Tag Archives: Comedy

Postcard to self for 2011

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Well I have been a saint in 2010 …. at least the last two months.  I have given up sugar, maida and ghee.  I have even started going for long walks.  Mind you, I have had to do them, because of medical reasons.  These are not resolutions that I have made.  I n.e.v.e.r make resolutions.  Being the kind of person I am, once I make them, I then feel it is my moral duty to break them.  I also treat rules the same way.  And yes, I was the kid in school who looked longingly out of the window in class, and perversely spent the games period in the class.

Okies …. so what do I have to say to self for  2011

1.  I resolve to try and control my laughter at jokes of my own devising.  Lesser mortals may not get them.  And stop rolling your eyes at me, dear offsprings.  English language is a hoot.  Where else will you have a term like “PSYCHO THE RAPIST” which denotes a respectable profession hmmm?

2. I will try to not be tempted to roll my eyes at people who order sugarless coffee and a huge chunk of chocolate cake at a coffee shop.  No it is not sour grapes.  I simply don’t get it.  I will look the other way.

3. I will try to live within my budget, failing which I resolve to search for a suitable pocket with a more generous budget to live off.  Millionaires invited please.  Apart from the loads of money, all they need to have is a sense of humor.

4. I will try not to figure out how exactly to execute a crime.  At least not aloud.  Yeah I am prone to watching Sansanikhej Khabar and the likes and then plan out how exactly the crime should be executed successfully.  Thing is that when I talk about it, people get a glazed look in their eyes.  In my defense, I think its excellent exercise of imagination and grey matter.

5. I will try not to look tired and washed out, so that I can blackmail the kids into allowing me a drink (medicinal).  It never works, damn.  I need to figure out another act, which will work.  I may as well keep a bottle in my almairah, but drinking alone sucks.

6. I will try not to get all emotional about money or the lack of thereof.  If I have it, I spend it at once.  So getting emotional about it is a waste of time.

7. I will try not to lure stray dogs to the house.  Our resident dogs have taken offence.  They nearly killed the last one …

8. I will try not to look for hidden chauvinistic undertones in everything men say at work.  Nah! Forget it, it isnt worth the effort to get pissed about.  They don’t know any better.

9. I will source sugar and fat free deserts, and then turn my nose at them.  Then I shall go without desert and be martyr.  What is life without a bit of melodrama?

10. F.O.R.  O.N.C.E.  I.N.  M.Y.  L.I.F.E I shall wear a cowboy hat with dungarees and a tucked in tee shirt properly accessorized with spur boots and pistols and walk a busy mall.   What is life without sensationalism?

I shall live, laugh, love and of course fight and cry wholeheartedly.  I don’t know how to live any other way.

AWESOME GYAN FOR 2011

Sardi aur beizzatti jitni mehsoos karo utni hi lagti hai

HAVE A WONDERFUL 2011

Dear Santa Clause, I’ve been good!

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Dear Santa Clause,

Yeah I have to put your full name so that we don’t get you mixed up with Santa of the Santa Banta jokes. I’ve been good this year, if I were any more good, I’d give myself diabetes. Shucks I already have it :-?

Well that just shows how good I’ve been!

The tree is up, the mornings are foggy. It is Christmas already. Time to prepare the list:

  1. A smaller butt, or jeans that make said butt look smaller
  2. A Samsung Galaxy Phone
  3. Kid#2 returns me my Ipod …. Sigh!  The boy borrows my stuff but never returns it.
  4. A sugar daddy who’ll pay for a holiday to Mauritius.  Santa why don’t you foot the bill?
  5. My first novel to be a hit!  Yes peeps!  Rupa Publications has accepted my first full length novel.  I just signed the MOU today.  :D .  Thank you God, thank you Mr. Santa Clause, thank you all the reindeers, (list below), thank you universe and thank you every body!
  6. My family and friends to have a great and eventful year.  May all your dreams come true.
  7. Back to materialistic things, I want an Ipad or a Samsung tablet too.  C’mon Santa, I am an author now!  I need one.
  8. A couple of cats.  We already have dogs and fishes.  Cats would be fun to add to the madness.
  9. Santa Clause jee, how about a new car?  A Ford SUV would do nicely thank you.

10. I am asking you with greatest humility and respect ….. twice my pay packet at half the working hours … please?   Pretty please????

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Add some names of Santa’s reindeers please, am listing the ones I know of

  • Dasher
  • Dancer
  • Prancer
  • Vixen
  • Comet
  • Cupid
  • Donner
  • Blitzen
  • Rudolf

    • So what have I been up to?

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    Sorry guys, not been blogging for some time, was not in a happy place – am still trying to say AAL IS WELL! but my brain is way to smart.  It just replies in a cheeky and irreverent way Ghanta all is well!

    Sigh!  Kya karen, brain hai ki maanta nahin.

    Thing is that I have been diagnosed as diabetic.  I know, its no big deal, just requires management of food.   I have lived fifty years in a deep warm loving relationship with carbs and rich Punjabi food. …. Hey 50 years is not a bad innings so to say.  Sadly, now I have to divorce bhaturey, basmati rice and aloo paranthas if I wanna see my sixties and seventies.  So I have been feeling glum.  For a person who is a foodie, this is a big huge deal.

    Stop ROFLing Kid#1  You told me to write a blog post!  And yes I am a drama queen I revel in being so!

    Here’s a pome – a pome on aging that I wrote while I was bidding goodbye to all the peanut butter and lemon tarts in the world

    In my Fifties

    When did I end up getting old?

    I never signed up for this

    I haven’t done all I want to do

    I haven’t learnt how to fish

    My hair owes more to L’Oreal

    Than the cash I owe the bank

    Jog I can’t, I can barely amble

    My happy has turned to crank

    I forget the faces I know I’ve met

    Their names just don’t come to me

    After every meal, I need to rest

    Otherwise I get really bitchy

    In my mind’s eye I am two and oh

    And my heart, it’s merely thirteen

    But this stupid body has grown old

    My spirit it tries vainly to demean

    Two out of three ain’t that bad

    Mind and heart you make me glad

    And I can still sing, dance a light step

    Aging ain’t bad if one is full of pep

    Adventure at Fifty Plus

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    My timing sucks!  That I have known for a long long time.  I married and became a mother when girls my age were dating, studying and building a career.  That is another matter that I did all that too … after getting married and having Kid#1.

    As you grow older, you stop having adventures.  May be it is because you get wiser and stop trying to break walls, and burn bridges.  At a certain age adventure means eating butter chicken and butter naan for dinner and (wonders of wonders) having a good night’s sleep!!!  Or that you sat in a car that your younger son was driving without wearing a seat belt and did not back seat drive.

    Well, apparently Godji has a wicked wicked sense of humor when it comes to me.  Yesterday I had a grand adventure.  I was in office having a routine Monday.  During the course of the day, I went chasing a file.  My cabin is on the first floor and I took the lift to the ground floor.  The damn lift got stuck.

    I suffer from claustrophobia and vertigo …. and my son is a pilot.  Godji and his weird sense of humor!

    Well, to say I freaked would be an understatement.  The admin housekeeper prized the lift door open at the first floor and dangled an arm in, thinking he could pull me up.  Hellooo!  I am a plus sized Punjaban.  The only thing he could have pulled up was my arm from its socket!  Naturally I screamed expletives I refused as politely as I could under the circumstances.

    Somehow they activated the emergency mechanism and the lift went to the ground floor.  I tumbled out, sat on the sofa in the reception and drank gallons of water.  Then I hauled me up and walked up the stairs to my cabin.

    On the way I saw the housekeeper and his minions tying ropes to a cane armchair which they were planning to lower into the lift to airlift me.  G.R.O.A.N.  !!!!

    I gave up any semblance of doing work and came home.

    Once home, I told my first born, the tender fruit of my womb, the boy I birthed and nurtured, even breastfed, the horrors that had befallen me.

    Well, he laughed until tears fell.

    Kid#1  (on his mobile to Kid#2) : Oye come downstairs, Mom is home, you gotta hear her story!

    Kid#2 : Down in my room in a jiffy : Tell tell!!

    So I repeated my sorry tale to the apple of my eye, my baby …

    Kid#2 : ROFL, was the rope strong enough, did you check?  And who would haul you?  They’d need some pehelwaans.

    Me : Go away guys, I better sleep this off!

    Both : Bet she will start taking the stairs, after all its only one floor!

    Humph!

    Sports Coverage of an Imaginary Sports Event

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    Team This post has been published by me as a team member of The Blue Ink Society for the SUPER 4 round of Bloggers Premier League (BPL) – The first ever unique, elite team blogging of blog world. To catch the BPL action and also be part of future editions and other contests, visit and register at Cafe GingerChai

    WHO’S THE FITTEST!

    This is an entirely imaginary event, which the author who is a big fan of WWE and TNA dreamed up under the influence of ginger tea and elaichi biscuits. The author is not a reporter, not sporty, and has no plans of covering a sports event unless all her favorite hunky athletes, particularly Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock, Vin Diesel, John Cena and Matt Hardy participate and have dinner with her.

    Given the recent craze for fitness and the fact that both Shilpa Shetty and Bipasha Basu have launched their own fitness videos, Mr. Modi has decided to launch a new brand of sports in India, loosely based on the same format as WWE which is called the WTF or Who’s The Fittest! This is your reporter Ritu Lalit, covering the event from Sree Kanterava Stadium at Bangalore.

    Mr. Modi has relied on his huge success with IPL and has roped in the big stars to make WTF a huge success too. The teams will be formed later. At present, Mr. Modi has invited bollywood stars and celebrities to make WTF a sports brand to reckon with. I am here at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium at Bangalore. The crowd is energetic and alive. Everyone wants to meet the stars or at least view them in person.

    Click to visit the Blue Ink Society E-magazine and read more

    My first crush

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    This post won an honorable mention from the judge Preeti Shenoy at the contest.

    There is something about rains, the smell of wet mud and moisture laden winds that remind me of the very first time my heart behaved like a hammer for a boy. It was a long time ago … and times were simpler. I had already made an ass of myself over Amitabh Bacchan in Zanjeer and even written a love letter to him that got caught. Of course that did not discourage me. I moved on … to a real boy.

    I must tell you that I was shy, bookish and had major self esteem issues those days. This was because after years of being bullied by being a valued sibling of my brothers, I was abandoned by them. They promptly dropped me like a hot potato the moment I hit puberty and had physical developments to show for it. I reacted by burying myself in books and not talking to them.

    I was not popular with the girls (never knew how to deal with them) and I found them catty.  They found me totally “quaint” {translation : weird}.  There was this boy, he was fair, tall and had the most dreamy eyes.  His name was Anil Mathur.  He sang beautifully.  I never met a real boy who could sing till then, boys in my knowledge could fight, tease their sisters, kick ball, fly kites and drive vehicles at break neck speed.  Anil was different.  He would sing and how.  Our school was next to the river and our favorite pass-time was to sit on the steps at the river bank.  It was a rainy day and we were munching peanuts when Anil and his band of merry men came and sat slightly away from us, of course, facing us.  Anil sang “Laga chunri pe daag” , not an easy song by any means.  I was fascinated.  I kept staring at him and (ahem) so did he.  Of course the other girls of my class  noted this aankhon aankhon mein thing and decided to butt in.

    I mean, if they had not butted in, it would have just been a memory of a perfect rainy afternoon with a beautiful song … but those cats decided otherwise.  This was school mind you, in the late 70s and early 80s.  You looked at a boy or even exchanged a pencil, you were going steady.  It spread like wildfire all over school that Anil and I were an item.  We had not even said “Hi” to each other.

    My brothers advised his pals to keep him safe and teach him swimming.  I had thrown an idiot into the river for kissing me in the summers.  Anil never approached me or said “Hi” ever!!!  Girls with 8 brothers in the same school don’t get boy friends easily.  Perhaps that was the reason I freaked so much on the mental retard who surprised me by attempting to kiss me.  I simply pushed him and he fell into the river.  No my darling brothers, I know you lurk here, I did not try to drown him, ever.

    The girls wanted drama.  I was too shy to give them any, Anil too scared.  The stoopid cats resorted to writing love letters in my name to him, and in his name to me.  This was stupid, but they wanted action you see.  All the action they got was Anil singing Mere Sapno Ki Rani Kab Ayegi Tu or another favorite of his, Humne Tumko Dekha, and me sitting quietly, nose in book, listening.

    Love Letters

    Love Letters
    Love Letters

    For a short period of time, I believed that Anil was sending me letters and I kept tearing them to bits.  My brothers may have found the song in the rain amusing, but would not have taken kindly to love letters being exchanged.  One day, after lunch, when I discovered yet another letter in my Physics Part II, I decided enough was enough.  As soon as I saw that he was alone, I slunk out to warn him.  But the class teacher saw me and gave me a pile of checked note books to distribute in the class.  I went back to the abandoned class, and then decided to leave a warning note in his note book.  I opened his note book and the truth was revealed.   The letters I got were written in quite a lovely hand, the guy had the most godawful handwriting.  That flummoxed me, but it hurt me too.  Part of me …. a huge part of me wanted Anil to write me those letters.  But all he could do was sing love songs.  Writing was not his forte.

    I lashed out at the girls of my class.  I was harsh,  but it was my pain I was dealing with so no regrets there.  I told them to stop being sneaky bitches and get a life of their own.  That alienated me from the group even further.  The letters stopped.  Anil would look at me sadly and sing mournful dirges like Sapna Mera Toot Gaya no doubt wondering why I did not write any more.  It never occurred to him to even come and exchange a few words with me.  Of course I never had the guts to make the first move especially after all the hullabaloo my class girls had created.

    By the end of monsoon, Anil got hitched with Aruna, the girl who I suspect wrote the love letters.  She got her real live romantic drama and I got my first crush and heartbreak.

    This is my entry for Blogadda’s  Wednesday Competition “My First Crush”

    12 Commandments by Phoenixritu Blogger Almighty

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    First of all I would like to thank BPL for recognizing the divine in me.  Don’t knock it folk, if BPL thinks I am God, I am, okay.  I heard you snigger, yeah you over there!  Stop it or I’ll ensure that you are a donkey for the next 9 lives.  Now where was I?

    Yeah I was on that long list of thank yous made so fashionable by the Bollywood and Hollywood actors in their award acceptance speeches.  Any way since I am God, I think I can do away with all that.  Besides Zeus defeated his sire Cronos to ascend the throne and Cronos could not even tell him to behave since he did the same to Uranus.  He actually went a step further, he imprisoned his vanquished siblings, the Titans too.  Thanking one’s friends and family is passe for the divine I guess.

    You may think I’ll make a hash of this God-responsibility, much like Jim Carrey, but no I don’t intend to.  Though I would love to meet with a God like Morgan Freeman – he was awesome as God in Bruce Almighty, but BPL I cast no aspersions on you, you are making me divine, right?


    So as Blogger Almighty, what are my 12 Commandments?  Hmmm.  The first thing that comes to mind is to end war, poverty and have world peace.  But then I am not a Miss World aspirant, and while it may win votes with judges in a pageant, what does it mean to us bloggers?  Besides, lets get real … it ain’t gonna happen.  So regretfully I discard those as my first three commandments.  Here are 12 Commandments that will hopefully make our world a better place and help us become more successful and happy.

    As Blogger Almighty I would first like to sort out things in the blogosphere, so, my first commandment would be to do away with word verification in the comment section.  Honestly, we’re all bloggers and we all love our comments, our fragile egos get such a boost from the number of comments in our comment section.  Word verification discourages people from commenting.  Every one has moderation on, so why add word verification?  If it is spam, one can simply delete it, with no one getting wiser.  I think all of us will agree with this point.  So there we have it

    Another dangerous horrifying disease that I would love to cure is “The Writers Block”.  If I am Blogger Almighty, I can do at least this much for my fellow writers.  Every one is familiar with this disease; it has struck us all relentlessly and without any discrimination.  We are reduced to playing naughts and crosses on backs of envelopes or staring at the computer screen while pressing the space bar or clicking the mouse intermittently so that we do not have to stare at the screen saver.  The only known cure for “The Writers Block” known is to keep writing, so why not do tags when you lack inspiration?  So it follows :

    Spam, no – not the edible one, but the one that afflict our blogs and in-boxes every day bothers me.  As Blogger Almighty I would like to abolish spammers, but much like other merciful Divine Entities allowed mosquitoes and flies to exist, I acknowledge that spammers too have a right to live.  So I shall implore to blogger-kind to invent something better than Akismet and call it HITSPAM or SPAMMORTEIN to destroy spam.  Spammers can fall to my feet and I shall sentence them to behavioral therapy and community service.

    I have a special place in hell for virus.  I had the most awesome blog design that the virus ate up.  Virus and their entire ilk (trojans+malware+adware) deserve special place in hell.  No, I take that back.  In hell they may just go forth and multiply.  Remember the problem Smith created in Matrix?  I don’t want that to happen on Le Internet.  So we come to Commandment No. 4

    Copycats beware, I, Ritu the Blogger Almighty have something special in store for you.  Plagiarism is for the feeble minded.  I agree that our education system being what it is, all of us have been trained to mug and reproduce answers by rote.  But dudes, this is the real world and we are not cardboard cut-outs.  We can be original here and no one will fail us.

    Now that I have my main grouses in blogosphere sorted out, let me attend to the workplace.  I will not give reasons for most of the commandments I dish out here – but trust me I know.  I am at Senior Management Level and bullshitting the bosses is as important – nah! more important than just plain old fashioned work.  So please accept these commandments as tried and tested ones.  All of them focus on your looking busy and important!

    Ritu The Blogger Almighty offers yet another nugget of wisdom so that you look busy and bosses feel that you are earning your keep

    Honestly clean desks are for bosses.  Us minions need to have paper and files strewn on our desks so that the bosses don’t route more paper our way.

    Appearance is crucial.  Always look impatient and annoyed, interrupt someone lower than you in hierarchy, sigh deeply (you may practice this at home or in the wash room).  Ensure that you walk around with a sheaf of papers and a furrowed brow.  These give non-verbal signals that you are genuinely worried about the well being of the company and by inference, your boss’s financial well being.

    Now that I have given you important tips on how to amass great power, status and hopefully a raise at the workplace, let me pay attention to your everyday life.  I am sure you all must have heard the Bobby McFaren song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, I recommend it as a mandatory lullaby.  But following this course of action does not come easily.  I have reserved a few commandments specifically to de-stress you.

    Once you have the past and future out of the equation, things automatically get simple.  To further simplify stuff follow the next commandment

    The above is also for those well meaning busybodies and bleeding heart types who can’t keep their noses out of other folks business.  Of course if they still persist I will send more problems their way.  I am a cooperative divine entity :P

    Ever looked around and wondered about certain things?  We put man on the moon, we got internet, we invented stuff that makes life simpler and we still go about with the original mysteries of life unsolved and hotly debated!  Never mind, I’ll solve a couple of them for you since I am in a mellow and generous mood

    Actually I have to confess that every time I redesign the world – I flip a coin and change the order…………… it relieves the tedium of the eternal beings heh!

    The second most hotly debated mysteries of the world, Is God Male or Female? Oh I love sharing with you the secret of this one! ;)

    The truth is that we are partners, me and the male God, but he is watching the Divine Universal Tournament with endless snacks and beer for the last thirty centuries.  I TOOK OVER!

    If you like my 12 commandments you may please donate some money to my paypal account!

    Celestial Blessings

    Ritu the Almighty Blogger

    Meet the team :
    Ritu Lalit
    Deepak Amembal
    Bikram Mann
    Vibhuti Bhandarkar
    Karthik
    Manna
    Meghana Subramanian
    Deepti Raman

    The Image in This Post is a Teamwork by THE BLUE INK SOCIETY

    Moms and their love lives

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    I watched this delightful Meg Ryan movie

    If you’ve seen it, you’ll understand what comes next ……..

    Kid#1 and his wife were out shopping in Delhi.  Kid#2 was watching the movie with me.  I was laughing my guts out at the son, a serious FBI officer who comes home to find that the obese matron that he left a couple of years back had transformed into this hot stuff who sunbathes in a bikini, and proudly says she has learnt from her mistakes.  Now she does not have a relationship … she has many boyfriends.  Ohhh Meg Ryan looked delicious saying that!

    Me : Oh my, the son’s expression makes me laugh so much, I could pee.

    Kid#2 : You know he is so restrained.  If you did anything like that, the guy would not be alive.

    Me : Huh!  Can’t a Mom have a life?

    Kid#2 : Sure she can.  We never stop you from leading your life!

    Me :!!!???? (Darn I never knew I needed Mr. High and Mighty’s permission.  So I just decided to have some fun)

    Me : Suppose I bring a boyfriend home?

    Kid#2 : You know, I’d bash the daylights out of him!

    Me : (Really twisting the knife now) I had Kid#1 when I was 18 and you eight years later.  Now is the time I can live my life.

    Kid#2 : With a nonchalant shrug – You had your chance … too bad.  You’re way too old to have boyfriends

    Me : So what?!  Some young types love older women :D .  Or may be I am already dating a nice decent budha ;)

    Kid#2 : MUMMMA!!! Behave!

    Hyuck Hyuck!  I have a Neanderthal for a younger son!

    Torturing my kids really makes my day!  Happy Mother’s Day my darling sons.

    Edited to add …………………

    My darling Kid#2 is a great poet – apart from being a Neanderthal that is ;)

    He wrote me this poem for Mother’s Day

    You cradled me when I was little
    Even though all I did was whine and piddle
    You loved me as I grew up
    Even though I shrieked and woke you up

    When I was a teen and didn’t hug you
    You smiled and said it didn’t bother you
    When everything I did was a disaster
    Never did your loving hands falter

    You never tired of my insanity
    Or got angry by my lack of morality
    Always you were my lifeline
    And my shield when I got out of line

    My grades never bothered you
    My teenage stupidities didn’t affect you
    Your love for me lives on forever and today
    So mom, I love you. Happy mothers day!!!

    I have entered this post for the Blogadda Mother’s Day Contest

    Of human bondage

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    Now I am a die hard Facebook games addict. I play Mafia Wars and love flexing muscle and saying in deep baritone “MAIN HOON DON!” Cough Cough – that baritone strained my vocal chords. I also play Farmville. I agree with Addy – If I could grow marijuana in my farm and sell it to the criminals in my Mafia famiglia, I would be awesome.

    All pause a moment and admire my awesomeness in my perfect imaginary world …..

    Sigh! Life does have a way of bringing us down with a thump.

    About two months ago, Zynga – the blokes who run the show in Farmville announced a chicken coop expansion. It was chaos and mayhem with everyone clambering to get a larger chicken coop. I tried to get into my farm to join the fray – but I was locked out of my farm. Try as I may – I could not gain entry. I shed tears, sang a soulful dirge and said Alvida Farmville.

    A week ago Zynga remembered little ole me. They sent me a mail telling me that they had waved their fairy wand and unwithered my crop of cotton and unlocked my farm magically. I clicked the link provided and was in my farm again. Happiness all around. Actually it made just li’ll ole me happy.

    Now Zynga has a policy … Mafia Wars runs on the strength of your Mafia family. Large is everything – family planning be damned. Farmville runs on neighbours who fertilize your crop, and you fertilize their crop. You cant fertilize your own crop. Hmmm it sounds like pleasuring your own self. It aint allowed in Farmville. During my long absence a lot of my neighbours quit. So I decided to abandon them. I work in a manufacturing unit where productivity and streamlining is everything. I set about making my farm efficient and unfriended a whole lot of blokes.

    One person took it rather personally. I sincerely apologize to my erstwhile neighbours. Its all in the name of business. If you should be annoyed with someone – blame Facebook. Blame Zynga too! It is in any case being blamed rightly and wrongly for everything including global warming and meteor falls.

    Me – I am just a bit player growing tomatoes and carrots and dreaming of growing marijuana for my Mafia.