Our culture is full of stories the witty person – think Tenalirama, Gopal Bhand, or Birbal. The theater forms have all had the comic as an integral part of the story. Indian cinema – Hindi as well as other Regional language cinema have seen many shades of humor.  As Indians have become more confident, we have learnt to laugh at ourselves. Only someone who is secure within can laugh at himself or herself. Self deprecating humor is reflective of a self assured person. That confidence for some comes because of prosperity. For some even strife leads to its own variety of dark humor. I believe economic prosperity and exposure to a global environment have expanded the variety of jokes we Indians laugh at today. You see more comedy shows on TV than we did a few years back. Youtube and the Net has given us access to more brands and flavors of humor. So as a country we are discovering the joys of a global fare.

Malavika Velayanikal of  DNA newspaper spoke to couple of us on the question “Do Indians Have a Sense of Humor?” Here is the interview reproduced with her permission.

Let’s admit it. As Indians, we aren’t really famous for our sense of humor. It is a rather serious business, which, alas, we haven’t mastered. Not yet, at least. We reserve our peals of laughter for the jokes on ‘them’. And the ‘them’, obviously is Tamilian if you are Punjabi, Sikh if you are Malayali, or Nepali if you are Bengali. The pot of trouble is on high flame if the joke’s on ‘us’. For us Indians, humor is a vexing issue.

It could be because we are a very religious country. At least, Osho thought so: “For centuries sad people have dominated religion. They have expelled laughter – from the churches, from the mosques, from the temples….” To him, seriousness was a disease that has been praised, respected and honored; and Indians, “are serious people” – very religious, very holy.
Forbidden and dangerous territory as it is, a few brave men and women do test the waters. The ambitious ones tread on toes, and are quickly slain. The less smart ones are flayed. The perfect ones, survive.
Comedies are galore on television. Many are ghastly, but the pleasing TRP ratings have ensured more converts. Filmmakers are on to it too. So are stand-up comedians.

Author of bestseller Mediocre But Arrogant, Abhijit Bhaduri, feels we have learned to laugh at ourselves, as Indians have become more confident. “Only someone who is secure within can laugh at himself. Self deprecating humor is reflective of a self-assured person. I believe economic prosperity and exposure to a global environment has expanded the variety of jokes we laugh at today. So as a country we are discovering the joys of a global fare.”

While some believe humor has just arrived there are many who have been dabbling with it for years.
Of course, we have a sense of humor and a resilient one, argues Mahesh Ramchandani, a freelance writer for television, who has scripted several of the Movers and Shakers episodes. “In spite of all that the politicians have done to us and to this country, we still manage to laugh. I think everyone has a sense of humor, including Suresh Kalmadi, although you won’t see him laughing too much these days,” he says.

Swedish writer Zac O’Yeah, whose latest book, Once Upon a Time in Scandinavistan, an international bestseller, has always peppered his crime thrillers with humor. After living in India for over a decade, he sometimes feels there’s more humor in India than in most other countries in the world. “I think perhaps the unique thing is that we who live in India often straddle multiple cultures at the same time. Somebody can be Bengali by birth, but grow up and live their life in Bangalore, and also be completely fluent in English. My belief is that the more complex your own cultural situation is, with a variety of influences from different sources, the easier it is for you to appreciate the comedy of life.”
We obviously knew how to laugh at ourselves in the past, says Reena I Puri, editor of the Amar Chitra Katha series. “Indian folktales are full of amazing humour. Look at Tenali Raman, Gopal Bhand or Birbal.” She believes that Indian television humour has a long way to go, but “if I think of some of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s movies with Amol Palekar or Utpal Dutt, they were simply great.”

For O’Yeah, the classic humor exemplified by RK Narayan or the naughty humor in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Kamalakanta are the highest ideals – both quite advanced for their time. He enjoys an occasional standup comedy performance “by intelligent comedians like Aporup Acharya, for instance”.

But playing with wit, and escaping unscathed is rather tricky. Shashi Tharoor tweaked Mahabharata – almost as holy as it could get – married it to history, recast it with politics and won worldwide applause. But one stray tweet on holy cows and cattle-class had him reprimanded instantly, and retreating in haste. So writers like Ramchandani are doubly careful. How far one can push the envelope is a tough call.

“One has to weigh one’s words all the time because what is permissible today was offensive yesterday and what is taboo today will become permissible tomorrow,” he says. No television producer wants to lose a TV show and so they keep a close watch on their writers and keep showing us pictures of starving people in poor countries; this motivates us to self-censor, he says, jokingly.

The moral police used to be the only police to watch out for earlier, but now we also have the politically correct (PC) police watching over us, Ramchandani says. “While the moral police gets offended if we take a potshot at their sacred cows such as god, religion, and so on, the PC has their own sacred cows and so, for example, at one time you couldn’t get a pro-gay piece into the media, now you can’t get a non-pro-gay piece in because the ‘liberal’ Taliban is watching. Some will say that is a good thing, which is exactly how the moral police defends itself,” he says.

“My humor is a survival kind of one,” says writer Shinie Antony. “I wanted to be a comedian when I grew up – partly because my report cards were a joke.” All her books and writings are humourous, but her wit, she says is very self deprecatory. “There is a thin line between offending someone and being funny, which I have never crossed,” she says.
So says O’Yeah: “Even if as a novelist I prefer a comic genre, my writing isn’t about having fun at some particular person’s [or a community's] expense.” He enjoys “a fairly gentle type of generic humour and which is mostly actually targeting myself [if it targets anything at all] or my own preconceived notions, or my own stupidity. In fact, I would like to claim that my humour is almost of the philosophical kind, but if I said that probably the community of philosophers would burn my effigy.” That was a joke, by the way, he quickly adds.
Politics seems like the favourite fodder of television humour. There is much entertainment in it, and on live Parliament debates, our politicians perform better than most comedians do. Laloo Yadav, Mayawati, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, and Mamata Banerjee top the charts for chiding comedians. But political sensibilities are also quick to hurt, and the ‘party’ often cracks down on the artiste as well as his subjects.

Once, a television show that Ramchandani was working on made some nasty jokes about gangsters. He recalls receiving anonymous calls telling them to take it easy. “We’re particularly careful not to offend the feelings of gangsters and terrorists, because they are very sensitive people and also own guns, certain politicians who will remain unnamed and George Bush – because a channel, which will remain unnamed, that was airing one of our shows had given us clear instructions that we were not to make any jokes about George Bush. No kidding!” he says.

Bhaduri too has ruffled several feathers with his wit. If you are a good humor writer, you would most certainly offend someone who is the butt of the jokes, he says. “One of the Professors of Mathematics at XLRI had told me I had caricatured him unfairly in Mediocre But Arrogant. A short story about the futility of New Year’s resolutions drew the flak of an erstwhile colleague who claimed that the work-shirking, scheming person in the story was modeled on him. At the alumni meet of XLRI last December, a classmate came up and said that the character of Ayesha in Married But Available was modeled on her and that she didn’t quite like that.”

The cultural elite of the country, after chuckling through hours of Seinfield, Monty Python and Woody Allen, are now sampling the slew of stand-up comedy shows live in the city. Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi often get to enjoy live performances by American, British and Australian comedians. The recent Russell Peters’ show in the city was sold out every day. Local comedians like Vir Das and Ruby Chakraborty are popular as well.

We could argue on the cultural divide of humor in India for hours, and get nowhere. A sense of humor is, after all, a very personal thing. “That’s why it’s called ‘a sense’, I suppose,” says O’Yeah. It will differ between different people depending on social class, cultural background and so on, he adds.

Everybody has a sense of humour. Only the degree of it varies, feels Shinie Antony. To her, humour is an essential defence mechanism of the mind. “How you cope with a situation without losing your sanity.” And laughter is addictive. “It is like applause,” she says. “But humorists must learn where to stop with the jokes.”
In their quest for chuckles, comics could get carried away. After all, only blurred lines demarcate the boundaries between humor, flippancy and offence. So, funnymen, beware, when you go searching for that funny bone.

What do you think? Do economically prosperous nations produce more variety of humor? Do people who laugh at themselves make better colleagues?

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Download my cartoon from here and feel free to use it.

There are days when you are the pigeon and there are days when you are the statue. The trick lies in getting an early warning especially on the “statue days”, so that you can take in a deep breath and last out when your head is being held underwater. In my case the pigeon days are few and far between. It happens ever so suddenly and if I do not immediately take advantage of that tiny sliver of an opportunity I have only myself to blame. Horoscopes are helpful to take a sneak peek into the future. I read them regularly. My newspaper carries two of them (written by two different blokes) on Sunday. If you miss one of them while being stunned by their editorial, you can always read the other one without having to flip back on the pages. Tip for you: If you do not like the prediction for your own zodiac, try reading the one which says what you are looking for. If being a Scorpio does not bring me money this week, I am OK taking the prediction for Pisces if they are the ones with cash in the wallet.

Like it happened last month when I was going to have an all important discussion on salary hikes with the Big One. I checked what the week’s prediction was for Scorpio (my zodiac sign). It was not pretty. It said, “You will have a difficult time convincing a colleague (ahem, someone is being cryptic) about your point of view. Avoid arguments. Money matters will keep you worried.”  Whoa! I needed a sanity check on this one. So I read up what the prediction for the week was for Taurus – my boss is Taurean. It said, “Avoid getting into an altercation with your colleagues about money matters.”  There was no reason for the prediction to come true, but it did. The Big One must be reading the same newspaper.

I have a simple solution to this problem. I am taking writing out predictions not by zodiac signs but by topic. This horoscope is about the twelve things that matter to everyone regardless of what zodiac sign you are – crab (Cancer) or twin (Gemini). It works even if you follow the Chinese calendar and you are a pig or rooster or monkey. Net net, no matter what beast you are, I have a prediction for you. What’s more, it s a prediction you will like. Read this on a bad day and it wll cheer you up.

1. Health: You are in the pink of health. If someone asks you start exercising, remember, this week is not a good time to start. After all the year has 52 weeks. Choose an auspicious time to start the regime, not now.
2. Money: Money is coming your way. If you are facing a temporary cash crunch, don’t worry, you will get bailed out – remember how everyone gets a bailout package just before they go bankrupt? So chill. Think big. You ARE rich.  
3. Romance: The opposite sex is called so because they have been going in the opposite direction. This week, your magnetic charm will work. So be prepared to read advice on money (point 2 above). So stuff will happen even to you. Honest. It has to…
4.  Office: This will be the best week you have had in a long time. Your projects will all finish in time. Your work will be praised – even by that nasty person who sits in the corner table playing Solitaire all day. You will be given a raise and made to be the big cheese so you get an unlimited expense account right away. (Read point 2 and 3, who do you think will be popular? wink …wink…) 
5. Shopping: Plan your shopping. You are going to be busy buying stuff all of next week to spend what will come your way this week. Some of the brands have strange spellings. Learn them. Remember your shoe size and color choice as you leave home. Credit cards will work. So go splurge.
6. Travel: This week will see you doing a lot of travelling to exotic places. By that I do not mean your long commute to the office. The Pizza Shop is not my idea of an exotic destination. Think out of the box or suitcase if you must. It could involve air travel – relax. Read section on Food to feel reassured.
7. Traffic: There will be no jams this week. You can drive like a maniac and everyone on the road will indulgently wait for you to drive past. You are in a hurry. You have stuff to do. We all understand. Read section 8 below. 
8. Parking: Parking will be plentiful. That is going to last for the next seven days from the time you read this prediction. So save this one for a rainy day. That is the time you really need to park someplace and run to the nearest washroom. If in doubt read section on Traffic.
9. Telephone: The phone company will waive off charges for you to use the phone. This is that wee of the year when telephone companies like to give customers a surprise. Nothing like having a 100 free minutes added to your account – evey minute. You can even call your microwave for an hour and you will still have minutes left to spare. Oh yeah, there will be no telemarketing calls to receive – unless you are making them. Remember this could lead to what section 3 predicted.
10. Food: This is your lucky week. Even airlines food will taste delicious. This is the count no calories week. No matter how man helpings of chocolate cake you have you won’t resemble any of the animals mentioned in the zodiac sign – leave alone the sixth one in the chart.
11. Television: TV will feature your favorite program (including those that you secretly tape and delete diligently). There will be no annoying ads at crucial moments of sporting events – unless you have made any of those ads. In that case only the ad will play all day on all channels. So no matter who watches what channel, your ad will get the highest TRP ratings.
12. Emails: The office email server will be taken down for maintenance this week. They are upgrading stuff. If you don’t answer mails for a week, the world will take you off their mailing list. You will no longer get annoying emails that assign work to you.

If you feel I have not given enough good news in a certain section, leave a comment behind. We need to build a horoscope around these twelve vital areas and not zodiac signs. 

If you want to read the usual stuff on sun signs, here is a link to Linda Goodman’s sun signs.

The morning newspaper and a cuppa chai is a ritual that is common to a large part of the human race. But people read it in their own manner. Some glance at the headlines and head straight for the sports page. So open the editorial page and shake their head disapprovingly at the affairs of the world. I head for the cartoons. I grab the newspaper and head straight for Ajit Ninan’s cartoon. I look for two elements of wit in a cartoon – the visual and verbal. Ninan excels in both. With most cartoonists one lands up choosing between the two. Ajit started his career with FD Stewarts – an ad agency in Chennai before they transferred him to Delhi. While in Delhi Ajit started contributing cartoons to  Target – a magazine for children run by the India Today group. That led to an offer to join the media group as cartoonist and illustrator. Ajit’s cartoons in India Today, Business Today and Target got him noticed. He joined Indian Express newspaper in 1992 before drawing for the news magazine Outlook. He is now with The Times of India as their Chief Graphics Consultant. Ajit used to run a cartoon strip called Detective Moochhwala (and his tail-less dog called Poochh, which means tail in Hindi) for Target. That comic strip had cult status amongst readers and it was amazing to see Ajit pack in a tight storyline and brilliant graphics in about 35-40 frames.

Nephew of the cartoonist Abu Abraham (1924-2002), Ajit grew up in Hyderabad. The highlight of his time at Hyderabad Public School was when he used to get “suspended” for drawing cartoons of his teachers. According to Ajit, “That allowed me to sit in the library and go through stacks of Punch and New Yorker cartoons. Cartoonists James Thurber and Arnold Roth were my inspiration. As a kid I spent many doing detailed sketches of machines and turbines. My love for these gadgets showed up when I drew Moochhwala who used hi-tech inspired gadgets like Katchem Krime Komputer – which was a dig at the Ku Klux Klan.”  Ajit looked at my caricature of him and said, “That’s spot on! The hair on the eyebrows was michievous.” We caught up over lunch and many cups of coffee.

Abhijit Bhaduri: Where was your first cartoon published? How old were you then?

Ajit Ninan: My first work was published in the last issue of the children’s magazine Shankar’s Weekly. I think that was in 1968 or 69 and they shut down after that. Maybe because of my cartoon!! They sent me a Money Order for Rs10/-.  I promptly spent eight bucks out of that buying myself a new pair of school shoes.

Abhijit: How did you know that you wanted to be a cartoonist?

Ninan: I am a “Mallu” (Malayali for the uninitiated) but from Hyderabad. I was weak in Math. So it had to be art. My ambition was to teach in a college. I thought I would move all my classes to the afternoon and get to sleep late everyday.

But I did not start off doing cartoons. I started off drawing complicated machines and turbines. As a cartoonist you have to learn to draw all kinds of things and from all angles. If you need to draw a tractor, you have to know how much of the wheel would be visible, what shape the headlights are. Where are they fixed etc. You have to be able to draw all those details. Only then can you use them in a cartoon.  A cartoonist’s mind has to be like a Rotoscope. When I am looking at a person, or reading a news item my mind automatically churns ideas, creates images, exaggerates a point of view. That is important for a cartoonist.

(According to Wikipedia: In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.)

Abhijit: Whose cartoons do you admire?

Ninan: Mario Miranda’s drawings. He is the only Indian cartoonist who can have a hundred characters in a drawing and still have harmony. His pen strokes are so confident. He will take care to make a guy in a black coat stand in front of a white door to bring out the contrast and details. I grew up admiring the works of James Thurber and Arnold Roth of New Yorker. There are two kinds of cartoonists – those who attract attention with the blacks and those who use white (space). American cartoonists use a lot of black – their politicians and business people wear black. That explains their style. Our style has to be to use white. Abu Abraham shifted to using more white after he started to draw in India. I love Lurie’s style of big heads and small bodies. I used this style while drawing the business leaders caricatures.

Abhijit: When you draw cartoons for a living, does it not tend to take the joy out of what could be a nice hobby? How do your friends treat you?

Ajit: It is a stressful and lonely role. You cannot delegate it to anyone. You always have to have ideas that have at least a 24 hour shelf life. If you are on vacation, the continuity has to be maintained for the reader. My friends expect me to always come up with something wacky. Some of them are wary about getting themselves depicted as a cartoon.

Abhijit: How do you draw caricatures? Are good looking people more difficult to draw caricatures of?

Ajit: Yes, good looking people are more difficult to draw. I find it tougher to draw women than men. When Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister, I was worried until he built his helipad ! By making Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister, in one stroke Sonia Gandhi has deprived cartoonists of so many cartoon topics. Manmohan Singh is difficult to make fun of. But cartoonists still manage to.

I always start with the nose. Then decide where to hang the rest of the face. (hands me a collection of biz leaders’ caricature he has drawn.)

Abhijit: What is it about the state of Kerala that has produced some of India’s best known cartoonists – Vijayan, Kutty, Shankar, Ravi Shankar, Abu Abraham to name a few? (Just check out this list at http://keralacartoonists.blogspot.com/)

Ajit: I think it is a combination of literacy and political leanings that Kerala has to offer. All that Leftist ideology encourages people to cock a snook at the establishment. And then of course, having a largely matriarchal society ensures that the banter between the sexes is always witty.

Abhijit: How did having the cartoonist Abu Abraham as your paternal uncle influence your work?

Ajit: He was a very insightful man. Abu used to say, you need a high degree of intellect to be a cartoonist. Get to the essence of a situation, then visualize it in the most concise fashion. Do not fill up your drawing just to show people that you draw well.

Abhijit Bhaduri: How did Detective Moochhwala and Pooch get created? I was a great fan of those cartoons. I know I am not alone because I see many others pining for Moochh and Poochh. (Download a hi-res copy of this cartoon from here)

Ajit: Moochhwalla was inspired by cartoonist David Low’s character Col Blimp. I kept the dog Poochh white in color as it would save the hassle of coloring and shading the dog. (Pulls out a comic book version of Moochhwalla comics collection and shows me). I just loved coming up with those stories and crazy gadgets. Fitting a full story and the drawing on to 35 odd frames was a challenge. And not to forget the “silent” cartoons.

Abhijit: How would you go about hiring a cartoonist?

Ajit: I would gauge the person’s mind more than the lines. You need a wacko sense of humor. Then look for the person’s ability to visualize.  I would ask the person to come up with as many visualizations of say, the hammer and sickle or any other party’s logo? After all the cartoonist is conveying a political point of view with visuals. The cartoonist should not have to wait for a news headline and then think of a cartoon. Humor can’t be simplistic humor either.

Abhijit: What is the role of a cartoonist in a newspaper? With newspaper readership dwindling worldwide, what will happen to cartoonists in future?

Ajit: There are many opportunities for cartoonists. Look at animation films like Shrek and Madagascar. They could employ hundreds of cartoonists.  There are web sites and TV channels that look for cartoonists. Above all cartoonists need to be able to work in teams.

Abhijit: Any cartoon you regret having made?

Ajit: At the height of the Bofors scandal, I had drawn Rajiv Gandhi like a Pope surrounded by black sheep with one white sheep that was supposed to be VP Singh. Instead of the cross on his clothes I had used the Congress party symbol. That had offended some Christian groups. Another time I had shown the map of India to be like a Ganesha. Gujarat and the Eastern states being the ears etc. That offended a few Hindu groups. So I apologized.

Ajit Ninan has a fan club on Orkut. Click this link to join that community.

Collective nouns are a fascinating quirk in the English language. As the Rinkworks site would put it in their fabulous collection of collective nouns, “One of the craziest oddities of the English language is that there are so many different collective nouns that all mean “group” but which are specific to what particular thing there is a group of: a herd of elephants, a crowd of people, a box of crayons, a pad of paper, etc. There is great diversity of collective nouns associated with animals, from a sleuth of bears to a murder of crows.” There are interesting collective nouns for various professions – a sneer of butlers or a converting of preachers, a blackening of shoemakers and an obeisance of servants. A jail would have a pity of prisoners and maybe even a talent of gamblers.

You may have one duck but when a few more join this a lone duck, it is called paddling or badling of ducks. Some call it a raft of ducks or a bunch of ducks or for the less adventurous, it is a safe of ducks or a sore/ sord of ducks. If the same bunch of ducks are in flight they can be called a skein, string, twak or team of ducks. The same skein of geese when they are not in flight but waddling around on land will be called a gaggle. A collection of swans is called a bevy, herd, lamentation or wedge. A mustering of stork. Hawks are interesting too. You could have a cast, kettle (if they are flying in large numbers) of hawks but call it a boil  if it is just two or more hawks spiraling in flight.

If it was just birds in general I would simply refer to them as a flock, flight, congregation or volery. It is not just people who brood. You could have a brood of hens or peep of chicken. A tiding, gulp, charm or murder of magpies. A collection of owls is called a Parliament. The flamboyant peacocks gathered together is called muster or ostentation or pride. Murder, horde, parcel or storytelling is to crows while a collection of ravens are called an unkindness. A clamor or building of rooks but a rookery of penguins and a pandemonium or prattle of parrots.

A collection of apes is called shrewdness while a group of baboons is called a troop. You have a clowder, pounce, dout, nuisance, glorying, glare or clutter of cats but an intrigue of kittens. An obstinacy of buffalos. It is a kine of cows but twelve cows or more are a flink. A yoke, drove, team or herd of oxen. An intrusion of cockroaches (what else). A business or fesnyng or cast of ferrets. A tower of giraffes or a bloat of hippos. A quiver of cobras, a rhumba of rattlesnakes, a battery of barracuda and a nest of vipers. A leap of leopards, a pride of lions and an ambush or streak of tigers.

There are collective nouns not just for animals and birds. There are many interesting ones for people as well. I will start with my favorite. A collection of writers is a worship (really, that’s what they are called) while a group of worshippers is called a congregation. An audience of listeners, an eloquence of lawyers and an ambush of widows (the same term as a a collection of tigers… hmmm). It has to be a conjunction of grammarians. A cutting/drunkship of cobblers and a hastiness of cooks. A bunch of critics is called a shrivel – as in may their tribe shrivel? Painters when together could be a curse/illusion or misbelieving. A collection of magicians is called an illusion just like the painters. It is a disguising of tailors but scolding of seamstresses. A tabernacle of bakers but a babble of barbers and a gaggle of women. A troop of boy scouts but a company of girl guides. If you know some more of them please do add them here.

I could go on and on but let me end by asking you what a collection of such collective nouns is called? A lot of fun for sure.

The experience of growing up online will profoundly shape the workplace expectations of “Generation F” – the Facebook Generation says Gary Hamel - the management guru. Very clearly if you are one of those who believes that you are now with it because you now know how to use email, you do not belong to the Facebook Generation. Dear Gary, you will be happy to know that I am no stranger to Facebook. As someone recently mentioned that you have to be on Facebook (which I am even if it is really tough) to be considered cool.

Many teenagers continue to express deep angst at the enhanced age generation who have now taken over as Facebook users. When a website has like two or even three generations using it simultaneously, it clearly is a message to the youngest of the family to move on and seek online shelter for the homeless someplace else. The young and the young at heart cannot necessarily share the same cool hangout spots. Despite all the developments on the net, none of the social networking sites have found an answer to the Three E-mail Challenge. Put simply it means, with friends it is tough to exchange more than three emails on a subject without running out of steam. Let me explain what this is all about. In the pre-email era, the probability of meeting someone from school or college was remote. You met a couple of them at the airport or maybe if you missed your flight, the way I met Pingy after years. A freak snow storm had left me stranded in a remote town and that’s when I met Pingala Reddy, my class mate from school. While he wasn’t my best friend then, I must confess I really enjoyed meeting him after so many years. Right after I got back I wrote him an email (email no 1) thanking him for his hospitality and how much I had enjoyed meeting Pingy and his family. That I would love to host him and his family when he would visit my part of the woods next.

Pingy wrote back instantly (email no 2) saying he will take me up on my offer for sure. I wrote back (email no 3) that he was welcome to do so any time and that my family would love to meet the Reddy family. This email was followed by silence. The point being that with friends who you meet after years it is impossible to have an email exchange beyond the three. Facebook doesn’t have a solution either.

After many years Pingy wrote another mail (enclosing photo of family vacationing in Spain) and asked me if I was planning another trip to visit him? This was email no 1 of this exchange. 

In email 2, I responded that a family vacation in US would break the bank and hence not on the cards unless he offered to fund the trip. Pingy sent a cryptic smiley in email 3 as a response. We haven’t corresponded since. That’s the 3 email jinx

I met Rascal Rusty at Dubai airport last December. He was running to catch a flight but managed to convince me to sign up on Facebook before he rushed off. All the blokes of our class were evidently getting buttonholed into joining this social networking site that all the college kids had discovered a while back. I signed up and promptly added Rusty to my list of friends. I trawled the site to look for more classmates. Slowly I found Joy and Gur there as well. I now had 3 friends on Facebook. The community was growing. The only thing was that I did not quite know what to do after that.

One day I learnt how to write on the Facebook Wall.

Spray can in hand I went and wrote a bold “What’s up?” on all three walls. Joy ignored me. Gur replied “Nothing” and Rusty said that he was traveling for the next 2 weeks to Venezuela and will respond after he is back. The three email challenge has been replaced by the Facebook version of it.

Meanwhile I got a friend request from a person who I could not remember ever having met in my life. I accepted it simply because of the compulsion to not be seen as a boor who would not say hi to a stranger. That’s how Josh became my friend. He had 462 friends on facebook. He was clearly a popular beast. He could well be the next President with such a large number of friends to support him. By now I had discovered how to peek into his photo albums and heck, was I scandalized by some of them. Since he is a friend I will not share with you what I saw beyond gently hinting that Josh has the lifestyle of a rock star if the photos were anything to go by. The next morning I found that he had thrown a sheep at me. Thrown a sheep? Whoa !! What’s that all about. What was I supposed to do at this act of unprovoked violence? Should I throw a knife back to show that I was not to be taken lightly. I thought of asking Rusty, Joy or Gur for advice. Then I remembered that in most murder mysteries lesson no 1 is if someone threatens you, do not broadcast it. So I decided to be discreet. The next morning I found Josh had sent me a patch of green earth. The fellow is finally coming to his senses I thought and wants to make peace. I have decided to keep quiet and see if this fellow is serious about gifting me real estate.  With the falling prices of real estate this fellow probably thinks it a bargain to pacify me with a nice 4 acre plot. Hmmm… I wonder if I should forgive him by accepting the “patch” as he likes to call the plot. I changed my mind. I maintained a cool aloof silence which got Josh to send me a poke on Facebook. How does a poke get delivered? Maybe someone comes home, rings the bell and without exchanging even a hello, pokes you and goes off. I am really ticklish and hence I stayed home for a full day without answering the doorbell. And it worked. I was wildly successful in throwing the “poke delivery person” off track. They could not find me. I have since then been discovering one new surprise everyday. There is a quiz which lets you learn what you were in your previous life or scary ones that discover how low your IQ is. Today I checked my Facebook account. I think Josh is crazy. He sent me a party hat. He is mistaken if he thinks I will forgive him so easily for throwing a sheep at me and that too when I had done nothing to provoke him.