A tribute to the funny Malayalee

Malayalees are a funny lot. I would say they are the Indian counterparts of the Irish in the UK.
They see something funny in almost anything, sometimes at serious issues too.
I recollect some stories my father used to tell us when we were kids.
One of them is still fresh in my mind.
Private buses operate in most of Kerala. So the owner of a bus fleet was interviewing potential conductors for a job. There was a huge rush of candidates thanks to the unemployment problem in Kerala.
The bus owner asked each candidate to perform a single task. The task was to stuff a brand new matchbox with matchsticks from another new matchbox. In other words two matchboxes in one.
The enlightened gentlemen who were asked to do this refused to do so, considering it simply illogical, saying that it just could not be done.
Finally a smart young man took the two matchboxes as the others watched in disbelief. He removed a few sticks and placed them into the other. Then again a few sticks were transferred. This went on till the matchbox he was filling started bursting at the seams. Still he went on. Then finally he was putting each match, stick by stick into the overfilled box.
He was about to continue unmindful of the other people who were watching dumbstruck, when the bus owner motioned him to stop.
"I very well know that the task is impossible. But I wanted one of you to try it. The idea is, you need to try to cram more and more people in my buses even when they are jam packed full!", he said with glee.
The young gentleman got the job.

Another instance goes to a time when the British were still ruling India. The English brought a lot of changes to India, their biggest gifts being the railways, the other being the English language.
When the Englishmen started raising poles to lay the electric and telephone lines, the locals were suspicious and dismayed.
"They are putting poles into the ground, tying them up with electric ropes to pull India towards England!", was one wise goon's opinion.

Another story I have to relate might irk feminists, so my apologies to them. Everyone has heard of the obese uncle who seemed pregnant. Well this one has a similar twist.
The lady teacher was giving a Biology class to a class of toddlers. Thumping her chest the saree clad lady said emphatically, "This is where the lungs are".
Next day the lady came to the same class wearing a salwar - kameez. I can see your lungs, now, madam!" one of the toddlers exclaimed pointing at her breasts!
Just to prove my point here is a funny take on the IT recession by the Funny Malayalee :-D
http://www.technoparktoday.com/2009/02/technopark-ottanthullal-video/
And another one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpQkc7CMqLc

All that glitters...

This incident took place in the early eighties when I was still in my upper primary class.
We had a lot of stuff to read in our house. My father subscribed to The Blitz, The Times Of India and the now defunct Illustrated Weekly of India (then edited by the most venerable Khushwant Singh). So we were never really short of reading material.
The Illustrated Weekly reserved its last page for classifieds and one advertisement insert that appeared week after week caught my fancy. It was an advert for a mini printing press. It promised to print wedding cards, visiting cards and anything that came to your imagination.
I was intrigued by this product and I mentioned this to my father one day. He brushed it off as a child's immature fancy. But week after week I saw the ad and got more and more excited about it.
Finally my father told me he would order the product. It cost 30 rupees which was quite a sum in those days. The order was supposed to be placed by VPP(Value Post Payable) which meant that we would have to pay the postman the amount before we could open the package.
I waited anxiously for the mini printing press and started dreaming of all kinds of thing I would be able to do with it.
It was a long wait but one day finally the printing press arrived. The postman handed over the package, my father paid the money and I tore open the bundle as soon as I could.
To my dismay what was supposed to be a "printing press" was just a collection of rubber blocks with inverted letters embossed on it. There was a small holder for the these blocks and an ink stamp pad came with it. It was just a crude rubber stamp.
I tried arranging the letters on the holder to spell out my name. I pressed it against the pad and tried to make an impression on paper. But it was a clumsy process. The letters fell out and if they didn't, the impression was imperfect with some letters not producing any imprint, being misaligned.
I was dismayed.
My father laughed. He said,"Let this be your first lesson in life about buying. You always have to be careful of being cheated".
I wondered whether my father indeed had an idea of what the so called printing press would be, when he placed the order.
I never bugged my father for anything after that, until I reached the 10th grade when I asked for, and got a typewriter which proved out to be a real utility and on which I drafted my first story which appeared in a local english magazine in serialized form.
I had learnt an important lesson in life - things are not always what they seem.
Later in life I saw some weird products some of my friend bought on the internet. A mosquito killer arrived in the form of a hammer and a plate. There were spurious products which promised to produce rays which would repell anything from flies to rodents.
I smile now, when I think about that mini printing press and what it turned out to be and what it taught me.

Chicken poop for the soul

Not long ago the city of Bank-lure which was the capital of the ancient land of Canara-arctic was known as the Garden City. It was a clean and green city with wide boulevards and lush greenery on either sides and neat gardens with trimmed grass lawns dotting the city. The weather was akin to that of European lands with mild winters and warm summers and people came from far away lands just to sit in the gardens and enjoy a quiet picnic.
Bank-lure was the chosen destination for people to retire. People retiring all kinds of jobs from government services to the military liked its quiet ambience and idyllic lifestyle.
Soon all that was too change.
Multi-nationals from the West and home-bred multinationals saw in Bank-lure their chosen destination for setting up offshore software development centres. The weather was a plus point and its proximity to nearby lands which had a huge resource pool of well educated professionals was an added bonus.
The government of Canara-arctic welcomed these huge corporations as they saw in these industries, a milking cow for cash and also a potential employment provider for locals and the fact the huge salaries paid to the highly skilled professionals these companies attracted, would ultimately trickle down to the locals. In addition to the fact these were non-polluting industries unlike those in the neighbouring bigger cities.
In short it was a win-win situation for all those involved.
Soon software development hubs sprung up everywhere and yuppies from nearby lands thronged the city. Bank-lure became their land of opporunity.
These yuppies did not mind paying some extra money for whatever they required, be it food, clothing, shelter or trips in an autorickshaw, as they believed they had to maintain a lifestyle akin to their status in society.
Then things turned real ugly.
The poor auto drivers who once were very careful to charge passengers by the automated fare meter, found life getting difficult for them. They had to pay higher prices for basic food items, as the yuppies were ready to pay more for the same stuff causing the shopkeepers to start selling cut-rate items at cut-throat prices. The auto guys had to struggle with their housing because all of a sudden every cent of land became a goldmine for real estate developers. The auto drivers could not send their children to good schools as all the seats were already filled up by children of yuppy families. With no other option left, the auto drivers too hiked their fares. They started billing ordinary people for just waiting in the mad rush hour traffic jams for hours, caused basically by people moving from point A to point B and another set of people moving from B to A. The roads choked with traffic exhausts.
With the higher auto fares, the auto drivers found that they could send their children to better schools, buy prime land to stay and eat nutritious food. For this they charged the poor yuppies sky-high fares. Being inherently thrifty, they thrived.
The yuppies liked to work hard and party hard and they were paid well, so they thought. They didn't mind paying a bit of extra money for buying some goods or paying the auto drivers higher fares. They didn't mind going to hotels and bars with their colleagues just to half-eat a special food dish and leave.
The real estates developers, the shopkeepers, the hotel owners all joined the rat race.
Prices went sky high until the yuppies could take it no more. But they had a lifestyle to keep. The salary received at the beginning of the month vanished by the end of the month. If a month's salary was missed due to illness, they had to borrow from friends to cope with the rest of the month's expenditures.
Land prices shot sky- high, the gardens disappeared and huge high rises came up to cater to the software industry and residences for software employees.
The banks and the financial institutions did not like to be left out. The yuppies no longer to be able to pay in cash now bought desirable objects on credit, courtesy the banks with just a payslip as a promise that the money would be repaid.
Newly married yuppies bargained with shopkeepers for each and every thing they bought, be it a new TV for their home or a dish washer or a apartment in a high-rise.
The city was dying, literally, throttled by software yuppies and the culture they bought with them.