Night
I lie softly curled
In my mosquito-net cocoon
Watching
The shaman-witch wind
Weaving a shadow play
With the light from the street lamp
And the leaves of the parijata tree
On my soft cobwebbed walls

It’s an enthralling tale
Sung, not told
In voices that only I hear
Of how it will be
To have gaily painted wings
To flit and float
And sip from
Flowers
More gaily painted than me
And bask in the fame
Of a million delighted gasps,
“Oh, look, how pretty!”

I watch and listen
Enthralled

And think how much
I like it here
Close to the ground
After all, when I fall,
How far down will it be?
I like the way
It smells here  
Of known darkness
I like that I am still
A possibility, a promise
Not a pretty fulfillment
Flying to my death

You could say
I’m not ready to be a butterfly
Just yet…


By Ratna Sleepless

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp,
but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly.
"One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."- Hans Christian Andersen

To me it has to be one of the most beautiful sights in the world. Butterflies in the sun. Recently, early one morning, I was on the terrace of my house. Suddenly I could see wave after wave of butterflies swooping over my head and flying past, like a sort of Nature’s air show. It was as if little bits of the sky had floated down and then taken wing because the butterflies were the exact colour of the brilliant blue sky against which they flew. And as I watched, their blue wings caught the sunlight and turned into a rising cloud of undulating, iridescent azure. I stood transfixed - incredulous that something so utterly beautiful, so breathtakingly stunning could have come my way, just like that. Without any fanfare or pre-release publicity, without my asking. And totally free. It made my day and the sight of those butterflies is forever imprinted like a patch of brightness inside my head.
And so, today, I’m going to talk about how to attract butterflies to your garden. Of course there is a serious-jelly, ecologically correct, healthy, New Age living for doing this – in fact there are many. But let me come to that in a bit and first tell you the other reason to do this. Because along with air and food and water and money and old age pension and nail clippers and love and , we need beauty in our lives. Things that take our breath away, that delight and entrance and fill us with wonder and joy. Things that make us glad that we are alive and make our day. And the sight of butterflies fluttering in the sun is just one of those things.
That done, now to the serious-eco-healthy part. Butterflies, along with moths and birds, are Nature’s most important plant pollinators - second only to honey bees. And if there’s no pollination, no papaya for breakfast and no bhindi for lunch, maybe not even eucalyptus oil for your cold balm. Insects (like butterflies) pollinate 75% of crop plant species, which give us about one out of every four mouthfuls of food and drink that we consume. Besides, butterflies not only help produce our food, along with caterpillars, they are also food for many other animals. But there is one other very important reason to have butterflies around. They are indicators of the state of health of your ecosystems. If butterflies abound in your environment, it means that there’s plenty of vegetation around and all is tickety-boo with the ecosystem. When the butterflies vanish, the ecology is in serious trouble.
And the good news is that it’s not that difficult to have these beautiful creatures around. All you need to do is to grow brightly flowering plants loaded with nectar in lots of piping hot, golden sunshine. Nothing exotic or hothouse-rare mind you, just your average hibiscus or tomato!
 So today, I will introduce you to just two easy-to-grow plants that you can grow even in a pot or a planter – one has some of the prettiest flowers in the world, the other you can eat.  
The icing on the cake being that both these plants are well-known medicinal plants…..

Hibiscus
Jasun, jaswand, joba, dasawala, sapattuppu, dasanam. Hibiscus rosa sinensis. But perhaps its beautiful name is a Sanskrit one – japakusuma or jabakusuma. “Japakusuma” meaning the prayer flower and aptly so. Because the hibiscus is the primary flower of worship for the Devi, Her most favourite, so much so that in some parts of India like Chattisgarh it is called Deviphool. In the invocation to Suryadeva, he is described in the first line as “Jabaakusuma sankasham” or “as radiant as the colour of the red hibiscus”. One of the most popular and well-known hair oils not so many years ago in India was a brand called “Jabakusum”. A name well chosen because the hibiscus has quite a reputation for making hair beautiful and healthy. Being a natural emollient which makes the hair soft and promotes hair growth, the hibiscus flowers when crushed yield a dark purplish dye that is said to also help darken the hair. The hibiscus is a key ingredient in one other famous hair oil, this time an Ayurvedic formulation – brahmi amla tel!
But the hibiscus’ greatest importance and one that has serious long-term implications for women is this. In Ayurveda and traditional medicine, it has long been used both as a contraceptive and to treat gynacelogical problems like vaginal and uterine discharges, menstrual irregularities etc. But, modern medical research both in India and abroad indicate that hibiscus may indeed give us the first female oral herbal contraceptive. While the R&D work is still on, the indications are promising.
That’s as far as we humans go. Now for the butterflies. They are attracted to the hibiscus’ many brilliant, glorious hues. The butterflies that favor the hibiscus include a species called blues - to which family the glorious blue butterflies I mentioned at the beginning of this article belong to, thus named because of their gorgeous colouring.
And finally, the bonus - the hibiscus, as a tree, also attracts many small birds including song birds!

Dill
Anethum graveolens or Anethum Sowa. (Which is Indian variety.) Shatpushpa, madhura in Sanskrit.  Suwa (Hindi), sapsige soppu (Kannada), sataguppai (Tamil),
Relative of the cumin (jeera), bay leaf (tej pata) and the carrot.
Or as known in the Western World – dill.
Which makes it time to talk about gripe water. Once called "the secret of British nannies", and what no mum will do without for her new born little darling. Well, the active ingredient in gripe water is dill, the remedy given to millions of babies the world over to relieve colic. Actually, the wonderful therapeutic benefits of the dill weed has been known for about 3000 years.  The ancient Egyptians and Romans knew it and Hippocrates, the father of medicine, used dill in a recipe for cleaning the mouth. Charlemagne had it on his banquet tables as a digestive for his guests who indulged too much. And here in India, we used it in Ayurveda and traditional medicine for all kinds of healing and soothing – as digestive and anti-flatulent, mouth freshener, for colds and flu and to stimulate menstrual flow and breast milk.
We now know that dill’s wonderfully gentle ability to soothe even a baby’s irate stomach is due to its anti-bacterial ability, which tackle many strains of bacteria including Escheria coli, responsible for gastrointestinal illness like infectious diarrhea.
But this is not all that pretty little dill – a delicate, wispy, dark green plant – offers. Apart from soothing unsettled digestions, it is also very nutritious. Fresh dill – like all greens – is an excellent source of dietary fibre and both the both seeds and the leaves are very good sources of calcium, so essential for healthy teeth and bones, as well as iron and manganese.
Now for the butterfly attracting qualities of dill. Its gorgeous yellow flowers that look like sunshine lace would attract any self respecting butterfly. But along other members of the carrot family, it is the only food plant for the caterpillars of the gorgeous black swallowtail butterfly - which is a common Indian species.
So, grow some butterflies in your garden. Because….well, you know why now but also to remind yourself that the some of the best things in life are free. Finally, let me end with this joke told to me by a very dear friend. A scientist, one of those hot-shot genetic engineer, imperiously and rather impertinently declared, “Okay, God, this is it, You’re no longer the Master of Creation. I have finally cracked the mystery of creation.”

God, used to the ways of his humans, quietly said, “Really? Then who is?”
“Well, I am,” declared the scientist even more grandly, “And to prove it, give me a handful of dust and I will create anything You want out of it.”
“That’s wonderful, my son,” said God even more quietly, “so why don’t you first create that handful of the dust?”
So the point, my fellow gardeners, is this - we grow nothing, we create nothing, we invent still less. With a bit of luck, we just somehow create the right conditions for something to pop out of the universe and show its workings to us. Be that the wheel or a zinnia.
Sources : the world’s healthiest foods website, www.floridata.com and other sources.

George Bush was
sitting in his office wondering whom to invade next when his telephone rang.

'Hello, Mr. Bush!' a heavily accented voice said, 'This is Gurmukh
from
Phagwara, District Kapurthala, Punjab .... I am ringing to inform you
that
we are officially declaring the war on you!'

'Well, Gurmukh,'
Bush replied, 'This is indeed important news! How big is
your
army'

'Right now,' said Gurmukh, after a moment's calculation, 'there is
myself,
my cousin Sukhdev, my next door neighbor Bhagat, and the entire
kabaddi team from the gurudwara. That makes eight'

Bush paused. 'I must
tell you, Gurmukh that I have one million men in my
army waiting to move on
my command.'

'Arrey O! Main kya......' said Gurmukh. 'I'll have to ring
you back!'

Sure enough, the next day, Gurmukh called again.

'Mr.
Bush, it is Gurmukh, I'm calling from Phagwara STD, the war is still
on! We
have managed to acquire some infantry equipment!'

'And what equipment
would that be, Gurmukh' Bush asked.

'Well, we have two combines, a donkey
and Bhai Amrik's tractor.'

Bush sighed. 'I
must tell you, Gurmukh, that I have 16,000 tanks and 14,000
armored personnel
carriers. Also, I've increased my army to 1-1/2 million
since we last spoke.'


'Oh teri to....' said Gurmukh. 'I'll have to get back to
you.'

Sure enough, Gurmukh rang again the next day.

'Mr. Bush, the war is still on! We have managed to get
ourselves
airborne.... .. We've modified Bhai Amrik's tractor by adding a
couple of
shotguns, sticking on some wings and the pind's generator. Four
school pass
boys from Malpur have joined us as well!'

Bush was silent
for a minute and then cleared his throat. 'I must tell you,
Gurmukh, that I
have 10,000 bombers and 20,000 fighter planes. My military
complex is
surrounded by laser-guided, surface-to-air missile sites. And
since we last
spoke, I've increased my army to TWO MILLION!'

'Tera pala hove....' said
Gurmuk, 'I'll have to ring you back.'

Sure enough, Gurmukh called again
the next day.

'Kiddan, Mr.Bush! I am sorry to tell you that we have had
to call off the
war.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Bush. 'Why the
sudden change of heart'

'Well,' said Gurmukh, 'we've all had a long chat
over a couple of lassi's,
and decided there's no way we can feed two million
prisoners of wars!'

NOW THAT'S WHY SINGH IS KING
!!!

“The Guide says that there is an art to flying,” said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and missing.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Come to think of it, there is an art to everything. Pouring exactly 32.5 sips of tea into your teacup every morning. (Barring Sundays and Flashers Unite Day, when it is 37.8.) Pretending your head lice are dandruff flakes with legs. Picking your nose during your question and answer round in the Miss World contest in such a way that the judges believe that it is your goobers, not your breasts that will save the world. Etc. Etc.
And there is an art to having a crush.
Now the dictionary defines a crush as an intense but usually short-lived infatuation. But that’s a shallow definition, as if having a crush were like having a zit or a sandwich and it doesn’t to justice to a noble, ancient art, fraught with such subtle intricacies, not to mention intricate subtleties, that it deserves at least 10 volumes of the Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon. Which I am in the process of penning but till then, this little jotting will have to suffice.

BC (Before the Crush)
Before setting off to have a crush there’s a very important matter that you have to first sort out. And that is to make sure that you’re not Kareena Kapoor. Or Justin Timberlake. (Tick only one.) Nor have been ever listed as one of the World’s Ten Sexiest Warthogs. In other words, the number of people currently beating a path to your door (or website) on account of how hot and whatnot you are should be one less than that for a maggot. This instantly expands by nineteen million galaxies the universe from which you can choose the object of your crush (more on that later). Which can now be anyone from Laloo’s buffalo minder to the boiled potato masher at your favourite vada-pav stall, both of whom, we’ll have you know, are as crush-worthy as your next Kareena-come-latelys.

OOC (Object of Crush)
Having got that out of the way, let us now dwell on the tricky matter of choosing the Object of Crush, henceforth referred to as OOC. Now there have been instances of people having a lifelong crush on a slotted spoon, having taken the word “object” literally. But speaking from experience, people are better. (I once have a crush on a red pencil sharpener for about two weeks and it wasn’t much fun though I have to admit the “prup-prap” sound it made every time it sharpened made my superior gemellus tingle in the most gratifying fashion.)
What about animals, did someone ask? Hm. Well, there was one case of a crush on an amoeba but we’re still as hazy on the subject as the fetish wallahs are on having sex with a shoe horn.
The next and most important thing about your choice of OOC is that he/she (since we’ve now ruled out “it”) should be unattainable. And we don’t mean your everyday, garden variety of unattainable like buying up one floor of Antilla. (Those who are asking “Antilla who?” may immediately drum themselves off this planet.) We’re talking about unattainable that makes crossing the Atlantic on a rubber bath duckie seem like licking tomato ketchup.
Unattainabilty is critical because it’s like virtual sex - you’ll never get to know the more intimate details about your OOC. Spitting while eating boiled egg. Nymphomaniac vampire half-sister who visits every full moon. Barking in sleep. Passing garlic-scented wind during….well, never mind. Mother who’s just had a sex change and likes to discuss her (his?) post-operative plumbing during lunch.
We see you blanch. You’re thinking - Richard Gere and garlic-scented….?
Really?
Who knows me darlings, who knows. But more importantly, do we really want to know.
Also, hop off the beaten path, eschew the straight and narrow and venture to where few others have dared to go. So, while George Clooney is a good choice, George Bush is better. Similarly, Beyonce is sweet but Hilary Clinton is…well, you know. (You’d be surprised how many amongst us think that ice-queen-meets-AK-47-laugh is nothing less than a Playboy centre spread coated Viagra.) So are Prince Charles, aforementioned buffalo minder, Heather Mills, Michael Jackson’s children’s wet nurse, Osama’s third wife (not to be confused with Obama who has only one wife anyway), the man who left a crate of rotting Alphonsos at your door in 1993. Famous dead people are also a good bet, as long as the dead body has been disposed off. (I mean, we don’t want any talk of necrophilia muddying these sacred waters, do we now.) Which mean King Tut is off limits, Attila the Hun is not.

And Now, The Crush
Righty-ho.  Unattainable, dream-the-impossible-wet-dream OOC selected. God in Heaven, coffee on boil, libido on roil. You can now get down to the actual business of having that crush. Which basically involves thinking of the OOC every waking moment (barring while shaving underarms and performing other ablutions that we can’t mention) and generally deteriorating into the most awful kind of drip. In other words, you have to pine and ache, hanker and crave, long for and lust after. You have to gnash teeth, tear hair and eat heart out. (All yours and mercifully, it’s all low cal AND organic.) And every now and then, you have to dissolve into a deliriously gibbering, slavering puddle of ecstatic saliva at what might be a glimpse of the right-hand corner of the hangnail on the left little toe of the OOC.
And you have to do this all the while making sure that the distance of sixty-three gadzillion light years of unattainabilty between you and your OOC has not lessened by a even single millimetre.
Naturally the question that springs to mind like a startled toast out of toaster is - but what if it does? You mean what if you suddenly find that you’ve just pipped Salman Khan to the sexiest-napoleon-with-hair-weave post and Katrina – whom you lusted after for so many long and hopeless moons – is giving you the eye, not to mention the once-over, laced with a couple of smouldery-over-the-bare-shouldery come-on-overs?
Well, remember the stroke-of-midnight trick in Cinderella when the coach goes back to being a pumpkin and the coachman to the dirty, two-timing, double-crossing, whisker-twitching rat that he always was?
It’s more or less the same thing with a crush.
Which is that without so much as a by-your-leave or a hey-ninny-no, it simply will vanish into the morning smog. (Or at the next traffic signal.) And the OOC will topple off the altar, shattering into sixty-three gadzillion pieces and then morph into an ordinary mortal of flesh, blood and gumboils that you can now proceed to have as bossa nova partner, running mate or to drape on your arm to the next Star Parivaar Awards.
But never ever again to be the OOC.

Finally, AD (Or What’s The Bleeding Point about the Whole Darn Thing)
I mean, that’s a bit like asking what’s the point about balloons at birthday parties.  Or umbilical cords if it’s her apron strings that’s going to keep us attached to our dear mamas. Or the p in pneumonia if we aren’t going to pronounce it. These are the unquestionable essentials of life that don’t need silly, pointless things like points. (Which are mainly for fingers and the pervie-brain that designed the pointed bra.)
But since you’re asking, actually there is a point to having a crush. It’s a lesser known but well documented fact that the secret of the longevity of the centenarians in the Upper Silesia (no relation to Yash Chopra’s Silsila) is not bathing in the urine of the Caucasian tur but a lifelong, unwavering, passionate crush on the Abominable Snowman.
And that’s simply because a crush is cross between an emotional laxative and Oil of Olay.
Lemme explain.
See, basically life’s mainly a dreary drag, a grimy grind and the daily diet of the ho-hum and the humdrum clogs up the bowels of soul to ultimately give you the worldview and complexion of an ageing constipated eel. Having a crush evacuates and expels, it also opens up the pores, irrigates the pons (not what you are thinking but close), hydrates the appendix and generally gets what till now was a grudging, grumpy trickle splooshing in great, happy gushes through your tubes.
Leaving you with softer, younger-looking….um….er….well, certainly the bowels of your soul will look like that of a sprightly 17 year-old. We can’t guarantee anything else.

“Biologically speaking, if something bites you it's more likely to be female.” Desmond Morris“The power to charm the female has been in some instances more important than the power to conquer other males in battle.” Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man.

Saturday night.
You are single and so willing to mingle that it hurts but you know that tonight’s the night because you are one fourth Marilyn Monroe, one fourth Angelina Jolie, half a hank of Mallika Sherawat, whisked together and stir fried with a few pinches of Silk Smita.
(Yeah, the mirror. Well, you’ve politely asked it to shut up and go suck eggs with the Wicked Stepmother.)
Through the mists of cigarette smoke rolling over a sea of Margaritas, you spot him. George Clooney meets Akshay Khanna. Pure dishy-ness. On the rocks.
You give him the works. Zinging come hithers like flashes of liquid lightning from under thick, languorous lashes. (Okay, so they’re false but by the time he knows it will be too late.) Interspersed with smiles so mysteriously seductive that Jezebel would’ve slashed her wrists in jealous despair. All done while throwing your head back so that your hair cascades down your back in voluptuous eddies, showing off the long, lovely line of your neck.
(Shut up, mirror.)
Quick break, pretending to sip drink but actually checking cleavage as you think - should be reeling him in any moment now.
You wait.
Nothing.
Shocked, you peer across aforementioned Sea of M. No GC-met-AK, instead a Frankenstein-meets-pyorrehea is leering his way over to you. You now feel like one-fourth yesterday’s cat vomit, one-fourth today’s doggy poop, two bags of saggy, stale underwear stir-fried with….
I know.
But girls, do not despair.
Because the fault is not in your come-hithers, but in the men.
Apparently the poor dear baa-lambs can’t tell flirting from a boiled egg. So you can flash those come-hithers (and whatever else you’ve got to flash) as much as you want, you can wiggle all your wiggle-ables, you can giggle the sound that’s supposed to turns saints into helpless putty, sinning as if sinning is going out of style. But unless you’ve have also sprayed “Hey, you’re cute! Wanna….?” across your naked breasts in neon pink and have thrust them – jiggling - into his face, he probably thinks you’re asking if you can join his car pool.
Thus spake not I but the findings of a study just conducted by the University of Indiana.
Now, before we all skewer ourselves on our tail combs (not what you’re thinking), let’s take a few deep breaths and mull on the matter.
Maybe there is a reason why men are so confused.
Maybe it’s because in most other parts of the animal kingdom, it’s the males that do all the hard work. For one, it’s they that have to be pretty and titivate (again not what you’re thinking) - all those gaudy colours and stripes and horns and humps and antlers and shiny feathers. Whereas the women mostly slop around in nighties and no make-up. I mean, have you looked at a peahen lately and what do you think the lion gets to have the mane?
For another, the lads that have to do the impressing - flashing and prancing and singing and swelling up and puffing out and generally strutting their stuff while the ladies get to just sit back, languidly sip iced tea, check out the merchandise. And if something catches their eye, then they select. (“You. Yeah, you with the bright green feathers growing out of your butt…”) Naturally, if the bloke’s bump-‘n-grind is not up to snuff, he don’t get any tonight and if it is, he may even be rewarded by becoming a tasty post-coitus snack. Chomp, chomp. I tell ya girls, the women have it good in the jungle.
So, I’m thinking why should it be any different with our boys considering that the genetic distance separating us from the fruit flies is only some 43 and a half DNA helices or something. I mean the poor things have been asked to squash deep-seated primordial urges to paint and pout and flaunt their fishnet stockings. So, naturally they are confused when the women start doing what they should be.
In other words, fellas - there, there.
We understand. Kinda.
And come to think of it, we women shouldn’t really be complaining because there was one other very important finding that popped up in that research. Not only do men not get it when we make sheep’s eyes at them, they often also mistake mere chumminess for the glad eye. Which makes it all very simple now. All we have to do is just walk up to the he-who-we-lusteth-after, give him a sisterly peck on the cheek, maybe arm wrestle for a bit, rain a few hail-fellow-well-met slaps on the back and before we knows what, we’ll have him sucking our toes all night long.
Or whatever.
Incidentally, girls, while we’re on the subject, the next time you’re desperately dateless, you might want to try a fruit fly. I’m telling you, these chaps have got their romancing fundamentals down pat. The minute a male fly spots a prospective date, he wastes no time and starts tapping the lady’s abdomen with a foreleg. (The fruit fly equivalent of  “haven’t we met before somewhere”.) If she’s interested (he’ll know when she doesn’t slap him and stops yawning and painting her nails), he serenades her by vibrating his wings. (I have it from the best authority that Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful tonight” is a hot favourite.) If she melts, he clinches the whole thingummybaba by licking her…er, well let’s just say that it’s an anatomical region that is a favourite hang out of male fruits flies.  
The best part? The lucky (picky?) lil’ lady fruit flies reserve the right to refuse any suitor who do not perform all of the above and in the proper order. (No licking before serenading, no tapping before licking etc., etc.)
But back to humans…
And the question that trembles on our lips is - is it time?  
Is it time to retire our Wonder bras? To pack up our Kissable Krimson lip glosses and stopper up our Chanel No.5’s? Is it really time to put away our secrets of lace and satin and silk, to undo the pouts in our lips and admonish our hips not to sway?
If it is, what a pity.
Because flirting is such a blast. We do it for the pure heck pleasure of it. It’s almost as good as shopping, often beats chocolate truffle cake by points. And some of us will tell you it’s even better than sex. (By the way, many a time, we aren’t all that interested in finding out whether you’re as much George-Clooney-meets-Akshaye-Khanna in bed as you look out of it.) And never mind those peacocks, we love dressing up and totting out our best gorgeous-creatures-made-for-love for all the world to see.  Because nothing can describe the incredible rush of watching a man’s eyes mouthing the words, “Boy, you’re beautiful.”  
Even if we are imagining it and you’re actually saying, “Yeah sure. There’s one seat vacant at the back.”

.....or maybe not, but whatever raga they are dancing to, it's the cutest animation I have seen in a long time...cuter than Happy Feet?

What would you say are the chances of women writing thousands of these
letters to a short, stubby man with pimples and a haircut that looks as
if it is from New Paramount Haircutting Saloon?
My
point is this. We ladies are a picky lot. After all, there’s blood
involved here. So, you may be the greatest superstar, an acting legend;
your films may have raked in gadzillions, declared as immortal
classics, your waxwork might be rubbing bottoms with Cary Grant’s at
Madame Tussauds. But if you don’t make our hearts (and other regions
too) throb, go boompity-boom and dhak-dhak, if the knees ain’t turning
to delicious moony mush, if you don’t start a conflagration in our
sweet, womanly jigars that would light a million beedis, if there isn’t
a sudden and insane urge to rush into our boudoirs (yes, we all have
one) and slip into something more comfortable at the mere sight of you,
then sirjee, we ain’t wasting a drop - forget blood, not even drool.

Also, beefcake palls after the first two nibbles…

Now I’m not one of these khoon-bhari-khat (KBK) types.
(For one, e-mail doesn’t fell any trees. For another, I can’t stand the sight of blood.)
But if I were, there is only one man to top my list.
Vinod Khanna.
Even
now, pushing sixty-two, on the wrong side of burly, thinning hair et
al. They say that if he hadn’t suddenly taken “sanyas” in 1982 at the
peak of his success, Amitabh Bachchan would’ve had serious competition
for the post of Uberstar. Well, I for one am glad he did because
otherwise, I’d be writing so many of dem damn letters - all the way
from Reshma Aur Shera to Leela and Risk - that I’d have needed blood
transfusions by now…

And his most gasp-‘n-reach-for-my-khoon-bhari-pen moment?

Well,
I’m going to skip the obvious one - which is the kissing scene in
Dayavan because according to me, there’s almost no one who can fill a
uniform quite so, er shall we say, satisfactorily as Vinod Khanna. (I
take a moment to compose myself and wait for knees to solidify.) So,
for me, it’s Achanak (the entire film) and of course, the scene in Amar
Akbar Anthony when he and Amitabh Bachchan meet for the first time.
When Khanna starts unbuttoning his shirt and growls, “Dekhte hai tum
main kitna dum!“? …..

Oh my goodness gracious me.
(I take
5 minutes to compose myself.) Did I say “uniform”? Make that dhoti,
lungi, shorts jeans, tuxedo, bath towel, bandit jewellery, shorts, Rupa
baniyan…. Oh, the heck with it. The man would make lace garters look
like regulation jock wear. Not to mention orange caftans with rudraksh
malas. On any other man - even Vincent Chase - you’ll bust your boob
job laughing. On Vinod Khanna? I need a whole week off to compose
myself…..
(Vinod Khanna’s other KBK films - Mere Apne, Hera Pheri, Mera Gaon Mera Desh, Shaque, Rihaee and Imthihan)

And
coming a very close second to the Sexy Sanyasi (thank you Devyani, for
this and so many other delightful handles) is Jackie Shroff.
Even now; fifty, silly pudding-basin hair-weave et al.
And
I don’t care how many of you jeered, “wooden! Wooden!”. And it’s not
what you are thinking though how many men do we know who can make a
bandhini dupatta look as macho as …well, as Vinod Khanna in an orange
caftan?
You see, it’s like those liqueur filled chocs. What
separates mere beefcake from a prime cut of KBK is a soft, delicious,
heady centre that makes every woman feel that she is this maddeningly
irresistible goddess-sex-kitten-houri….. and reach feverishly for her
trusty blood-dipped-nib. And we always know. With just one bite…er, I
mean one look into the fella’s eyes and by the feeling of a 60-piece
orchestra playing somewhere our nether lumbar regions.
And our Jaggu
Dada has that stuff by bucketfuls. Just watch him in Parinda, Gardish,
Aina, Kaash, Saudagar (to name only a few) and even as the utterly
ch-se-chunky-hunky “Chunnilal” in Devdas, even though he ch-se-hammed
it to the hilt.
But the highest point of our Shroff‘s KBT-ness was
(and is) as the swoon-a-licious “Raj Kamal” in Rangeela and what on
earth was that Urmila thinking?! I mean, Aamir was cute but if I wanted
cute, I’d get myself a Care Bear.
That’s just Jackie on screen. Off
screen? The man should ring a warning bell or something five minutes
before walking into the room. Because when he does, there isn‘t be a
dry female ...er saliva gland inside a 10 mile-radius.
Sigh.
Now
I know I said “list”, but I’ll have to stop here because after Vinod
Khanna and Jackie Shroff, I‘m almost clean out of blood and what’s left
I have to save for the man who really did get KBK’s by the sackfuls.
Sada Jatin-Kaka a.k.a Rajesh Khanna. Pimply, yes. Stubby, short body,
yes. Haircut from New Paramount Haircutting Saloon, most definitely.
Guru kurtas, retch-yetch-yes. But the eyes, oh the eyes. Look into them
and you feel you are drowning into a tub…no make that a jacuzzi full of
that soft, delicious, heady stuff that makes you feel that you are this
maddeningly…..you get my drift. Baharon ke Sapne, Aradhana, Khamoshi,
Kati Patang, Amar Prem, Mere Jeevan Saathi, Daag, Aap ki Kasam, …. so
please don’t ask me to pick the most KBK of this lot because ….
Oh wait a minute.
There
is one - Aavishkaar. For weeks, nay months afterwards, there was
nothing I wanted more than be “Mansi”, married to “Amar” and live in a
house outside which a lamp glowed this message of conjugal bliss -
“Ghar Mansi Amar ka”.
And I can’t think why I didn’t dash off a KBT…

Do you dieWhen you die

Or when the memory
Of you
Begins to fade...

Got this in the mail and i think it says all that needs to be said about Da Man!

* There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Rajnikant has allowed to live.

* Outer space exists
because it's afraid to be on the same planet with Rajnikant.

* Rajnikant counted to
infinity - twice.

* When Rajnikant does a pushup, he isn't lifting
himself up, he's
pushing
the Earth down. (God help me.. i cant take this anymore)

*
Rajnikant is so fast, he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head.

* Rajnikant doesn't wear a watch, HE decides what time
it is.  [Ah, the
greatness…]

* Rajnikant gave Mona Lisa that smile.

*
Rajnikant can slam a revolving door.

*
There are no races, only countries of people Rajnikant has beaten to different shades of black
and blue.

* Rajnikant's house has no doors, only
walls that he walks through.

* Rajnikant can divide by zero.

*
Newton's Third Law is wrong: Although it states that for each action, there is an equal and
opposite reaction,
there is no force equal in reaction to a Rajnikant turnaround
kick.

* When taking the GRE, write "Rajnikant" for every answer. You
will score over 1600.

*
Rajnikant has 12 moons. One of those moons is the Earth.

* Rajnikant
grinds his coffee with his teeth and boils the water with his own rage.

* Archaeologists unearthed an old English dictionary
dating back to the year
1236. It defined "victim" as "one who has encountered
Rajnikant"

* If you Google search "Rajnikant getting kicked"
you will generate
zero
results. It just doesn't happen.

* Rajnikant can drink an
entire gallon of milk in thirty-seven
seconds.

* Rajnikant
doesn't bowl strikes, he just knocks down one pin and the other nine faint.

* It
takes Rajnikant 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes.

* The Bermuda
Triangle used to be the Bermuda Square, until Rajnikant kicked one of the corners
off.

* There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
Rajnikant lives in
Chennai.

* Rajnikant once ate an entire bottle of sleeping
pills. They made him
blink.

* James Cameron wanted Rajnikant to play the
Terminator. However, upon
reflection, he realized that would have turned his movie into
a documentary, so he
went with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

* Thousands of years ago Rajnikant came
across a bear. It was so
terrified
that it fled north into the arctic. It was also so terrified that
all of its decedents now have white
hair.
 

Wishing all my friends at Rediffland a wonderful Festive Season