The A-B-C of Bengali
by Shivjeet Khullar (reproduced here)

A is for Office. This is where the average Kolakattan goes and spends a day hard(ly) at work. If he is in the Government he will arrive at 10:00, wipe his forehead till 11:00, have a tea break at 12:00, throw around a few files at 12:30, break for lunch at 1:00, smoke an unfiltered cigarette at 2:00, break for tea at 3:00, sleep in a seated position at 4:00 and go home at 5:00. It’s a hard life!

B is for Bhision (vision). For some reason most of the Bengalis don’t have good bhision. In fact in Kolkata most people can be seen wearing spectacles most of the time. The effects of this show in the city.

C is for Chappell. This is the Bengali word for the ‘Devil’, for the worst form of evil. At night mothers put their kids to sleep saying ‘go to bed, or Chappell will come and take you away.’

D is for Debashish. By an ancient law every fourth Bengali Child has to be named Debashish. So you have a Debashish everywhere and as an effort at creativity and distinguishing one from another they might also be called Deb, Debu, Deba, Debo with other variations like Debnath and Debprotim thrown in.

E is for Eeesh. This is a very common Bengali exclamation made famous by Aishwarya Rai in the movie Devdas. It is estimated that on an average a Bengali uses ‘eeesh’ 10,089 times every year. (That’s counting eeesh and other eeesh-ish words).

F is for Feesh. These are creatures that swim in rivers and seas and are a favourite food of the Bengalis. Despite the fact that a fish market has an overpowering and overwhelming odour, it takes but a sniff for a Bengali to determine if a fish is all right. If not he is liable to say ‘eeesh what feeesh is theesh!’

G is for Good name. Every Bengali boy will have a good name like Debashish or Debopratim and a pet name like Shontu, Chontu, Dinku while every Bengali Girl will be Paromita or Protima as well as Shampa, Champa and Tuki. Basically your nickname is there to kill your good name.
H is for Harmonium. The Bengali equivalent of a rock guitar. Take four Bengalis and a Harmonium and you have the successors to “The Bheatles!”

I is for illeesh. This is a feeesh with 10,000 bones which would kill any ordinary person, but which the Bengalis eat with releeesh!

J is for Jhola. No self respecting Bengali feels complete without his Jhola. It is a shapeless cloth bag where he keeps all his belongings and he fits an amazing number of things in it. Even as you read this there are 2 million jholas bobbing around Kolkata- and they all look exactly the same!

K is for Kee Kando. It used to be the favourite Bengali exclamation (something like what chaos) till ‘eeesh’ took over because of Aishwarya Rai (now Kee Kando’s agent is trying to hire Bipasha Bosu (nee Basu)).

L is for Lungi. People in Kolkata manage to play football and cricket wearing it. Now there is talk of a lungi expedition to Mt. Everest.

M is for Minibash (minibus). These are dangerous half- buses whose antics put those speed-demons on the Formula 1 race track to shame.

N is for Nangtoe. This is the Bengali word for Naked. It is the most interesting naked word in any language!

O is for Oil. The Bengalis believe that a touch of mustard oil will cure anything from cold (oil in the nose), to earache (oil in the ear), to cough (oil on the throat) to piles (oil you know where!)

P is for Phootball (football). This is always a phavourite paasshon (favourite passion) of the Kolkattan. Every Bengali is born an expert in this game. The two biggest clubs there are Mohun-Bagan FC and East-Bengal AC and whenever they play, the entire city comes to a grinding halt (of course it also comes to a halt as a result of strikes called by some union or political party which could vary from once-a-week to daily during elections).

Q is for Queen. This really has nothing to do with the Bengalis or Kolkata, but it’s the only Q word I could think of at this moment. There’s also Quilt but they never use them in Kolkata.

R is for Rabindranath Tagore. Many years ago Rabindranath got the Nobel prize. This allows everyone in Kolkata to frame their acceptance speeches and walk with their heads held high and look down at the humbler and less accomplished denizens of Delhi and Mumbai.

S is for Sardarjee who the Bengalis are very envious of because sardars are born with a semi-monkey cap on.

T is for Trams. Hundred years later there are still trams in Kolkata. Of course if you are in a hurry it’s faster to walk.

U is for Umbrella. When a Bengali baby is born they are handed one.

V is for Violensh (violence). Bengalis are the most non-violent violent people around. When an accident happens they will shout and scream and curse and abuse, but the last time someone actually hit someone was in 1979.

W is for Water. For three months of the year the city is under water and every year for the last 200 years the authorities have been taken by surprise by this phenomenon!

X is for Xmas. It’s very big in Kolkata with Park Street fully lit up.

Y is for Yeshtarday (yesterday). Which is always better than today for a Bengali.

Z is for Jeebra, ..Joo, Jip and Jylophone

Disclaimer:
Source of original news: chain e-mail

Subsequent comment picked up from another blog:
http://alexmachan.blogspot.com/2007/02/insult-to-indian-flag.html
Maria said...
I was at the event at New Jersey. This person put the flag near her feet to get blessing for his country. She told the authority to remove it before that someone click the photo and start distributing on Internet. I was think Alex blog is smart blog but I was wrong. We should use our discretion when we upload these pictures in the blog without putting the full side of story.Shame on you Alex. I lost trust in your blog.Maria

Gurus n Quacks
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi - Divine Mother, The "Guru" of Sahaja Yoga, Godwoman,

The one who tramples the national flag (sic)













Like Maggi Noodles, Instant Karma is available 'for sale' today and the peddlers and/or their followers are so haughty/illiterate/ignorant/callous that they cant see beyond their shadows.

I am a shamed 'Indian' today. This is a sad day.





SHAMEFUL PICTURES OF THE NATIONAL FLAG SERVING TIME AS THE FOOTMAT OF A 'GODMOTHER'




All those 'apparently' educated people who lie prostate at the feet of such 'divine mothers and fathers', shame on you.
One of them can be seen here ... There are thousands of others.

Think about it!!

Up for some laughs !!!

If thatz not going for the ball(s), what is?

Now can one get more explicit????

Source of Al-Qaeda funding !!!!!!

Use Technology for competitive advantage.....

‘Candlegiri’ and the ‘Great Indian Middle Class’
Vengeance of the wannabes and also-rans of society

The great Indian middle class, one of the most hypocritical and racist communities on this planet. Why do I say this? Well, a couple of recent incidents. First, the case of Jessica Lall – a small-time model who was shot on having denied a drink to the son of an influential (quite obviously ‘rich’ ….. thatz Indian politics for you… all of them are rich…. A bunch of incompetent, corrupt, scheming, insecure, rich people) person. Now I too rejoiced when the ‘miscarriage of justice’ (yeah! The accused was initially let off amidst witnesses turning ‘hostile’ by being ‘bought off’, ‘bumped off’ or ‘threatened to push daisies’) was redressed (the court hauled the police, the lower courts etc.) and delivered a landmark decision. Manu Sharma (the accused) was to be punished for his crimes after all.

I don’t have any issues with this but look at the background – Jessica was slightly glamorous in her appearance and hence initially the interest was lukewarm from the middle classes (those who watch English news channels and then the vernacular ones to get the full import of the news… those for whom every news is ‘breaking news’ being reported ‘live and exclusive’ by breathless (mostly telegenic) ‘reporters’) – till the visual media started beaming pictures of her ‘very ordinary looking’ sister, her parents (haggard, pretty ordinary looking folks … folks who look and would have been tired of carrying the burden of injustice) – the collective realization of the middle classes was kick-started – these people are one of ‘Us’ … and how dare a person (incidentally each member of the middle class tries to break into the ‘upper class’, ‘the privileged lot’ … what many government housing boards euphemistically call the HIG, i.e. the ‘high income group’)… and thus was started the concerted campaign of bringing the culprit to justice … or shall we say retribution/ revenge.

We were then bombarded with pleas to redress the ‘miscarriage of justice’ by lighting candles at the ‘india gate’ in delhi for instance. The breathless TV ‘reporters’ were joined by ‘RJs’ (radio jockeys) who typically would score lesser in IQ tests and are generally more breathless on the FM radio stations. There were signature campaigns (e-mail campaigns for the more technologically inclined). There were also a few ‘sms’ contests (Should manu sharma be hanged? Type “Manu Y” for Yes; “Manu N” for No and send it to 6644. The first 300 would qualify for a 3-day vacation to Malaysia and would also get front row seats in the courtroom when the verdict is delivered).

Why am I raving and ranting against the middle classes? I am one of them, right? One of them …

One who struggles day in and day out to break into the next upper category….
One who looks wistfully at business class seats while flying economy in a cattle carrier…
One who looks down upon people who make much less money and are not ‘privileged enough’ …
One who if fair by color of skin would look down upon people with a darker skin… the evidence is the surging sales of fairness creams (for more evidence look at matrimonial ads… wanted bride: fair/gori, blah blah .. or boy, fair/5’ 7”, 5-fig salary)…
One who doesn’t acknowledge all those unfortunate people who happen to have been born into poverty and a life of misery ….
One who dreams of social equity but wont want the dalits or the poor, the umkempt to be in the same vicinity as us (they have no class!!)
One who discriminates … (check her English out … her accent is funny) …
One chest-beating nationalist who probably hasn’t ever stood up when the national anthem was sung .. unless someone was looking …
One who is too keen to dispense justice .. to engage in ‘prohibition’/ ‘censure’ of any kind…
One who wants cheap labour – maids, drivers, errand boys etc. but who’ll rave n rant about the slums in the cities (no slums, no cheap labour my friends) …


I am ashamed of the ‘great Indian middle class’.
Where were/are they:

- When a dalit woman and her daughter were raped & murdered by half the upper-class menfolk of a village in maharashtra?
- When women were raped in moving cars in the nation’s capital?
- When crime is committed openly in full public eye?
- When middle class people in middle class cars try and bully ‘bikers’ (bikes cost less) and pedestrians on the streets?
- When there is so much misery around (and they sit tight in front of their 21” flat screen color TVs watching ‘english’ channels)

Maybe busy watching their ‘english’ channels, participating in some ‘sms contests’, buying ‘fairness’ creams or maybe lighting candles for some ‘cause’.

Or probably watching ‘news’ of Shilpa Shetty fashioning herself as india’s ambassador at ‘Big Brother’ (sic)…

AFTERTHOUGHTS:
I dont think there would have been any candlelight vigils if Jessica was an ugly, fat woman ... after all.. how would the designer middle-classes bring themselves to hold a candle to a fat, ugly woman and how could they identify with her ... with Jessica they were fine ... she could represent the ‘middle classes’ just fine …
Here was a fine specimen who the middle-classes could claim as their own ... just like they have been claiming citizens of all nationalities but of ‘Indian origin’ (their forefathers probably went there as conscripts, slaves, cheap labour or fortune hunters) as their own (Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Willaims, Mahendra Choudhary – in case you didn’t know .. the ex-Prime Minister of Fiji who was deposed in a coup – to name a few).

Mere Yaar ki Shaadi hai !!!!
Homer has found his Marge ...


I got engaged on 26th of Jan which means that every year people in India will get the day off and I will get bugged by my fiancée who would then have become my wife (for now I’ll call her high-command) to celebrate esp. since it would be a holiday for the both of us. I have a plan though in case the bugging gets too much to handle – I switch to another country so I don’t get bugged on the 26th of Jan (Republic Day in India and a public holiday) :-) … but hey who knows, I guess I would have to celebrate it after office hours even if in a different country.

When I wasn’t engaged I used to think of marriage with mixed emotions coz I have always been (or thought so) of the behavorial differences in men and women – the ‘men are from mars and women are from venus’ kinds. I haven’t found it difficult to connect with women (some are impossible though) … but I also felt quite a few no. of times that they are given to emotions a bit too much. But then you see the other side of the coin, and that is that they are so much more involved and ‘giving’ when it comes to relationships.

We men find it difficult to live upto expectations … and most of the times we bring this pressure on ourselves. As for me, I’m in that phase when everything appears positive and achievable … maybe it’s love … lemme just rephrase it, I’m sure it is :-)

Dear blog, till next time … keep rocking.