My Original Jokes

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I have always thought that only a happy person is capable of creating jokes. It comes to him automatically, or rather the humour he creates is the expression of the state of his mind. I don't think I'm capable of creating jokes and for the reason I may not go further. I am too lazy to convince myself that I'm happy...and jokes would not come to a lazy person too. As I rummage my archive, I find some of them in my repertoire in the early days of my blogging. To that I now add the last one and repost it.

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TheIQ Test

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The teacher tests the IQ of his pupils.

Teacher: In Heaven gods and goddesses talk in sign language and mind-reading, and on the Earth humans talk in prose and swear words, right? Then tell me boys, in what medium do the inmates of the Hell talk?

A student: It’s simple. They talk in poetry.

Teacher: Wow! How could you know that?

The student: My mum has this thing to say to my dad, always:
“To hell with your poetry.”

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The Poetic Process

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A modern poet is asked to tell something about the poetic process. He gives his profound comparison, which is reproduced below:

Poetry is like nose picking. When you inhale the essence of the world around you it gels in your innermost province and then solidifies. It concentrates, seasons and sticks to you. But then it does not come out so easily. You have to force yourself to give out. It pains, and finally when it comes out you feel great. You look at it again and again and feel its clammy texture between your fingers. You don’t like to discard it even the world criticizes you. So goes my poem “Poetic Pick”:

I picked my nose and then the poetry came out
Out came poetry as I picked my nose.
Nose for picking and poetry for keeping
The world may go to hell the poems are mine.

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Truth, Lie and Wit

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Ask a child: who is the most beautiful woman around?

Child: my mum.

Conclusion= the child speaks the truth.

Ask his dad: who is the most beautiful woman around?

He replies: Obviously, she is my wife.

Conclusion= the husband lies.

Ask the wife: who is the most beautiful woman around?

Wife replies: She lives behind the mirror.

Conclusion= the wife is witty.

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The Evolution

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In the past when cows got hungry they used to go out for grazing. Now there’s no grazing field. So when they feel hungry they come home to eat.

Human being in the past used to come home when they felt hungry. But now with eateries abounding, they go out to fill their stomach like the cows of yester years.

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By
A. N. Nanda
Coimbatore
27-10-2011
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Smile a While

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This is the poem I wrote for my poetry collections "In Harness" and that was some eight years ago. Sometime back I revisited it to cull some of its stanzas for my new book "The Roadshow" and so it is poised to reappear in its revised form in my forthcoming book. This book is going to be a fiction and to patch a poetic fragment into a work of prose makes an interesting stylistic digression. It will appear in the end of a chapter to present a denouement that is expected to accentuate the element of pathos in it. It is the first love poem of the protagonist, something he writes to present his ladylove but fails to do that. Normally prose written with poetic flair makes it immensely readable, and poetry sprinkled amidst prose blends sense with style. At least I've tried to produce something of that sort. Now, here's a sneak peek.
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The sweet girl, the intimate

Smile for my sake

And smile once again…

When you smile

Lightening flashes, jovial

Snow melts and cherry blossoms

Lily wakes up from slumber

The moon peeps behind the floating clouds…

When you smile

Moments of dullness cheer up

All by themselves,

Worries melt like sweet ice creams

And monotony evaporates,

Fatigue of years but drifts away

Into the sky of inconsequence,

Wishes jump unruly in all directions

Like those charged, mischievous popcorns…

I hear you humming

Like the tinkling of a wind chime;

You flood my senses

In fun and frolic;

Just a glimpse of yours is enough

To make me feel the warmth

And long to gaze at you

For aeons on end...

Your moist lips speak

Myriad of yearnings in silence,

Your fleeting winks convey

Plenty of mischievous suggestions;

I understand them, but

In my own frivolous way

Beyond the limits of deadly commonsense...

Millie, the bounteous!

You enriched me with your love

True, you’ve the world before you to soothe

Yet smile a while for my sake!

And smile a while for my sake!

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By
A. N. Nanda
Coimbatore
20-10-2011
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Pure Ramblings

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A Happy Dusshera to you all...and a happy reading.

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Junkification of Newspapers: For quite some time I have been marking a change in the way our newspapers look these days—we have on the very front page full-page ads of those products that can afford such a pride of place; there are advertisements (advertorials?) with copious text looking like multi-column news items just to brag about the success of engineering colleges engaged in collecting capitation fees and supplying cheap labour to the IT firms and BPOs; separate special supplements that look like handbills inserted in the middle announcing a sale or the inauguration of a shop in the street corner, etc. Somehow I find the idea of devoting the entire front page for advertising is weird, almost verging on infringement of readers’ right to read. It has been practice since the day modern newspaper came into existence, to present the best and the most newsworthy material on the front page. Readers have come to expect this as a matter of right, not something which can be taken away by the newspaper fellows just for earning extra bucks. It is a sort of unwritten understanding between the readers and the newspaper publishers. But nowadays most newspapers love to flout that…and nobody protests.

Do we need an Anna to organize a fast for this too? With the roaring bonhomie between media and Anna prevailing, this is the least one can expect at present. So, we have to learn to live with the junkification of newspapers.

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Anti-Tourism: Is it necessary that people should move about places so frequently and in so large numbers? Yeah, we call it tourism, wanderlust, or whatever way we may name it, I wish there should be a bit of anti-tourism in our thought too. It is time we thought about this. We had better thought of this. Who doesn’t like to gain a distinction of going onto the top of Mt. Everest even if it requires airdropping him? Even gods and goddesses chose hilltops to live and, in the process, further religious tourism! The place to be visited has to be less trodden upon, virgin area, and blah, blah, blah. Big people should go to big places, brag about it. Is tourism about bragging? Howsoever great it may appear as an instrument of dissemination of knowledge, the big question is can we afford spending so much fossil fuel, spoiling the spots otherwise clean and tidy, pampering people as guests at the cost of rightful inhabitants, and spreading diseases and so forth? Even a separate stream of jurisprudence is evolving in the process: A crime against a foreign tourist is more heinous than a crime perpetrated against a native!

Or, alternatively, should we have a controlled tourism? Say introducing a qualifying examination to pass before dreaming of visiting the leaning tower of Pisa or meeting Shompen at Campbell Bay of Great Nicobar Island?

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Political Dream: This time I had a political dream (Not political ambition, I say!). The dream was that in a certain constituency in UP election, the contestants are Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare. Was it a fasting competition or what! Who can interpret my dream? One thing is sure, nowadays I read newspaper but rarely, watch television only when the cable fellows disconnect it. So, who will have such weird political dreams if it is not me?

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By

A. N. Nanda

Coimbatore

06-10-2011

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