A king asked a sage to explain the Truth. In response the sage asked the king how he would convey the taste of a mango to someone who had never eaten anything sweet. No matter how hard the king tried, he could not adequately describe the flavor of the fruit, and, in frustration, he demanded of the sage "Tell me then, how would you describe it?" The sage picked up a mango and handed it to the king saying "This is very sweet. Try eating it!"
Taste of Humour is also Something very similar; appealing and tickling individual taste buds only. We can never be hundred percent sure what would tickle and giggle whom, like this punch line, which made me think and smile at the same time; while others may find it quite mundane and boring.
"If swimming is so good for our figure, how do we explain whales?" ---Unknown
But sure, there is something about its' sunny-side , on which we all should agree : "Imagination was given to us to compensate for what we are not; a sense of humor was given to us to console us for what we are."
-Mark McGinnis
Lekhni has conjured up quite a few tasty bites for its readers. Hope, once again they will delve and relish them to their heart's content!
It is two years this March since Lekhni has accompanied its readers, if you really like something , drop us a line; we are always eager to hear from our readers & contributors.
Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption--no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, A Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains. My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this theme with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters to the mothers in Israel. It would not become to me to criticise you, gentlemen--who are nearly all my elders--and my superiors, in this thing--if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than fault-finding; indeed if this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received the attention, the encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this club has devoted to it, I should not need to utter this lament, or shred a single tear. I do not say this to flatter: I say it in a spirit of just and appreciative recognition. [It had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and to give illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me to beware of the particulars and confine myself to generalities.]
No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and diligent cultivation--therefore, it goes without saying that this one ought to be taught in the public schools--even in the newspapers. What chance has the ignorant uncultivated liar against the educated expert? What chance have I against Mr. Per--against a lawyer? Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.
Say Bazonka every day That's what my grandma used to say It keeps at bay the Asian Flu' And both your elbows free from glue. So say Bazonka every day (That's what my grandma used to say)
Don't say it if your socks are dry! Or when the sun is in your eye! Never say it in the dark (The word you see emits a spark) Only say it in the day (That's what my grandma used to say)
Young Tiny Tim took her advice He said it once, he said it twice he said it till the day he died And even after that he tried To say Bazonka! every day Just like my grandma used to say.
Now folks around declare it's true That every night at half past two If you'll stand upon your head And shout Bazonka! from your bed You'll hear the word as clear as day Just like my grandma used to say!
A Silly Poem
Said Hamlet to Ophelia, I'll draw a sketch of thee, What kind of pencil shall I use? 2B or not 2B?
Feelings
There must be a wound! No one can be this hurt and not bleed.
How could she injure me so? No marks No bruise
Worse! People say 'My, you're looking well' .....God help me! She's mummified me - ALIVE!
Jumbo Jet
I saw a little elephant standing in my garden, I said 'You don't belong in here', he said 'I beg you pardon?', I said 'This place is England, what are you doing here?', He said 'Ah, then I must be lost' and then 'Oh dear, oh dear'.
'I should be back in Africa, on Saranghetti's Plain', 'Pray, where is the nearest station where I can catch a train?'. He caught the bus to Finchley and then to Mincing lane, And over the Embankment, where he got lost, again.
The police they put him in a cell, but it was far too small, So they tied him to a lampost and he slept against the wall. But as the policemen lay sleeping by the twinkling light of dawn, The lampost and the wall were there, but the elephant was gone!
So if you see an elephant, in a Jumbo Jet, You can be sure that Africa's the place he's trying to get!
Letters
I was thinking of letters, We all have a lot in our life A few good - a few sad But mostly run of the mill- I suppose that's my fault For writing to run of the mill people. I've never had a letter I really wanted It might come one day But then, it will be just too late, And that's when I don't want it.
Me
Born screaming small into this world- Living I am. Occupational therapy twixt birth and death- What was I before? What will I be next? What am I now? Cruel answer carried in the jesting mind of a careless God I will not bend and grovel When I die. If He says my sins are myriad I will ask why He made me so imperfect And he will say 'My chisels were blunt' I will say 'Then why did you make so many of me'.
All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a barber's shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences in barbers' shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I approached it from Main--a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I sat down, hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of the remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's hair, while his comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his customer's locks. I watched the probabilities with strong interest. When I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1 my interest grew to solicitude. When No. 1 stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket for a new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to anxiety. When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customers' cheeks, and it was about an even thing which one would say "Next!" first, my very breath stood still with the suspense. But when at the culminating moment No. 1 stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep from falling into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness that enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell him he will wait for his fellow-barber's chair.
I stayed out fifteen minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck. Of course all the chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting, silent, unsociable, distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who are waiting their turn in a barber's shop. I sat down in one of the iron-armed compartments of an old sofa, and put in the time far a while reading the framed advertisements of all sorts of quack nostrums for dyeing and coloring the hair. Then I read the greasy names on the private bayrum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the private shaving-cups in the pigeonholes; studied the stained and damaged cheap prints on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous recumbent sultanas, and the tiresome and everlasting young girl putting her grandfather's spectacles on; execrated in my heart the cheerful canary and the distracting parrot that few barbers' shops are without. Finally, I searched out the least dilapidated of last year's illustrated papers that littered the foul center-table, and conned their unjustifiable misrepresentations of old forgotten events.
At last my turn came. A voice said "Next!" and I surrendered to--No. 2, of course. It always happens so. I said meekly that I was in a hurry, and it affected him as strongly as if he had never heard it. He shoved up my head, and put a napkin under it. He plowed his fingers into my collar and fixed a towel there. He explored my hair with his claws and suggested that it needed trimming. I said I did not want it trimmed. He explored again and said it was pretty long for the present style--better have a little taken off; it needed it behind especially. I said I had had it cut only a week before. He yearned over it reflectively a moment, and then asked with a disparaging manner, who cut it? I came back at him promptly with a "You did!" I had him there. Then he fell to stirring up his lather and regarding himself in the glass, stopping now and then to get close and examine his chin critically or inspect a pimple. Then he lathered one side of my face thoroughly, and was about to lather the other, when a dog-fight attracted his attention, and he ran to the window and stayed and saw it out, losing two shillings on the result in bets with the other barbers, a thing which gave me great satisfaction. He finished lathering, and then began to rub in the suds with his hand.
He now began to sharpen his razor on an old suspender, and was delayed a good deal on account of a controversy about a cheap masquerade ball he had figured at the night before, in red cambric and bogus ermine, as some kind of a king. He was so gratified with being chaffed about some damsel whom he had smitten with his charms that he used every means to continue the controversy by pretending to be annoyed at the chaffings of his fellows. This matter begot more surveyings of himself in the glass, and he put down his razor and brushed his hair with elaborate care, plastering an inverted arch of it down on his forehead, accomplishing an accurate "Part" behind, and brushing the two wings forward over his ears with nice exactness. In the mean time the lather was drying on my face, and apparently eating into my vitals.
Now he began to shave, digging his fingers into my countenance to stretch the skin and bundling and tumbling my head this way and that as convenience in shaving demanded. As long as he was on the tough sides of my face I did not suffer; but when he began to rake, and rip, and tug at my chin, the tears came. He now made a handle of my nose, to assist him shaving the corners of my upper lip, and it was by this bit of circumstantial evidence that I discovered that a part of his duties in the shop was to clean the kerosene-lamps. I had often wondered in an indolent way whether the barbers did that, or whether it was the boss.
About this time I was amusing myself trying to guess where he would be most likely to cut me this time, but he got ahead of me, and sliced me on the end of the chin before I had got my mind made up. He immediately sharpened his razor--he might have done it before. I do not like a close shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to get him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one little roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum, and slapped it all over my face nastily; slapped it over as if a human being ever yet washed his face in that way. Then he dried it by slapping with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian. Next he poked bay ruin into the cut place with his towel, then choked the wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would have gone on soaking and powdering it forevermore, no doubt, if I had not rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me up, and began to plow my hair thoughtfully with his hands. Then he suggested a shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly. I observed that I shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath yesterday. I "had him" again. He next recommended some of "Smith's Hair Glorifier," and offered to sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the new perfume, "Jones's Delight of the Toilet," and proposed to sell me some of that. I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives with me.
He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise, sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind, and plastering the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too late for the train. Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily sang out "Next!"
This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting over a day for my revenge--I am going to attend his funeral.
In early December, as we pulled up to my ancestral village, the gaon called Baranghati where my father was born and his father before him, I noticed a man balancing two bales of paddy on a long stick teetering on his bare back. He was barefoot and struggling. I looked at his face.
“That’s my uncle”, I told my daughter. She nodded, more interested in the ducks and cows scattered every which way.
I sat with him later and out came the story I hear each time I visit. The village remained the same as in the 1940s, when my father left to set up a business elsewhere, the same as in the 1970’s, when my father left for the US, the same through the 1990’s as India’s urban centres joined the global economy and all accompanying comforts.
His tone was short and matter-of-fact: bad schools, bad roads, no health care, no adequate political representative. A small herd of us – my three cousines, my daughter, our driver – would take short jaunts in and out of various distant relatives’ homes and hear the same.
As I sit here in New York City typing this column, Baranghat and the place where a part of my roots ultimately untangle feels a world away from the US that is sleek, slick, shiny, packaged, crunchy, home. With each visit, it becomes less clear why I am there what I can do. My female cousins have mostly been married off, the “lucky” ones to cities across Assam: the young male cousins mostly operate small stalls elsewhere selling SIM cards and cassettes and toffees. Few farm, leaving greying men like my uncle- really the son of my grandfather’s cousin- to handle the hard labour.
I somehow cling to the image of he who forms a part of me and my history, one whom I might not otherwise give a second glance if encountered on the streets of Delhi or even Guwahati. We have little in common, little to say, and yet I fear the day when my offspring and theirs will no longer feel connected to a place like this, or even to each other.
And that, I suppose, is the answer. For almost two years now, I’ve pondered and offered various explanations, including the need to follow opportunity eastward, to the country that birthed my parents but never seemed big enough for their ambitions.
In the process, I’ve delved into not just the two Indians, but the countless Indians that perplexed me, yet ultimately define me: The young cousins who work as engineers and managers in Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai; the inlaws in gated communities of Gurgaon and Noida; alarge close-knit patch-work across Guwahati; and those more removed relatives in the village. For the last few weeks, I felt compelled to be among the latter in Assam, distanced from the first-class and five stars that had unintentionally been the backdrop to so much of our India stay in New Delhi. It was hard for me to explain to anyone just why we were going and why for so long. Sure, we planned to volunteer, to attend a few family weddings, but just what was it we were after?
The answers unveiled themselves mostly through my daughter: when she took her clothes off and jumped into a stream during a family picnic, frolicking with the children of my cousins and laughing in the way we used to; when she performed a Bihu dance Chritsmas eve with another set of cousins and they laughed and traded inside jokes; when she joined that uncle with a stick and led the cows in rounds over the paddy heaped in his mud courtyard.
We non-resident Indians spend life-times hanging on yet criticizing, looking back yet teaching our children to “be Indian” through Bharatnatyam, religion classes and memorizing the national anthem. But having gone through several stages of definition and creation of said identity , that won’t be enough.
And so, when my daughter sobbed as we left India last week (why can’t we take the maid with us? I don’t want to leave my cousins or my dog. When will we come back?), in her raw, young reaction, I finally had an answer to why we had come that is far more becoming and honest than “ because the economy’s booming”. I sympathized with her, having felt the same way numerous times as I departed India, chastising my parents for leaving in the first place.
But after two years in India, I know now why they did .
Through my daughter, though, I learnt something perhaps much more important- the reason India continues to lure. Despite her tears, my emotions ran far more joyous as we bid farewell.
Home is a place you can always come back to, after all. (Mint-January-2009)
I cut through the cool water of a South Indian beach looking for something interesting on the ocean floor. I had been looking for the last half an hour. Just as I was about to swim forward to look at a star fish, when without warning a light blinded me and forced me to go to the surface; I was sure that I hadn’t imagined the light. I went back into the water and scanned the sea bed but saw nothing. As I swam backwards retracing my path, the light blinded me again. This time, curious, I swam lower, shielding my eyes. A moment later, I found a beautiful ring. I swam to the surface with the ring to get a better look at it. The ring had a heart shaped sapphire with two emeralds on each side. The ring fit perfectly on to my finger as if it was made for me. The jewels sparkled every time the Sun reached it, casting rainbows on the water.
I started to swim towards the shore to show the ring to my cousin. Just then I heard a click. My ring had slipped off my finger and got stuck between some rocks. I kept going towards the shore because I thought my cousin could help me get it since she had long fingers. I needed somebody with long fingers because the ring was as delicate as water and could be scratched or bent easily. I got to my cousin and told her about the ring. Then we swam back to the spot where the ring was stuck. My cousin swam under water and luckily retrieved the ring for me. “Thank you for giving me a helping hand,” I told my cousin, after slipping the ring back on to my finger securely.
We then dried off and rested on the beach watching birds. Suddenly, a bird resting on a pile of seaweed caught my eye and I decided to sketch the bird. The moment I finished my drawing the bird on my paper mysteriously disappeared and landed in my lap, which I didn’t expect. I glanced back at the clump of seaweed to see if the bird there was gone, but that bird was still there. “Wow,” I said to my cousin, “I think my drawing came alive because of the ring.” I drew a cookie and that became real too. “May be it tastes like a normal cookie too’” said my cousin. She took the cookie from me and bit into it. “It tastes just like any cookie,” she reported. The rest of the day we drew animals, food, and lots of other things. We had lots of fun until my grandmother told it was time to go home. On the way to the car, I didn’t notice that the sapphire ring had once again slid off of my finger. When we got home and realized that the ring was gone I was very sad and frustrated because I was so careless. I hope that somebody would find the magic ring and enjoy the ring the way we did.
A Little Boy
There was a little boy
In the tumble tweeds
Playing in the garden
Who ate some magic seeds
Now his ears grow flowers
And hair like weeds.
-Shail Agrawal
Picture Puzzle Piece
One picture puzzle piece Lyin' on the sidewalk, One picture puzzle piece Soakin' in the rain. It might be a button of blue On the coat of the woman Who lived in a shoe. It might be a magical bean, Or a fold in the red Velvet robe of a queen. It might be the one little bite Of the apple her stepmother Gave to Snow White. It might be the veil of a bride Or a bottle with some evil genie inside. It might be a small tuft of hair On the big bouncy belly Of Bobo the Bear. It might be a bit of the cloak Of the Witch of the West As she melted to smoke. It might be a shadowy trace Of a tear that runs down an angel's face. Nothing has more possibilities Than one old wet picture puzzle piece.
A king asked a sage to explain the Truth. In response the sage asked the king how he would convey the taste of a mango to someone who had never eaten anything sweet. No matter how hard the king tried, he could not adequately describe the flavor of the fruit, and, in frustration, he demanded of the sage "Tell me then, how would you describe it?" The sage picked up a mango and handed it to the king saying "This is very sweet. Try eating it!"
Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption--no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, A Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains. My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this theme with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters to the mothers in Israel. It would not become to me to criticise you, gentlemen--who are nearly all my elders--and my superiors, in this thing--if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than fault-finding; indeed if this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received the attention, the encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this club has devoted to it, I should not need to utter this lament, or shred a single tear. I do not say this to flatter: I say it in a spirit of just and appreciative recognition. [It had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and to give illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me to beware of the particulars and confine myself to generalities.]
No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and diligent cultivation--therefore, it goes without saying that this one ought to be taught in the public schools--even in the newspapers. What chance has the ignorant uncultivated liar against the educated expert? What chance have I against Mr. Per--against a lawyer? Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth. 
All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a barber's shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences in barbers' shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I approached it from Main--a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I sat down, hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of the remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's hair, while his comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his customer's locks. I watched the probabilities with strong interest. When I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1 my interest grew to solicitude. When No. 1 stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket for a new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to anxiety. When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customers' cheeks, and it was about an even thing which one would say "Next!" first, my very breath stood still with the suspense. But when at the culminating moment No. 1 stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep from falling into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness that enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell him he will wait for his fellow-barber's chair.
This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting over a day for my revenge--I am going to attend his funeral. 
In early December, as we pulled up to my ancestral village, the gaon called Baranghati where my father was born and his father before him, I noticed a man balancing two bales of paddy on a long stick teetering on his bare back. He was barefoot and struggling. I looked at his face.
विविधा News & Views
