There is nothing like reading a properly phrased remark during a conversation with friends or cousins. While discussing the mundane and the not so mundane occurrences in the world outside, reading the succinctly and wittingly made points is a pleasure that wraps around you and keeps you grinning, while you go about your blessed ordinary life. Here are some whatsapp one-liners by a few crazy cousins of mine…
- Saj: Please offer him my felicitations on the anniversary of his natal day
(I was at a birthday party and I sent a picture of the birthday cake to my cousin…) - Megs: They are chaadi buddies.
(While discussing two other cousins and how they never get into arguments with each other) - Saj: You are like a lotus in the ditch
(A weird compliment…) - Jude: Is your modesty shaking with outrage?
- Saj: O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frightened thee.
(Saying goodnight…) - Saj: Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall goodnight till it be morrow.
(Quoting Shakespeare to say goodnight…) - Megs: India and Indians are weird at your convenience.
(To a flippant cousin who loves India but can’t tolerate her antics at the same time…) - Saj: You make fun of India and Indians everyday, while eating their vada paav and drinking their nimbu paani.
(While discussing India and the unbelievable stories that come out of her everyday…) - Saj: The world has to take a cue from your predilection to those singers to become a better place.
(This was when I said that the world would be a better place if everybody listened to country music, have you ever heard of a gangster or a terrorist who likes country music…) - Jude: Marriage counselling classes left me traumatized for months.
(While discussing the mandatory marriage counselling classes before getting married in a church) - Karen: This phone I have is really really good… I dropped it from the upper berth in train and it bounced right back to me.
(Discussing how strong other phones are compared to the iphone) - Nitya: He loves you. Now go and live…
(My psychoanalyst cousin said this while discussing life…) - Karen: Life is one big bowl of avial, everything mixed together and locally flavoured.
(Just an allegory on how life is a mixture of many things you like and some that you don’t. We all tend to pick out only the vegetables we like in avial, but while serving everything gets dumped on your plate.) - Megs: Don’t ask questions and kill the joke.
(After explaining a joke to a cousin) - Karen: Who cares… Taylor Swift, Rohith Shetty and Tyler Knott should get together and direct movies.
(While discussing Chennai Express and how it was way over the top. Swift and Tyler Knott too, tend to go overboard with their emotions, so it would only be fitting if they all got together and directed a movie.) - Karen: An award show where Taylor Swift wins any country music award is not worth watching.
(Seriously, in which universe are her recent albums remotely country. Give her awards, but don’t club her under the country genre.) - Saj: We did some research on the garbage, found a mail with the address, and also the smell of briyani.
(While trying to find out who was throwing away their garbage at the wrong place in his apartment.) - Saj: India will become a super power & Om Puri can give away 30000 to each rakhi sister his son accumulates.
(Again while discussing India and the Om puri article…) - Saj: OK, MCP stands for Microsoft Certified Professional, male chauvinistic pig, Midwestern Christian Prince. I’ll take the third one.
(When someone called him an mcp and he decided to find out what it means) - Saj: Everyday you kill us with your comic timing.
- Saj: OK, successfully fixed buffer overflow in my bladder. Gn
(In the middle of the night, when he woke up to pee.) - Saj: You should not twist every fact I say into a personal attack on me.
- Jude: Who were the Americans who partook of the Mughal cuisine.
(Asking a cousin who lives in US, about some people who had come home to taste briyani) - Jude: Maybe I lost a few calories reaching for the top shelf.
(This was when the above cousins’s company came up with a healthier snack alternative. They placed all the high sugar content snacks on the topmost shelf and the low calorie healthy snacks were placed within easy access.) - Saj: Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, and Dwayne Johnson are the stalwarts of Hollyood’s mindless violence genre.
- Saj: Their fingers are paralysed by the adrenaline rush that you induce in the minds of your audience.
- Megs: No one wants a fat God.
(While discussing how athletic Jesus always looks.) - Megs: Go try installing some muscles
(To a cousin who is obsessed (in a good way) with fitness) - Jude: Well, now she’s gone along with her mannequins leaving the poor pigeons grainless. Maybe they will still flock there, looking upwards expectantly waiting for grain to rain down from the sky like manna from heaven, from the hands of a shirt wearing angel.
(While discussing his next door neighbour who used to feed pigeons from her balcony wearing only a shirt. She was vacating the apartment and her mannequins were in the hallway…) - Jude: Gone are the long days where the sun just didn’t want to stop giving away the last of its precious moments of warmth, now the days are bleak and cold. The sun, a mere wisp of its earlier glory.
(Describing the slow change in seasons…) - Jude: Sitting as you are in a decadent first world country, its only natural that you are unaware of the travails that befall your country mates.
(Spending the past few weeks with my brother in Geneva, I had no idea that a great cyclone called Phailin was expected to hit the Andhra coastline…) - Jude: Visiting the remnants left behind by the bourgeois and the clergy who exploited the peasants.
(While discussing the castles I’ve been visiting here and the old world charm that surrounds them…) - Saj: I am trying hard to interpret the humour, i’m failing so far.
- Jude: She is planning debaucherous things to do this weekend.
(While wondering why a cousin was not replying…) - Karen: Never judge a man on the circumference of his mouth.
(While discussing a cousin’s crush on Steven Tyler) - Jude: Madras stations have layers of grime coating every visible surface. The patina of centuries of crushing poverty. (Discussing how crowded the major stations are…)
- Karen: If they weren’t already married, I would feel sorry for them.
(After waking up to find 200 messages from Sheldon and Leonard like cousins, all about code and client and proxy and what not…) - Jude: Do they pass your threshold for acceptable Desi behaviour.
(To another cousin in the US, who was getting acquainted with an Indian family…) - Nam: She is not that talented. (This was when guests had come over for dinner and I had spent the whole day cooking different things. For starters, we bought some frozen food to be baked before serving the guests. And when one of the guests, saw the beautiful cheese rolls that were bubbling away, she asked if I prepared them… and my sister was quick to reply.)
This is truly praiseworthy. You must be rewarded
Lovely post!
Hello Karen,
Are you back in Chennai 🙂 ?
I was looking forward to pics from Geneva 🙂
Super-post and my favourite line here is – Life is one big bowl of avial, everything mixed together and locally flavoured.
(Just an allegory on how life is a mixture of many things you like and some that you don't. We all tend to pick out only the vegetables we like in avial, but while serving everything gets dumped on your plate.)
Liked the avial bit. What an analogy!!!
Hey….interesting! I wonder how you remember all this unless you document it. And I liked the south Indian version of life like an avial….tastes much better than the north Indian version of life-Bhel puri. Also miss Namita's wise cracks. That's a whole lot of it.
Zak, I should thank thee for thy contribution here… and for the many chuckles that you induce through your witty personality.
Yummychunklet, thanks 🙂
Ha, Mahesh… glad you like it.
Clement, 🙂
Nitya, yeah, I copy paste them. Never thought of that, the north Indian version of life is Bhel Puri, pretty interesting :p
And Nam, is a whole different story, she cracked me up so much last month…