AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

CRANK'S CORNER

        Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his team are the true followers of Abdul Kalam: After all, they are the ones who made India a superpower in 2020.

        Okay, listen to this: Pakistan's Misbah-ul-Haq thought he was sending the ball to no man's land. But he forgot that there is a Malayalee in every corner of the world.

        These are perhaps the two most forwarded smses over the last week. What do they show? Quite simply, it is just that I have completely run out of original humour ideas that I have to borrow on corny forwards to fill this column with.

        But seriously, I am forever amazed by the kind of things that people think up to forward both on sms and emails. The other day I got another one. Here it goes: 'Daily Prayer — O God, give us strength and capacity to pay Income Tax, VAT, CST, Service Tax, Excise Duty, Octroi, TDS, ESI, FBT, Property Tax, Stamp Duty, CGT, Water Tax, Professional Tax, Road Tax, Education Cess, Congestion Levy & many more. Besides don't forget Mamool, bribes, donations, chanda, Beggars. If we have some time and money left, we will do some business. Cheers to booming Indian economy! Gud Day!'.

        How about this one: A Lady is Standing on Top of a Hill and she is going to push her Father Down. So what's the Name of the Lady?

        Push...Pa.

        Okay, I know you enjoyed both the jokes. But as a practising journalist I didn't as the first thing that struck me is the fact that these smses have too many needless capital letters and flippant spelling for any word that could be misspelt. Or to be precise, any wrd tht cud b misplt. This is the problem with any journalist. You show him a photo of a naked woman, his mind will immediately go into an overdrive on the synonyms for naked, which by the way if you are interested is, bare, defenceless, raw, nude, au naturel. Small wonder journalists are not hot property in the social circuit.

        But whether you are a journo or not, the fact of the matter is that pornography is always enjoyed. Oops sorry, the previous sentence should actually read: But whether you are a journo or not, the fact of the matter is that language has become a major casualty with the advent of mobiles and emails. Vowels have become totally redundant and soon you may get an official announcement that the English alphabet consists of only 21 letters, which too are dispensable according to the convenience of the user. Even then, my question typically would be: If there are no vowels would the word 'an' be removed from the dictionary. See, journalists never change.

        Actually I shouldn't have any problem with how a language is used as at the core it is a mere medium for communication. But what is happening in reality is reverse discrimination. People who like to dot their 'i's and cross their 't's are considered old-fashioned and out of sync with reality like some clones of T Rajendhar. Recently I received an mail from one of the readers and the message contained a rash of '??????...', '!!!!!!!!!!!...' and a lot of emoticons, which by the way resemble the hideous red-smeared pumpkins that households dangle outside to ward off the evil eye. But somehow smsists and emailers survive on these hieroglyphs and language in most cases is a needless intrusion. The day is not far off when you receive a forward on the sms announcing the death of language, which doubtless will be accompanied by a grimming mug.

        The thing that is even more perplexing than what you get as sms is what some people send as messages to be run as creepy scrolls on music channels, whose comperes speak a language that would in comparison make smses worthy of Nobel prize for literature. To me sending a message to someone through a music channel is like sending a love letter by beginning it with 'to whomsoever it may concern'

        'Shobha: I love my husband'. This is one of the messages that I saw recently on a music channel. I don't who this Shobha is, but if any of you know this woman, please, please take her to the nearest psychiatrist. I think this is a terminal case in need of immediate attention. Why would any woman send a message to a music channel professing her love to her husband, who I presume, should be sitting in a nearby chair. Even if he were not around, should not the said Shobha be sending that message to his phone rather than to the music channel? But what if this message was intended for someone other than Shobha's husband? The story gets truly scary and daunting. Who among us the teeming millions is Shobha telling that she loves her husband? And why is she telling us through this music channel? Or am I the only person who read that message, and hence it was for my sole information? Perhaps. So that means I need to sms her through the same music channel. But I don't know the number of the channel. So here goes my reply to Shobha: 'Thanks Shobha for loving your husband. We are all saved'.