AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

CRANK'S CORNER

        Ladies and gentleman, I have got it.

        Don't ask me what it is. I can't figure that out. If I can explain it, then it means I have not got it.

        I know I have started to sound confusing right at the start (usually I become incomprehensible only from the middle). That, sirs, is the problem. I am not able to say what I want to. Don't ask me 'have you ever?'. Being rude is not fun. And at any rate, I don't like the joke to be on me.

        The thing is I was supposed to write about something else. The original idea was to talk about the stupidity of an SMS that did its round a few days back asking mobile-users to not to SMS anyone as a show of protest against service providers charging special rates on festival days. The protest SMS exhorted everyone to spread the word through, er, SMS. In other words, we were being asked to do something to ensure that we will not do that very thing. The preceding line sounds daft (I should know as I wrote it). But the protest SMS idea was dafter. The only thing that comes close to this is Sonia Gandhi's resignation to get re-elected. You don't get out to bat again. Can you? But she did. And the world said Sonia is intelligent.

        I am digressing. But when you put 'Sonia' and 'intelligent' in the same sentence the head is bound to reel. But my wife tells me that she recently came across even more an outrageous limerick that had Sonia and smile in the same line. And she read it out for me: 'There was a girl with a dazzling smile, and her name was not Sonia by a mile'.

        Okay, enough about Sonia and stupidity. Where was I? Okay, nowhere. I have not got to the nub of it. That, as I said, is the issue here. My words, never the best of my allies, are failing me. I am feeling like Sehwag with the bat, wondering what he was doing with such a huge toothpick in his hand.

        Talking of Sehwag did you hear those latest jokes? Back in the pavilion, Sehwag was talking to a teammate. 'I can't understand it,' he said 'The ball hit my head and the wicket-keeper caught it, but the umpire gave me out though there was no wood to it. The co-player looked sympathetic. 'Sometimes they go by sound,' he deadpanned.

        Now that we are on the subject of cricket have you heard of this one about the fast bowler who went to the Arab kingdom and left the Sheikhs, well, shaking. Apparently, this fast bowler was introduced to a Sheikh who boasted that he had seventy eight wives. The bowler matter of factly told him: 'You only need two more, and you're entitled to a new ball.'

        I know family audience are reading this and I need to be more discreet. But it is a quality that God has not endowed me with. I once went to an acquaintance's place and found him to be talking animatedly with another person. Seeing me at the door, he asked me to hang around till he finished talking to the other person, who he said was a doctor. 'Go ahead,' I said full-throatedly, 'I am in no hurry. I understand it should be really important as you are talking to a doctor.' Is he your family physician, I added for good measure. The friend looked at me with a look that would have made even a bearded terrorist with an AK-56 shiver. I didn't understand the reason for his glowering animosity. It is only when I learnt later that the doctor he was talking to was actually a veterinarian did I understand the folly of my words. But by then it was too late to undo the damage.

        Okay, fine. But why am I recounting these personal miseries to you, as if you are all interested in knowing that I don't understand the difference between a doctor who asks you to open your mouth and flashes the torch into it and the other doc who treats the one which bites you when you don't carry the same torch out on a late night walk in a dark street?

        That is the problem I am forever missing the wood for the trees. Or is it the other way round? Well, actually who cares. English is always very complicated and unless you read regularly you can't survive in this world.

        But come to think of it, it was a voracious reader who ended at the bottom of a stomach of a voracious lion. The hungry predator was roaming through the jungle looking for something to eat. He came across two men. One was sitting under a tree and reading a book, the other was typing away on his typewriter.

        The lion quickly pounced on the man reading the book and devoured him and left the man typing. Why? Well, even the king of the jungle knows that readers digest and writers cramp.

        Writers cramp. Eureka! That is what I had in the first place and hence couldn't get to write what I started out to. So folks, take diversion. I have writer's block. Hence this column is closed for the week.