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"Oh, no, that's alright," said Eve. "I don't really need anything. But thanks ever so much for bothering."
...PGW in Leave it to Psmith
The other day I read that men in blue shirts are more likely to attract women in pink...also if they have a two-day beard...I mean the men.
I don't know the beard part of it but my son looks good in his blue shirts.
The other day he parked his car in front of the huge Reliance Digital here and ran in a hurry into it to buy the latest Panasonic 5.1 sound system. And asked me to follow him. As you know, I no longer walk like an angel these days and so lagged behind him by a good two minutes.
As I entered the stores, I was terrified by the sounds and sights of a dozen audios and vidoes. And was lost at the entrance, standing still like a blinking monument.
And one young salesman approached me and asked:
"What can I do for you sir?"
"Get me my son"
"Where is he?"
"Somewhere in here, wearing a blue shirt"
"Ha Ha Ha...all of us salesmen here are wearing blue shirts, sir!"
...Posted by Ishani
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Sage Ashtavakra....wiki
She smiled affectionately upon the proprietress, bestowed another smile upon Psmith as he opened the door for her, and went out. Psmith turned away from the door with a thoughtful look upon his face.
"Is that young lady a nurse?" he asked.
"Do you want a nurse?" inquired Miss Clarkson, at once the woman of business.
"I want that nurse," said Psmith with conviction.
...PGW in Leave it to Psmith
Teenage is funny, when you look back on it.
Those lines are from perhaps the only romantic comedy Wodehouse ever wrote. And I happened to read them in my teens. And they stuck.
I imagined Eve Halliday as the epitome of beauty.
And then I happened to watch a few Hollywood movies in the Leela Mahal at Vizagh. And all those famous heroines like Liz Taylor, Marylin Monroe and Audry Hepburn left me cold.
They were not petite enough. Their complexion was a pale white unlike the wheatish thing that appealed to us then. Their eyes were anything but black...shades of blue. Their hair and hairdo were weird. They had great statistics but I had read that statistics is worse than a lie.
We had a couple of blue-eyed girls in our village school and everyone teased them about it...calling them:
"Pilli Kallu"...meaning "Cat's Eyes".
Later on of course you know...blue eyes came in a variety of shades...sky blue, royal blue, ocean blue, ice blue...you name it we give it...
And then I reached KGP and my friends and I were watching Bengali movies in the stuffy Netaji Auditorium for want of anything better.
And all of us from AP agreed that Bengali heroines starting from Sharmila Tagore in her first movie were ten times more good-looking than our own Telugu heroines who were all plump in the wrong places...like Savitri, Bhanumati, Anjali, Rajasulochana...not to speak of a current CM of a Southern state.
But I read a few years back that Buddha-babu was so bewitched by a southern actress that he called her Deepa Balan while lighting lamps in a brass stand where she came to help him out.
I guess there is a lesson there.
Coming to teens, one lady told me frankly that, in her Class XI, all boys looked handsome. I guess the reverse is also true...take it from me.
About that Deepa...It is said that the steady flame of an oil lamp is the most beautiful of all sights. I guess that was why Buddha-babu was lighting all those oil lamps instead of LEDs.
In Telugu there is a saying about the beauty of a bewitching girl:
"You can crumple her and light a lamp with it!"
The picture at the top is that of Sage Ashtavakra...who was unfortunately cursed while in his mom's womb that he would be born with eight deformities...they are listed...two in the legs, two in the knees, two in the hands, one each in the chest and head.
Pretty bad.
But, bachelor that he perforce stayed, he is known as the most revered of teachers with eminent disciples like King Janaka and Yagnyavalkya, both of who were wise householders like me.
So, beauty is not a prerequisite for a good teacher...although it doesn't imply that the uglier the teacher the better.
In our First year at AU, there walked into our Eng Lit class of 120 a most beautiful lady teacher. All of us fell in calf love with her at first sight. Unfortunately we soon came to know that she was already married to the son of the Registrar...that explains it.
Neither me nor my room-mate DB at IIT KGP had looks that killed ladies with one stroke.
But some student apparently told DB that he looks a clone of Soumitra Chatterjee...whose detective movie my son and I were watching the other night in our home theater...smoking all the time...I mean the hero.
And DB used to boast about it.
And I grew melancholic till J. S. Pandey wrote in print that I was once:
...a slim, handsome, intelligent and sincere young-looking gentleman...
I guess it is a confusion of ideas...the students were confusing the beauty of physics with beauty of their teachers.
I don't know the beard part of it but my son looks good in his blue shirts.
The other day he parked his car in front of the huge Reliance Digital here and ran in a hurry into it to buy the latest Panasonic 5.1 sound system. And asked me to follow him. As you know, I no longer walk like an angel these days and so lagged behind him by a good two minutes.
As I entered the stores, I was terrified by the sounds and sights of a dozen audios and vidoes. And was lost at the entrance, standing still like a blinking monument.
And one young salesman approached me and asked:
"What can I do for you sir?"
"Get me my son"
"Where is he?"
"Somewhere in here, wearing a blue shirt"
"Ha Ha Ha...all of us salesmen here are wearing blue shirts, sir!"
...Posted by Ishani
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