Doodles of a crazy man!

Can you remember the first French word you had learnt? I can. Let me take a guess about you, was it "Bonjour", "Monsieur", "Mademoiselle", "Au Revoir"? If you say yes, I can safely assume that you were the novel-reading types and you must have read these in a dozen fiction novels where the protagonist travels all over Europe trying to escape from KGB, MI6, CIA or trying to uncover some deadly conspiracy against all odds. I am equally sure that you would have pronounced them in your mind like how you would pronounce an English word. Only later, you would have known that "Mademoiselle" sounds like "memmozee" or "au revoir" sounds like "avva". If you were not the novel-reading types, in the post-cable-tv-pre-Internet era, there was only one way to get your basic French education - Fashion TV. You had to tolerate horrendously dressed zombies to catch a rare episode of Rio Carnival. I need not say that most of...

Read this hilarious news in, where else, but TOI today: "Naomi Campbell looked stunning in Vikram Phadnis' saree" Vikram Phadnis' saree? I am grinning ear to ear whenever I think of that line! ***** Q: "How does a south Indian bomb insult a north Indian bomb?" A: By calling it a "bum" :)

Ravi Shastri is a great commentator, or so he thinks. Its not too surprising when someone is in the company of Sanjay Manjrekar, Arun Lal and the likes. And lets not forget, he was the inventor of that historic phrase - " The last thing the team needs at this stage is a run out ". As if there would be some stage when "run out" will move up in the "necessary" list. Well, anyways! Thank heavens, his statements are not as ridiculous as Arun Lal who would say - " Rameez, I reckon when the required run rate keeps shooting up like this, the batsmen have to get the boundaries ". But, Shastri provided ample entertainment last night at the IPL finals presentation ceremony. " Ladies and gentlemen, on stage we have Sharad Pawar, president of Board of Control for Cricket in India, Lalit Modi - Chairman and Commissioner of IPL,......., Sharad Pawar - president of Board of Control for Cricket in India " With so much (repeated)attention sh...

Disclaimer: Good understanding of Hindi , English , Kannada is recommended. And absolute tolerance towards non-sense is mandatory. I was just thinking about how some proverbs have multiple meanings when you interpret it using multiple languages. There is a proverb in Kannada called " Hani hani kooDidare haLLa " (Same meaning as "little drops of water makes a mighty ocean") Hani = Drop; haLLa = Water body Now, " hani " sounds exactly like "honey". "Honey" is a term used to address a very lovable female (or male depending on your gender and orientation!) Now " Honey honey kooDidare " means adding many such lovable females to your list - which means having multiple affairs. " haLLa " can also be interpreted as in " haLLa hidyadu " which means "to be in ruins". So, this proverb also means that multiple affairs are not advisable. Have you noticed that people from different countries have differe...

I have always been fascinated by curse words or abusive words. Though I am quite familiar with abusive words in other languages, I will give more examples from Kannada, as those were part of my growing up. Let me start by analyzing how cursing works. The main intention of abuse is to insult and also hurt the other person. Thats the key. If you have a set of vocabulary that your recipient does not understand or does not consider derogatory, sorry sir, its a waste! Kids begin their cursing using simple words like "stupid" , "idiot" , "fool" etc. And it does not take too much time for them to realize that these qualities are so common and acceptable, they cease to be curse words in the long run. And as kids, our abuses were mainly restricted to the animal names. A typical kid fight when we were young would go like this: Kid 1: "Kaththe" (Donkey, not ass ;) ) Kid 2: "Kothi" (Monkey) Kid 1: "Naayi" (Dog) Kid 2: "Goobe...

"Oh, he/she is so innocent" Have you heard this statement quite often? At least I have. And "so" becomes "soooo" or "choo" depending on the gender of the statement maker. If you know me, you would have very rarely, if ever, heard me making such a statement. I have always had this confusion as to what innocence means. I seriously did not know the exact difference between innocence and ignorance. You always call a child as innocent, and not ignorant. If somebody has not committed a crime or has no knowledge of the crime, he is called innocent. But, if a person does not know about lets say anthropology, he is said to be ignorant about the subject. Definitely not innocent! So, I started this little research on the word "innocence". People mostly use the word "innocence" to define people who are trustworthy, dependable, not cheating and a whole lot of "good" qualities (including, not being aware of bad qualities). Innocen...

Conversation 1: (Having dinner at a restaurant in Basaveshwaranagar on thursday night) "Do you remember there used to be a hero in Kannada films?" "Who? How did he look like?" "He was not very famous. He had curly hair" "Oh okay, Sunil?" "No, but he acted around the same time. I think he has acted movies with Sudharani." "Who else? Shashikumar? Ramkumar?" "No, he was not a Kumar. I know him, but I cannot remember the name" "He has acted with Shruthi? Abhijit?" "No, he was not very famous I guess" "Raghuveer? Gulzar Khan?" "Namskaar pa. He was not that bad. He was generally a poor guy, a tailor in some movies. He always has lot of problems." "There were lot of bad movies and bad actors around that time. There was a movie called 'Mangalya' around that time. Malashree and Sunil are lovers and Sunil's brother Sridhar marries her so that..." "Yeah, its S...

Running out of original ideas is not the only reason why I am writing this article. ;) I happened to stumble upon Devil's Dictionary last week. It is a satirical book by Ambrose Bierce , having funny interpretations of English words. There are very few things that have made me laugh whole-hearted and this was definitely one among them. Here are a few definitions that I loved very much. Abstainer : A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. Absurdity : A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. Acquaintance : A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. Admiration : Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. Apologize : To lay the foundation for a future offense. Armor : The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith. Brain : An apparatus with which we think we think. Congratulation : The civility of envy. Conservative : A statesman enam...

It took me a few minutes less today to complete SuDoKu, Kakuro and other puzzles in Bangalore Times. I still had another 10 mins to reach office. What to do? Read Bangalore Times, of course! We all know its a crappy paper, but we all read it (like the old people who crib and watch mega serials and soap operas!) I expected to read some crappy article like - green is the 'in-color' this season or why pubs should be opened even after 11 or Mahima loves her dog more than her mom or why women are preferring metrosexual male to the ubersexual male or something like that. But, I was disappointed. Today's topic was about Bangalore being renamed to Bengalooru! One college student was of the opinion that "ooru" would be like village name. Kid, the word for village is haLLi, if you care to know. Some businessman suggested that government should concentrate on improving infrastructure than on these "silly" things. Mate, its as ridiculous as saying that you stop goin...

I dont know why none of the women organizations have criticized the usage of the word "wife-swapping". This particular usage assumes that a woman is a man's possession and he can swap his woman, like a commodity, as per his wishes. I consider this as a great disrespect to women. I feel we should fight against banning this word and replacing this with a more respectable phrase like "criss-cross-partner-exchange" or "mutual-consent-partner-swapping" or anything like that ;) What do you say?

A few days back, I was talking to my room mate in US. He asked me, "You dont eat chicken?" I said "No". "How are you surviving in this country, man?", he was surprised. He felt pity for me, an almost extinct species relying on vegetables, and he was proud of his 'chicken-eating' abilities. I asked him, "Do you eat beef and pork?" "No way", was his strong reply. I could clearly see his respect for the sacred cow and the aversion towards the ugly pig. I could not help but smile, as I remembered the comments of one of my colleagues, "Its very difficult to survive in this country without eating beef and pork". I dont say that vegetarianism is great, just because I dont eat meat. But, all I wish is that people should respect others' preferences, even when others are different from them. Just got a funny thought on this. The word "non-veg" does not give the proper picture of what people eat. So, how about havin...

I was very sick over the last weekend (both physically and mentally), so I came up with the list of american gaadhegaLu, just to cheer myself up! * Fussy husband ge yogurt alloo stone anthe. * Dollar iddavne dhoddappa. * Hotte ge bread illa thale ge Nike cap. * Cent ge hodha maana quarter kotroo baaradu. * Kayyi dirty aadre baayi yogurt. * Yathaa rentu thathaa apartmentu. * Soccer match nodo heNNanna nambabeda, shopping maado ganDanna nambabeda. * MaLLi MaLLi manchakke yeshtu kaalu andre, 1-800-COT-LEGS ge phone maadi andlanthe. * Kempage irodella sause alla. * Cot iddashte kaalu chaachu. * Peter hodha, Peter bandha. * Ondu kaNNige bread, innondu kaNNige burger. * Kunilaaradha street dancer sidewalk sari illa andlanthe. * Maadodella anaachara, apartment mundhe "God Bless You" sticker. * Thaayiyanthe magaLu, wool-inanthe sweater. * Credit card andre coma li irovnoo eddu baayi bitnanthe. * Dude nelakke bidroo french beard maNNaglilla. * Chinnadha fork antha naalige ge chuchchik...