A Bouquet of Old Cauliflowers

========================================================

Varun was a little off the mark in his diagnosis that I must be Senile (in his pseudo-limerick).

I find that it is my wife who is showing symptoms of Senility while she says I am afflicted with Pseudo-Senility, an altogether different but related old-age disorder.

*****************************************************************************

free-online-gpsastry-dictionary:

Senility: forgetting inconvenient things that happened (IOUs)

Pseudo-Senility: remembering convenient things that never happened (UOMees)

*****************************************************************************

It is like this:

I distinctly recall my wife telling me a couple of days back that she read a news item saying England is recruiting Indians for teaching English (and Math) to their kids.

Now she flatly denies she ever said it.

But I also recall her asking me to send my Resume'.

But, I said, I am already doing my bit: in almost every blog I am inventing new and exotic words, grammar, usage, figure of speech, Needless Capitalization (vide Deutsche), punctuation, spelling, syntax and stuff to enrich English.

This is primarily because Blogspot's gul-stats daily adds more Audience of Non-English-Speaking-Countries to the list of dozen or so I posted earlier; e.g. Germany, Italy, Poland, Luxembourg, Moldova, Latvia...and perhaps Ruritania...

I mean there ought to be a limit.

This blogpost is therefore to express my deep indebtedness to Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859).

For, it was he who insisted that for Indian kids the medium of instruction ought to be English rather than Sanskrit or Persian or worse.

But for him I wouldn't be blogging up custom today, nor my son drumming up custom for his Indian Company in the US right now.

To TBM we owe our Bread 'n' Butter & Fish 'n' Chips.

As a mark of Gratitude 'n' Respect I am taking the liberty of e-sending the following Bouquet of Old Cauliflowers to be laid at his Grave with Pomp 'n' Show.

[Knowledgeable readers would complain that I stole the Macaulay-Cauliflower pun from the Autocrat: but his Copyright expired long ago. To those who have already scented these foul-smelling Macauliflowers, I suggest that they at once go to bed or work as the case maybe]. .

********************************************************************

A Bouquet of Old Cauliflowers

1. Spider & Fly

A very old Spider
Said to the older Fly:
‘You can come nearer, dear,
My fiber’s gotten dry’;

Said the older Fly
To the old Spider:
‘I can’t come nearer, dear,
I can no more FLY!’


*********************************************************************

2. Peacock

A very old Peacock
Couldn’t see in the dark;

He went to an Optician
To get a prescription;

Who charged a million rupees
For his thousand ‘eyes’!


***********************************************************************

3. Elephant

A very old Elephant
Went to a Dentist
To get a set of false teeth;

He told the Elephant:

‘You already have a set;
Very nicely bent
And made of Ivory’!


*************************************************************************

4. Woodpecker & Kingfisher

A very old Woodpecker
Said to the old Kingfisher:

‘My beak is getting blunter
The bark is getting tougher,
And I am suffering from hunger’;

Said the old Kingfisher
To the old Woodpecker:

‘I'm no longer the King here,
The fish are getting cleverer,
I too suffer from hunger’;

The latter stopped hunting fish,
The former poking for woodlice;

They both went to the Restaurateur,
Ordered some Bread 'n' Butter
And lived happily ever after!


********************************************************************

5. Government Bull

A very old Government Bull
No longer felt useful;

With Cows and Calves so youthful
He felt very miserable;

He went to the Gov't Hospital
And found this Placard; ‘House-Full’;

The Matron there was kind to him
And referred him to an Old Age Home;

There he felt merry and gay
With older Cows and heaps of Hay!


******************************************************************

6. Mysore Tiger

A very old Mysore Tiger
With a coat badly faded
Went to the U.S. Tailor
To get a new one made;

Yankee Tailor told the Tiger:

‘Yellow Stripes are out of fashion,
My Nation is in Recession,
Take one of Stars and Stripes,
I will give you @ a cheaper price,
At Rupees Thirty a Dollar;

Dear old Mysore Tiger!
Redder Stripes and Brighter Stars,
My dear Mysore Tiger!
Mysore Tiger, Mysore Tiger! Mysore Tiger’!

==========================================================