30 May 2010

How many wheels have you?

During one exchange of letters with my friend tommydan1 I mentioned that I drive a two-wheeler.  He sent back a query - Whats a two-wheeler?  The world may have shrunk to a global village, where I talk more with a friend who lives thousands of miles away and barely exchange a sentence with someone sitting two feet away from me, yet cultural differences do count.  I had to shoot off an explanatory letter and as I did so, my mind started working on all kinds of wheelers.

One wheeler


Here is a one-wheeler.  I think only the performers in the circus drive it now. Its been years since I saw this.  It looks pretty precarious and seems to need a lot of skill riding this bike.

Look Ma ! No Hands !


















The Two-Wheeler


Plenty of examples of two-wheelers that run on the Indian roads. From Hamara Bajaj of old days that lasted for decades to the new fangled four stroke wonders with a built in mobile charger and an under the seat storage space you could rent out.  But this one is my poison of the moment.  Meri apni Kinetic.









Three-Wheeler






Another life-saver for people in a hurry to get to their destination without being at the mercy of state transport buses.  Called Rickshaw or Auto or three-wheeler or Tuk Tuk.  In places like Delhi and Chandigarh they rarely take you by the meter and try to fix a rate before the driver even condenses to move.  Extra rates for newbies, rainy season travellers and for those in a hurry.  If you happen to be savvy, the prices crash down to half. Get ready for a jerky ride that will endanger your cervical joints and make you reach for the painkillers.

Just like men, cant live with them, cant live without them.


No point in discussing anything about 4 wheelers. 
skip to:


Eight Wheelers


Good for enticing crying babies with, "Look what a long truck".  The baby stops crying and looks at the giant thing moving from the safety of his mothers arms.  What is the baby thinking?  "When I grow up I will eat all the chocolate I want and drive a big truck"








x Wheeler


I studied in a school on the Air Force campus and this trailer was used to cart Airplane parts.  This is called a Queen Mary Trailer and was the biggest grandest vehicle I ever saw.  A sighting of Queen Mary was guaranteed to stop a bus-load of students in their tracks, gawping at the immense size of this vehicle.  Big trailers will come and go, but in my mind this is the grandest.

23 April 2010

From the T'roor Fan Club


From the T'roor Fan Club


After international adulation
He came back to serve the nation;
But the politics of desi ghee
For him didnt quite agree
And he feared imminent isolation.

So he started to tweet
Messages, short and sweet,
And followers he gained
He was their messiah ordained
And Twitter became his daily retreat.

Breezy with his words
The King of Clubs of nerds,
He was irreverent and witty,
Twitter-folks his community,
The parliament was for the birds.

By his tweety slip of tongue
Many a surprise he sprung,
Like that one about cattle-class
Which displeased not just his party brass,
Giving him a taste of political cattle-dung.

Living a protected, charmed life
He emerged alive from every strife,
His face ever aglow
He loved his daily show,
And relished his twitter butter knife.

But yes, this boy, Tharoor
A saab, Haan Jee huzoor,.
Had this one thingy-thing
He went ding-a-ling-a-ling,
For pretty things, to be sure

And so his tweets didn't bare all,
For instance there was this doll
Sunanda was her name
His newest-hottest flame
With whom he was having a ball.

It's rumored she runs a spa
For sheiks and starlets, oh yeah!
Sounds rather hoity toity
And somewhat naughty naughty
But it sure ain't anything too raw.

Her hair dyed like the Tricolor
She's a mover, baby, not a scholar
She oozes come hither looks
When she ain't cooking the books
She loves India, I'll bet you a dollar


She's a good gal who avoids felons
Tho' she looks like the Cabaret star Helen
You can see her at the Oberoi
And at the Burj in Dubai
Or tweet her @ItsLikeMelons


So in this salubrious duty free port
With his gal, he was about to disport
When she put her head on his seena
And asked the fee for her paseena
Sure, babe, he said to his Kashmiri comfort

While caught in this heady spell
Came the Kochi IPL,
And his private Pushkar Mela,
Became a public jhamela,
And heaven suddenly became hell.

The Knives were quickly out
There was hardly any doubt
Except in his mind
And in his faithful twitter-kind
That this bout would see his rout.

He fought hard, kill-or-die,
But found no real ally,
He got booed off from the floor,
His own folks pointed him the door,
And finally he had to eat humble pie.

But in this loss is surely a gain,
That with this political stain,
In the parliamentarians' zone
He's accepted as one of their own,
A crucial win in his career campaign.

Much remains to be seen;
He's no political has-been
He's no Keralite son of the soyil
To get stuck with Cock a nut Oyil
He'll soon be back in Delhi and in pastures green.

---- Lakshmi


An Excellent poem from poet extraordinaire



__._,_

22 April 2010

Gimme Red !


Inspired by Couchpapaya

I had to tweak my answers to get RED, hehehe !


You boast incredible willpower and are capable of overcoming obstacles that would normally leave others shaking in their boots. You have a penchant for colorful environments and often impress others with your energetic bursts of energy. Your interests in many areas of life often leave you scattered, but when you focus you can accomplish anything you put your mind to.





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