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Chintito

You Wonder Why

Chintito

Most of us have envied people, nay geniuses, who add spice to an everyday word to define it with such clarity that we wonder, 'Why did I not think of that?' Simple, but sheer brilliance! Here's some I found on the net.

Cigarette is injurious to your health, we have heard so many times, and read if we bought a packet instead of smoking by only borrowing, which many of us have a habit of. But, when someone defines a cigarette as 'a pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end and a fool at the other', it makes you take a long puff and think; if you can, that is.

Love affairs, more so affairs that we imagine as love, come in the wham-bam mould these days. Dump and ditch are the key words. And so the pundits have come to a decision that those so-called 'love affairs' are more 'like cricket where one-day internationals are more popular than a five-day Test match'. Many affairs lead to the Kazi office and often the Kazi makes it to the Test venue with an obvious glee, which by no means is an expression of his happiness for the just-married couple signing 'an agreement in which the man loses his bachelor degree and a woman gains her master'. And, of course, divorce is the 'future tense of marriage' and the past tense of a second marriage.

Fools dare where angels fear to tread. One of the reasons why marriages do not work is because of the occasional yawn, 'the only time some married men ever get to open their mouth'.

To put a lot of things straight, even in a disturbed marriage, all you need is a curve 'smile' you dirty mind. These days many married people, both men and women, take refuge in the office as it is THE place where they 'can relax after their strenuous home life'.

At the office there usually is another kind of boss away from home, 'someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early'. For those of you who thought that divorce comes only after marriage have never consulted a dictionary, 'where divorce (always) comes before marriage'. Dictionary is part and parcel of education, which should be registered under the Ministry of Commerce these days, what with uni(que) varsities trading with part-time teachers from other universities. Lectures have been elevated to 'an art of transferring information from the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the students without passing through the minds of either'. Academics and the not-so academics consider arranging conferences on any subject imaginable au courant.

Speakers deliberate with such authority that 'the confusion of one man (is) multiplied by the number present'. Thankfully, most in the audience are not listening and will wake up only when they hear the speaker uttering 'etcetera' because it usually marks the end, little realising that it is 'a sign to make others believe that the speaker knows more than he actually does'. This is an era of compromise. Everybody is talking about it, more so the richer and the stronger, at both individual and state levels. Iraq comes to mind. The powerful have guilefully mastered 'the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes he got the biggest piece'. Certainly the interim government in Iraq wants the Iraqi people to believe that.

Many of you have seen the tears of the real 'Tiger' (no malice to our struggling cricketers), Faria Alam on television. She knows how to use 'the hydraulic force by which the masculine willpower (of the English FA) can be defeated by feminine waterpower'. I loved the headlines in a Bangla daily: Faria-2, FA-0. Spare a thought for the England football coach, our dulabhai. He is having a feeling when he feels that he is going to feel a feeling that he has never felt before. That state has been described as 'ecstasy'. Have you read 'War and Peace'? Or, for that matter, 'Crime and Punishment'? 'Romeo and Juliet' perhaps? Relax, neither have I. That is because they are classics that 'people praise, but do not read'.

We have learnt from the English that when you want to shelve an idea it is apt to form a committee, where 'individuals can do nothing individually and sit to decide that nothing can be done together'. Members will never admit mistakes that they term as 'experience'. Such committees are often manned by politicians, who 'shake your hand before the elections and your confidence after'.

People usually begrudge a 'successful' politician but have they not grabbed the opportunities that they made sure came their way? An opportunist 'starts taking bath if he accidentally falls into a river'. While falling from Eiffel Tower he says in midway "See I am not injured yet". That's the kind of person I would vote for. Not a pessimist 'who says that O is the last letter in ZERO, instead of the first letter in word OPPORTUNITY'.