Shock and awe

Well, not so much of a shock. Amitabh Bacchan is a pompous, self-important bore with delusions of godhood. But we knew that already.

On the other hand - my love for Aamir Khan (in a heterosexual, back-slapping buddy kind of way^[i]) increases by the day. Naming your dog after the person you like the least, just so you can blog saying things like "Shahrukh stinks", is an old classic, but never goes out of style. Also his approval of all things Catan proves that he is a man of taste (Mamta Kulkarni notwithstanding).

I'm off to buy a goldfish. The person I meet today who is least nice to me gets the honour of having aforementioned creature named after him/her. I shall then proceed to milk the joke dry, until said person is forced to rip out their own Eustachian tubes to preserve sanity. So BE NICE TO ME - this is not a test.

[i] - Not that Aamir and I are buddies or anything, but I'm not saying I would mind being.

No laughing matter

Shortly after the Kolkata Knight Riders' (wince!) website was launched, I looked through it (no time-wasting opportunity goes unexplored), and found a section titled "Humour", that was - much to my surprise - actually funny. And no, it wasn't Bollywood funny - which was even more surprising, given the Chief Performing Monkey who owns that bunch of clowns. This was intelligent humour. Whoever made these, picked their targets well, and played up their foibles just enough to be chuckle-inducing without being mean-spirited.

Now, imagine my surprise when I found, two days later, that the funnier ones had been removed. Luckily, I discovered that the jokes had not been taken down - you just couldn't reach them from the main site. However, I had sent the URL's to a friend earlier, so digging them up was a simple matter. So, in case you missed them, here they are:







I can never stop chuckling when I read these. In particular, the shot of Laxman saying "What am I doing here?", is hilarious.

Now here are the links to those jokes that remained on the site:

http://www.kolkataknightriders.com/ads.php?id=331&adsid=1
http://www.kolkataknightriders.com/magcover.php?id=311&magid=1
http://www.kolkataknightriders.com/magcover.php?id=321&magid=2
http://www.kolkataknightriders.com/newsarticle.php?id=361&newsid=3
http://www.kolkataknightriders.com/newsarticle.php?id=351&newsid=2
http://www.kolkataknightriders.com/newsarticle.php?id=341&newsid=1

Just looking at the two sets of jokes, it is quite obvious why some had to be removed. Each of those that was removed pokes fun at someone directly, while the ones that remain make fun of concepts such as sledging and match-fixing.
I can imagine what must have happened - Shahrukh Khan, who, it must be said, actually has a sense of humour, must have okayed all of them, and then someone decided to take offense and sent a rude message. Perhaps the Yuvraj Sena or some other gang of perennially unemployed Indians threatened to set fire to theatres showing Bhootnath. Whatever the reason, they went.
At the end of the day, humour is always the first casualty of war - whether it is the war on terror, or KARMA YUDH.