Funny Side (Hopefully) Up

Of late, I've been thinking a lot about birthdays (well, I haven't, actually, but a chap's got to have a topic to write about, hasn't he?). It seems a little strange to me, celebrating the day you came into the world, crying a lot and pooping excessively. And let's face it, the way we celebrate birthdays is a little creepy. I mean, think about this: 'Several people are gathered around an object on fire, chanting a repetitive song. One among them carries a knife. They extinguish the object and plunge the knife into it. The rest of the group stops chanting and spontaneously bursts into applause. '  - Description of a birthday party by some chap on Tumblr I mean, come on, tell me that doesn't sound like a scene from a cult horror film. But, strange cult rituals aside, I decided to do some research (read: click the first three links on a Google search) about birthdays. So, read on to learn some stuff about birthdays that you may or may not really care ab...

Hello, all! For the first time ever (I wish), I'm returning from a long break (because we all know there weren't any others, right? Right guys?). Alright, it may not be my first ever long break, but it certainly is the first time that I'm fully exploring the cause behind it. My most recent hiatus has been the result  of that terror of all students, the board exams. The board exams, or public exams, for those of you who have spent the greater portion of your lives under rocks, are a set of examinations set by a group of out-of-touch old men sitting in Delhi. OK, no, they're not out of touch. I'm sure they're all supremely intelligent people and actually quite nice once you get to know them. The trouble is, though, I don't know them, and so as far as I'm concerned, they're a gang of Faceless Fiends who have made my life for the past two months into something which makes Dante's descent into the inferno seem like a slow stroll through the park. ...

Hello, all. I know I've been AWOL again and I'm awfully sorry and all that sort of thing. My latest absence may be blamed on the board exams, those destroyers of lives and happiness. It is my considered opinion that the cities of the plains may have yet thrived if it had not been for the introduction of the board exams. While the exams are not yet over - they don't even start until the end of this month - I've been allowed to escape the tomes for the time it takes me to write this post. Today's topic is, as the title would suggest, divine economics - or rather, the economics of temples. Temples, in my opinion, ought to be considered businesses, at least in the sense that they provide a service in return for a fee. Now, if a temple is treated as a business (something I propose to do for the rest of this post), it would be a very strange business indeed. It breaks several of the most fundamental laws of economics, among them: 1. T he Law of Demand. The law of dema...

Harvinder Chowdury, a Sikh lawyer, has filed a Public Interest Litigation demanding that the courts ban Sardarji jokes. The courts, much more worryingly, have actually decided to take this seriously. Apparently, they're going to decide if the jokes "offend the Sardar community." Personally, I think this is a bit much. I mean, are you seriously going to go out and ban Sardarji jokes? Also, Sardarji jokes have been around for ages. How come all of a sudden, people are offended? Why is it a big deal in the first place? I mean, there are tons of communities out there who have jokes made about them. Take, for example, the rednecks. Rednecks don't shoot people for making jokes about them. Rednecks just generally shoot people. But that's neither here nor there. According to Ms. Chowdury, Sardarji jokes are a violation of the Sikh community's right to equality with other communities. I actually have a theory about equality where jokes are concerned. It is that if ...

Last week, I wrote a blog post about a project which we decided to take up called A Thousand Smiling Faces  . Between then and now, the most important thing we've managed to do is contract "A Thousand Smiling Faces" to "1K:)". We also managed to deliver 1085 burgers to kids in orphanages around the city. We began collecting money around 8 days ago. After several Facebook posts, two blog entries, God alone knows how many emails and hours spent walking from house to house asking people to donate, we managed to raise over  ₹1,00,000. The meals themselves cost us  ₹86,500 (McDonald's gave us a 20% discount on the grounds that it was charity), which leaves us with approximately  ₹10,000 behind the loose brick. I intend to use the  ₹10,000 to buy a  Jacuzzi  do another set of deliveries after the 16th of January, once my exams are finished.  The project involved over 20 of my friends (and friends' friends) and 15 orphanages. We had at least...

This week, I intend to have a stab at one of the most difficult tasks known to mankind: persuading an adult to part with a sum of money. Not a very large sum, but a sum nonetheless. This New Year's Day, I want to get 1000 kids in orphanages around the city burgers, fries and a drink from McDonald's.  And that, unfortunately, costs money. The first thing you'd wonder is probably, "Why McDonald's burgers?" Well, the thing is, I've worked at an orphanage before, and I remember that the kids at the orphanage really loved the burgers. I, like so many teenagers, have my parents to take me to McDonald's every once in a while and buy me a burger. These guys have no one. To them, a burger is something quite amazing. The look in their faces when they ate those burgers would have given those chaps whom Christ gave manna to a run for their money in terms of happiness. Another thing that quite a few of my friends have mentioned is the fact that burgers aren...

I'm terribly sorry that I'm making a second soppy post right after the last one about me leaving school, but hey, I've a really good reason this time. The reason is this: my dog died last night. Of a kidney ailment, of all things. My dog's name was Pluto. He was a white Labrador of approximately twelve years of age, with white fur. I'd tell you his height and width if I knew his height and width. He was, in my opinion, the greatest of all dogs everywhere, an exemplary example of canine-hood and man's-best-friend-hood. We've had him since he was about a month old and I was three and a bit. I'd love to say that I had him sleep next to me every night. I'd love to say that I played with him every day and fed him doggy treats at regular intervals. I'd love to say that I groomed him and gave him baths and took him to dog shows and regularly kissed him on the nose. The fact of the matter is, though, I didn't. Oh, sure, I used to play with him ne...