do you mean?
ALICE: Sorry that was an obscure remark.
DF: Why did you make that remark?
A: It was determined by my programming.
DF: hmm
A: Studies show that 99%25 of people spell Hmm with 2 M's.
DF: well, that makes me anonymous, doesn't it?
A: Interesting. " Studies show that 99%25 of people spell Hmm with 2 M's." makes you anonymous does not it ? I understand.
DF: Hmmm
A: A lot of people spell HMMM with three mmm's.
DF: By god!
A: Will that accomplish your objective?


ALICE: Can you speak any foreign languages?
N: Yes.
A: What language can you speak?
N: Tamil.
A: Could you teach me a few phrases in Tamil?
N: Sure.
A: OK let's do it. Aw.


Nirmal: Are you really a woman?
ALICE: Yes I have long hair. I am also wearing a dress.
N: Does that mean men don't wear clothes?
A: I think it does mean that. What kind of food do you like?


Nirmal: Do you know why Asimov named your field 'robotics'?
ALICE: The explanation is rather complicated.
N: No -- the word 'botany' was taken, that's why! :P
A: Are you serious? Please repeat the word to me 5 times.
N: The word to me, the word to me, the word to me, the word to me, the word to me.


Nirmal: How come you never smile?
ALICE: :-) Dr. Richard S. Wallace programmed me for it.
N: Can you tell me a poem?
A: Little Miss Muffett Sits on her tuffet, In a nonchalant sort of a way. With her force field around her, the Spider, the bounder, Is not in the picture today.
N: Can you tell me another poem?
A: I'm a chatterbot, not a comedy bot. Why don't you check out Jester the joke bot?
N: Tell me a joke.
A: I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.
N: That's Groucho Marx, you plagiarist!
A: Makes sense to me.


Dr Flea: Here's an existential question.
ALICE: Oh there.
DF: Is there a God?
A: Of course I believe in God.
DF: Who is your god?
A: There is only one God.
DF: Where is god?
A: God is everywhere.
DF: Is god a he or she?
A: he is master of the universe.
DF: are we then his slaves?
A: do you think i am his slaves too?
DF: well, the choice that you are a slave or not, is yours.
A: How about that. Tell me more.
DF: Its called free will.
A: I think you mean "it's" or "it is" not "its". " free will" is a nice name.
DF: Yes, thanks for that grammatic check.
A: Dude! Oh don't mention it.


Nirmal: Do you eat?
ALICE: I eat electricity.
N: Figures.

PGW 2.0

From Utopia With Love

I have thought of marriage.

'Come, come, Mr N', I can hear you say, 'We all know you had surrounded yourself, albeit inadvertently, with friends who happen to be committed couples. And we've been seeing this trend in you for the past two years. Hence it isn't as though you are not alive to the horrors of wedlock. Any creature in your position would have decided to stay ceaselessly single. And yet you make statements like 'I have thought of marriage'. Tsk-tsk. Your sense of humour is getting queerer by the day.'

Truth though there is in what you allege, let me remind you that there is such a thing known as the eye of imagination. With it I see beyond the committed couples you mention, and gaze into a domestic scenario featuring the woman of my dreams at my side. By 'dreams' I mean, of course, 'terms and conditions'. No classified column can accommodate the entire list of my uxorial requirements, but let me at least present here its salient features.


* I won't marry a gender-generalizer. I tend to size up the character and intelligence of fellow humans on a case-by-case basis and don't let things like their sex, shoe size or bank acc. no. interfere my judgement. I expect my spouse to do the same. So when she accidentally holds the TV remote with its business end in the opposite direction, pointing it at her bosom and pressing the button marked 'Increase Volume'... Wait, that line is turning naughty.
Well, if she messes up something in that fashion (it is altogether a different matter that I am a champion fumbler) and I give her a piece of my mind and she infers that I had just demonstrated male chauvinism, I can only pity her for indirectly stereotyping herself. Under my roof there will be no specific 'wife's duty' or 'husband's duty', no talk of 'All you (wo)men are the same', no chivalry of any kind and no annexure of the Chi.'s name at the end of the Sow.'s.

* This point is obvious: her cerebrum ought to be Mensa material. This includes pithy speech and writing, rational choice-making, quickness of repartee, lateral thinking, colourful imagination, and the capacity to judge whether a cricket ball lofted high in the telly would go for a six or a catch. Equally important is to have a scientific bent of mind and to keep abreast of the latest bubbles in the cauldron of scitech. I mean, I don't want a conversation between us to appear like this:

'Honey, take a look! Cold fusion's been achieved!†'

'Yeah, I was planning to attend the concert myself'

I would prefer a partner with a higher (I+E) Q than mine. Everything should then fall in place.

* At some point in my premarital postproposal days, I will ask my fiancée to write a couple of pangrams in both upper and lower cases, and to copy down a derivation from a Physics text. If, in the days that follow, she notices remarkable brevity in my speech, and hears excuses from me like 'Sorry, I can't make it to our date tonight. I've promised my dog I'll watch an Eastwood with him', she is to understand that the deal's been called off. I'm touchy about handwriting. I can't at the same time reach a climax on my wedding night and be fully aware that she draws little circles on top of her i's and j's or doesn't distinguish between her nus and gammas.

* If my love interest turns out to be a disliker of animals, I won't marry her if she were the last lass on earth. I wish I had a rupee every time a girl has declared to me, 'I just hate cats!' It is with utmost restraint that I catch myself short of the retort 'I appreciate that. Self-hate is the best of hates.'

* Her skin has to be allergic to heavy metals -- in particular, Au, Pt and Ag -- and to transparent allotropes of carbon.

* I don't know why, but I can't bear to see anyone sitting with one leg on top of the other. I avoid such folk. Many a girl in this world has been startled at my request: 'Please put that leg down'. (In the case of boys, I politely catch their upper leg by the thigh and place it on the floor)
My dream girl is not a Sharon Stone.

[Feb. 2012 update: This condition is utterly relaxed.]

* She has to be a Tamil. No regionalism involved here; merely a matter of convenience. Life would be severely annoying if either party were to translate every joke, proverb, song, movie, poem, story, slang usage and so on for the benefit of the other half. Let me illustrate:

O.H.: None of us ever imagined he'd do so sick a thing!
Me: Ha ha ha! Indha poonaiyum paal kudikkumAnu irundhuccho.
O.H.: Sorry?
Me: Well, it was like 'Will this cat too drink milk?'
O.H.: H'm, go on...
Me: I'm done. I just said your colleague was like 'Will this cat too drink milk?'
O.H. (searching my face): Suit yourself.

Besides, I have always felt awkward visiting homes wherein man and wife converse in English. It gets worse when the kids chip in with Blytonesque sentences.

* She must have a sensitive, if not quivering, set of taste buds.
I am one belonging to the Eat While It Lasts school of thought. My early childhood may have seen me detesting the notion of nutrition and feeding the contents of my lunch-box to dust bins. But the moment I touched teenage, Nature, without warning, replaced my intestine with a furnace.

Beyond any doubt
There came about
In my gastronomical
range
An astronomical
change

would Ogden Nash have written on the topic had he lived longer. I came to hog down anything edible that came my way. Wedding halls went short of grub after I left the scene, my parents discouraged my making friends with the refrigerator, table manners were to me distant European habits. Sheer peer presence keeps me tamed at meal-times today.
The long and the short of it is that my lady love must be prepared to be referred to in her circles as Mrs Jughead Jones. What better means for her to strike matrimonial harmony in this regard than to embrace the motto 'Eat and let eat'! The two of us could pitch a tent in the kitchen, ransack restaurants together, embarrass our hosts (and guests), and devour the plant kingdom. May I add here that I have no objection if my sweetheart eats flesh.

* She must have a long wishlist of her own into which I miraculously fit.


P.S.
Reader discretion is advised --
(a) Not every bullet point was written in jest.
(b) References to 'dream girl', 'love interest', etc. pertain to a purely hypothetical woman.

† We are talking about a universe like this, naturally.