Perfect femme names (lower is better)

Above: what first (working) result for "Mamta" on google images throws

Rank	Name	Score
I.	Mamta	3+2
II.	Madge	3+3
III.	Amara	3+4
IV.	Mwgli	3+5
V.	Tammy	3+5
VI.	Pamela	3+6
VII.	Meg	4+0
VIII.	Ana	4+0
IX.	Anamika	4+7

Japanese puns

Mushi wa mushi suru. = Ignore the bug(s).

Ika wa ikaga? = How about eating squid/cuttlefish?

Iruka wa iruka? = Is there a dolphin?

Futon ga futtonda. = The futon flew.

Sore wa sarada no sarada. = This is the salad plate.

Sake ga sakenda. = The salmon was shouting.

Hokkaidô wa dekkaidô. = Hokkaido is big.

Taiyô ni sawaritaiyô! = I want to touch the sun.

Share wa yamena share. = Stop telling jokes!
(This is often chanted menacingly when an adult pleads with the children to stop, just stop.)

Naiyô wa naiyô! = There is no meaning.
(This is the desperate cry of a weeping adult before the onslaught of children's jokes.)


梨は無し
nashi wa nashi. - There is no pear.

間諜が艦長に浣腸します
Kanchou ga kanchou ni kanchou shimasu - The spy is giving an enema to the captain.

雪が行
yuki ga yuki - the snow is going

善し由
yoshi yoshi - good reason.


wakusei wa kusei
mokusei mo kusei
(the planet stinks
so does jupiter)

Incest gods

Ishwara descended into the world of Brahma, arraigned him and his sons, and put an end to their incestuous proposals. But in spite of this a certain amount of mischief had been done; Brahma's sweat at the moment of his most passionate attention to Sandhya (his daughter) fell on the ground before her, and out of it was born numerous progeny; and out of the 'vital fluid' of Daksha (lord of creation, another of Brahma's sons) flowing down was born Rati, the beauty of beauties.

Manmata (another of Brahma's sons, brother to Sandhya, and the Hindu God of Love, who apparently throws love shafts much like the Pig in another mythology does) whose shafts proved deadly to others, succumbed readily to the charms of Rati, whose eyebrows were more perfectly arched than Manmata's brow; whose breasts were lotus-bud-like, pointed, with nipples dark as honey bees, and so hard that a teardrop falling on them would rebound in a spray; and the line of downy hair between whose breasts made Manmata wonder if by chance his bowstring had been transposed there. Her thighs smooth as banana stalks tapered down to her delicate feet, pink-tinted at heel and toe. Her hands were like sprouts of laburnum, and her tresses were like the monsoon clouds. Manmata was overwhelmed with love for Rati and married her.

Your closest friend is yet to arrive

250,000 years back, in the Pleistocene Era, evolution decided to fix the limit to our social relationship capacity - the radius of people and relationships that we could keep a track of. 25 years back, the nuances of genetics further narrowed the same capacity for me. 18 years back, research put these facts public, and their observation on our social dynamics further limited and cleaved the extents of our relationships within those capacities.
So it happens that our neocortex volume determines that capacity, which averages to about 150 for us human primates (mine should be lower, as empirically observed). A mesh of 150. Among these, a narrower - say, 50 - that hang dearly; 20 that stick close; and a mere 5 or 6 that resonate at our exact frequencies and talk our talk, whom we call our closest friends.

Even if we stretch our limits, or you claim to have a larger Neo-cortical region than I do, you could take your active social relationship limit to 250. Beyond that, new relationships are either futile, or end up displacing the existing ones. But even that calculation is weak, as we never know whom we might bump into and find endearing one of these days of our remaining lives, and have the need for inclusion in our nexus. That one person could potentially be your life partner. Or your best friend. Or your idol. Or your second-born's Godfather. Or even your third life partner, if you've divorced twice. Or your fourth, if after your third marriage you realise you really have an affinity to the same sex which is why your earlier commitments failed... you get my point.

Henceforth, how do we even begin to reserve space for our future relationships that would blossom, sans the guilt of pushing another to an inferior level, and also one on the fringes of that 250 limit completely outside? We need a 'Tatkal' quota - where one could just find a seat in our Neo-cortical Garib Rath.

The mention of our railways brings the fact to mind that this is India, where the great Indian art of 'adjust' has had the people cram their social lives with faces and more faces and the warmth of a thousand handshakes that they would never remember. Everybody claims to know every third person in a social setup, which makes their claim all the more dubious, or only hints at how degraded they assume a human social bond to be. More likely that person's just bluffing; their claims would fail on the mere premise of the time budgeting problem involved in maintaining anything like that monstrous social circle - we could be spending up to 42% of our lifetime in mere Social Grooming, which is highly disadvantageous in today's post-tribal societies. Imagine the drudgery when you find it all wasn't worth. "The lesser the merrier" seems to be apt for this age. I don't wonder why I respect my reclusive friends, who maintain a narrow social group - its only an appreciation of their humbling and evolved mean gene strategy. Everything else is petty subsistence.

Stay immersed in your head...
Then come up to the surface to breathe in the air filled with new dishes, faces, smalltalk which you feel like eavesdropping on, and John M's digestive travails. Dip back into the river of your thoughts. See the fascinating piles the words make, gawk at the logical conclusions further down the course; try shutting out the multilingual chatter smalltalk about yourself in the physical dimension, try looking involved, or try looking a traveler who's caught the pulse of the moment.

Ganga

Routine again. Step out, down to the river, maybe a 'Hi' to the freewheeling Baba in his bamboo hut along the way and share a chillum or some tea, finally down to the river whose lapping waves and the cold sands in the shadow regions serve a hint to its freezing waters, and the whirlpools at some distance a hint to its torrid nature, strip on the sandy shore, scream and come running and dive as John M does, or gradually walk in deeper and deeper as I do, for a slow sensory awakening, feel the hypothermia waiting at your physical threshold, another dip and then another one, and now in lost notion of all proprieties you walk back on the sandy shore shivering like a rattlesnake's tail and uneasily whistling, find the sun a blessing and sit down atop one of the rocks to sun yourself dry, talk and think like Plato, feel absolved of you 9-to-6-Monday-to-Friday routine, stare into solving the mysteries of geography about you, listen to the discordant truck horns in the distance, pat your canine friends who have confusedly followed you to the river, study the footprints, the ripples, the words that never get to you, the smiles that forever beguile you, the rugged spirit you will forever admire, the nostalgia you will fall into next when you're here.

The need for a thousand ears

Words run down the slopes;
A freshwater stream,
split into a thousand.
The thirsty come closer,
or so I wish.
But their thirst is not my affliction,
neither do I tout a permanent riddance.

These words and my visage is transitory -
a stimulant nobody would forever pursue.
Because every thirst is born of a new need,
where every journey leads to a new brook,
and every brook offers a new relief.
These are no ordinary waters.

@ Lamington Road, Mumbai

Having visited LR for 8-bit game cartridges, presently looking for an adapter to get my cell jack do a 3.5mm audio out. The roadside stall owner left for something urgent, leaving his kid in-charge, who got fascinated with my lesser-known cellphone, and eagerly snatched it away at my first hint of being comfortable parting with it - straight to the camera mode, a few clicks (the result of which you see) sans the curiosity for the outcome, then onto games and other features, which I suspected would ultimately lead to them enabling paid services... hence me snatching the phone back.
Shoplifted that adapter.

Donating under pseudonyms

...Goes Away in the End

For once you see me not with the eyes of their eyes and speak to me not with the words they pieced for you. As terrible as you are, as unimaginative as you are, as goody goody as you never were, but it all works. There are things that stir, lips that form a smile, and a crescendo is reached midway - it could've worked no better, let me assure you.
For once I fly high into the air again, find that smile playing between the passing clouds again, come down with a friend in hand, raise hell across the lakes again, promise myself to care again, to share again, be beat in the sands, and lost in the currents again.

I could build a house around words tonight, or at least a plush toy that could also double for my couch pillow where I would occasionally fall asleep thinking of the long silences that kept things together. I could also try to reach out again, to press the reset button and give a fuck-all to these strange equations that torment as much as they dictate the course of things, just like once earlier.

And you know what I did? I took a deep, cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself, "As guileless as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe I have been expressed today, this is the moment that I start to forget. Time will wash away the sandy shores and dry away those placid lakes, where I once had my moments to remember."
And the moments tick by, time my eraser, as rest of the city sleeps.