Vodka, english grannies and family.....

Can’t The Hindu find anyone else other than Nirmal Shekar to write in the sports section? For more than a decade he’s been writing the strangest things. His so called analogies are hardly that. Some classic Shekar (on Mirza getting the better of some Russian player),

“Girls her age seldom go to work at that hour, unless they happen to have the unenviable job of listening to — and placating — English grannies’ complaints about a Barclays bank statement or a malfunctioning microwave oven in a voice that frogs might mistake for a partnership call.…………even as the Russian found the surface about as agreeable as one of her countrymen might consider a pub that did not stock vodka”.

Which idiot gave this guy a job writing? There was also some stuff about polar bears which I will not torture you with.

Talking of bad journalism, saw this episode of Hardtalk (on BBC) with Richard Dawkins as the guest discussing his book, The God Delusion. Dawkins was trying very seriously to make a point about how religion pervades everything. How labeling a child as a Christian, Muslim or whatever is not considered to affect the psyche of the child while labeling the kid anything else would be a no-no. Throughout the programme the interviewer had an one point agenda – railroad Dawkins and trip him without really listening to anything the guy said!

Ha! The family (me included) are so good at giving advice. We just hate being at the receiving end! A certain someone recently told off a certain somebodyelse…lets call them M and J! It was rather ironic, since M has similar problems with life and doesn’t do well when advice is dished out to her! A bit of the kettle calling the pot black?

Hmmmm…talking of family….went home to Singara Chennai recently. Only to find my room usurped and my cousin giving me directions in my city!!! This from the creature who was the typical oblivious north Indian till 2 years ago!

Short Circuit!

To be ethical, this post's title was suggested by a good friend of mine (whose circuits are shorted more often than not!)....

Visited an old (and famously flaky!) friend the other day. On reaching her place, I found her pacing on the terrace as TNEB were tinkering with the electrical supply to the building. Apparently it was a case of high voltage leading to an electrical fire. We had hardly started chewing the fat when this dude started yelling for help. We found him in the middle of some rather thick smoke as his washing machine was burning merrily. Finally everyone exited the building and the EB folks and us got organised and started rushing in bags of sand. In the meantime we called the fire dept who came in time to put out a smoldering fire that the EB folks had missed.

After all the excitement we were gossiping with the local cops when this mama in veshti went by us doing a sprint worthy of Ben Johnson. Why? To collar one of the dudes who went out sand collecting, and accuse him of stealing sand from his house! On being told the situation, the mama insisted that the dude should have got sand from elsewhere! After much soothing of ruffled feathers he chilled out only to tell the cop that electrical fire cannot occur! As if we were making the whole thing up!
(Our considered opinion being he was drunk as a skunk!)

Why o why do I have to come across all the weird Tamil mamas in the world?