ALTER IDEM

Alter Idem turns 11 today... and that means, story time !   It was a very cold, wintery morning, and, Akbar and Birbal were walking by the river. On a sudden whim, Akbar announced a huge reward to anyone who would spend an entire night standing in the river, neck deep in water.  The biting cold deterred all except an extremely poor man, with a large family (let's call him 'Bechara'). Seeing his best opportunity to change his life forever, Bechara decided to take up the challenge.   After completing the challenge successfully, the winner was taken by the referees to Akbar's court to collect the reward. Jealous acquaintances thwarted the reward by telling Akbar that the lamps from the buildings nearby would have kept Bechara warm. The dejected Bechara rushed to Birbal for help....   The next day, Birbal invited Akbar and the jealous acquaintances for lunch. An hour past lunch time, the invited guests began to get restless about the lunch not being served. Apologising for

Unfortunate times, people! So unfortunate that I have started watching TV for some time every day - changing channels every few minutes, actually! The anchor, in heavily anglicized Kannada was raving about the latest Kannada song to go viral....about how people across age groups were uploading their versions of the hero's dance steps on social media. She referred to the song as the Kharaabu song. You know, Sri.U.R.Ananthamurthy had once jokingly remarked that by adding 'u' (as in 'put'), you could convert a word from any other language into a Kannada word! Kharaabu is therefore the Kannada equivalent of the Hindi Kharaab ! I'm not sure if it was intentional, but everything about the rather tuneless song seemed unbelievably Kharaabu - from incomprehensible lyrics to dancing by unkempt looking characters. And the way they were treating the lone female in the sequence was unacceptably Kharaabu ! Reminding myself that it wasn't fair to judge a song