Humour - Comfortably Numb

Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Humour: English as she is spoke

We don’t need no vocab! OXFORD BUSTING They speak her funnily in different parts of the world, as Sheila Kumar discovers Let’s face it, the amazing citizens of that amazing country, the US of A, started out tweaking English for pure convenience’s sake. While the purists raised a querulous eyebrow, stiffened their upper lip and bore…

Humour: He snores, she suffers

He snores, she suffers Who suffers more, the snorer or his spouse? SHEILA KUMAR delves into this debate Did you, perceptive reader, notice how the male of the species has been singled out in the blurb accompanying this article? Before a PIL is filed against this writer by irate (snoring and non-snoring) men, I have to…

Humour: A scaly affair

A scaly affair A snake in the house makes for more drama than expected. “Come quickly,“ the household staff telephoned Anthony, and pleaded. “There’s a python in the backyard eating one of our ducks.“ Sure enough, Anthony, hurrying to the yard, saw a magnificent specimen lying in a stupor, its middle swollen with fowl. Snakes…

Humour: What do women want?

What do women want? Back in the old days, it used to be far easier. The relationship between the sexes was one-dimensional, contained no surprises. Men were men, macho, less than refined, not in the least sensitive and more than a bit chauvinistic. Women, well, always the resigned lot, they just put up with things,…

Humour: Pillar to post

Sometimes, even awkward situations can take a funny turn, if turned the right way. She wasn’t looking forward to seeing them at the O’Hare airport in Chicago. They were her former husband, his new wife and their newly-born son. Not that she was in Chicago on pleasure; she was there to hand over her daughter…

Humour: Mona in Khajuraho

Note: Mona was a flaky character I created in the pre-digital age and she used to appear in a lot of my DH Middles. Discovery of India Sometimes you can travel to places and return, without really having seen anything. My friend Mona had just returned from a trip to the fabled temples of Khajuraho….

Humour: Skirting the issue

Chasing fashion trends can be a fruitless activity sometimes, finds Sheila Kumar. If it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t have believed it possible. As every woman in the country knows, ankle-length, gathered skirts have become the flavour of the season. Well, I’m not one to succumb to the trends of the moment usually but now…

Humour: English as we use her

Over the years, we’ve taken the Queen’s language and turned it into one effective hotchpotch, reports SHEILA KUMAR gleefully. There is a hoary chestnut of a tale that periodically does the round in India’s ad circles. A doughty veteran wanted the Indian branch of his advertising firm to retain a catchy slogan he had put…

Humour: It`s all in the name

It`s all in the name What’s in a name, asks someone who just cannot remember monikers. In anyone else it would have been advance notification of the onset of senility. In my family, in the greater clan, it just reaffirms the passage of a tradition we aren’t too thrilled about. The thing is, we aren’t…

Humour: No more idlis!

No More Idlis Sometimes, when dreams come true, it can be more than you bargained for. When I am in the northern regions of the country, I dream of idlis. I dream of tucking into a heaped plate of…