Laff lines

Pee-pee tea
One day a mother was out and the dad was in charge. The little one was maybe one and a half years old. Someone had given her a little tea set as a gift and it was one of her favourite toys.

Daddy was in the living room engrossed in the evening news when she brought Daddy a little cup of 'tea', which was just water.

After several cups of tea and lots of praise for such yummy tea, Mom came home. Dad made her wait in the living room to watch the toddler bring him a cup of tea, because it was 'just the cutest thing!'

Mom waited, and sure enough, here comes baby down the hall with a cup of tea for Daddy and she watches him drink it up, then says, 'Did it ever occur to you that the only place that baby can reach to get water is the toilet?'

Dry leaves
Last October, after much deliberation, I bought a magnolia tree from our local nursery. After only a few weeks I noticed that the leaves had started to shrivel and the tree appeared to be on its last legs in spite of my tender care.

So I took some leaf samples and marched back to the nursery to demand an explanation or get my money back.

"I know exactly what's wrong with your magnolia," said the manager.

"Good!" I exclaimed. "What's it suffering from?"
You can imagine how stupid I felt when he said, "Autumn."

Work for self
There was this man who, many years ago, worked for a large business. That was his lifetime employment, but he wasn't happy there. He wanted to go in business for himself. He saved his money and finally had enough that he could quit and start his own business.

About two years later, I was on vacation and was going through the town where his business was located. I stopped by for a visit. "Hey John, I heard that the first year is the hardest for a new business."

"Yeah, the first year was pretty rough, but we are doing pretty good now. In fact, I'm getting to where I only have to work half a day."

"Wow, that's pretty nice. Maybe I should think about going into business for myself."

"Yeah, and the nicest part of it is that it doesn't matter which twelve hours you work."

Make your own lunch
A bricklayer routinely complained about the contents of his lunch box.

"I'm sick and tired of getting the same old thing!" he shouted one day. "Tonight I'll set my wife straight."

The next day the men could hardly wait until lunch time to hear what happened.

"You bet I told her off," the bricklayer boasted. "I said,
'No more of the same old stuff. Be creative!' We had one heck of a fight, but I got my point across."

He had indeed. In front of an admiring audience, he opened his lunch box to find that his wife had packed a coconut and a hammer.

In the red corner...
A recent widow was crying to a grief counselor. "We were married twenty-five years before he died," she said, dabbing away a tear. "Never had an argument in all those years."

"Amazing," said the councelor. "How did you do it?"
"I outweighed him by forty pounds and he was a coward."

Leaky car
As the owner of an old clunker, I was used to dealing with a variety of car breakdowns. One day at the supermarket, just after I had filled my trunk with groceries, I noticed a stream of fluid pouring out of the bottom of the car. I knew I had to get home before the car was once again out of action.

When I arrived I asked my husband to take a look at the problem. Expecting the worst, I braced myself for his diagnosis. When he came back in, he was smiling.
"It's apple juice," he said.

Dumb thief
A jeweller standing behind the counter of his shop after hours was astounded to see a suspicious looking man in a black ski mask come hurling headfirst through the window.

"What on earth are you up to? What happened?!" he demanded.

"I'm terribly sorry," said the man, "I forgot to let go of the brick.”

I

The gate near my building is closed at 10, so I take the gate at the other end of the colony and luckily, find a rickshaw.

It's a chilly evening, thanks to the rain earlier that day. The rickshaw almost flies through the night breeze, the driver's thin white shirt flapping in the slipstream. He's wearing a lungi, sandals and a very faded, unbranded jeans baseball cap, turned fashionably backwards. 'Nice hat, mamu,' I remark, not being able to resist. He laughs. He got it on his first visit to New Market, more a souvenir than anything. 'Don't you feel cold?' I ask him, careful to keep the pity and guilt out of my tone. He looks back, smiles and shrugs, not an easy feat, considering the fact that he is still driving.

His name is Mohammed Abdul Goffar, though he pronounces it “Gopphar”. He lives in Badda. “Rickshaw's go from Eskaton to Badda?' I ask, a little taken aback. I thought the road was blocked for rickshaws. 'Ho mamu, jai toh,' he says, relaxing a bit on his seat, 'takes about 30 taka.'

He lives in the garage where he keeps the rickshaw. The garage owner has made a sort of attic [or in Bangla, called chung] for the rickshaw pullers. He has to pay 80 taka daily for the rickshaw and 50 taka for the food. Even excluding that, he earns about 200 taka a day. 'That's not so bad,' I say optimistically. 'Ho mamu, choila jai.'

We stop at the pharmacy just as they are about to close for the night. After a little begging I manage to get the medicine and hop back on the rickshaw. And we continue our conversation as if there hadn't been an interruption.

Gopphar mamu's family lives in Gaibandha; family meaning wife, four-year-old son Jakir Hossain and his parents. The bus fare takes 100-120 taka if he sits. If he stands, he can get there for fifty. He works for 20 days and goes home for 7-10. 'But, of course, if father falls ill, I stay a little longer.' I ask him how old his dad is; the reply is 60. He says he is 33.

At this point, I become a little puzzled. Normally, the mamus of this country get married as soon as they possibly can and give birth to a bunch of kids by the time they are 33. 'Did you marry late?' I ask him. 'No, I married when I was 23,' he says. I decide to blast privacy to the moon. Mamus aren't too big on privacy anyway. 'How come your son is so young?' He gives a shy smile [or at least his tone gives that impression], 'we decided to wait a while before taking a baby. A baby is a big responsibility. And we've decided we're going to stick with this one baby, send him to school and stuff.' I look in utter astonishment towards the rickshaw puller who could be a poster boy for the birth control campaign.

We arrive at my building. I pay him and say good-bye to his smiling face. As I walk up the stairs, I ponder on how quickly and effortlessly we stereotype other people. I also ponder on how misplaced our pity can sometimes seem. I remember his tone when I asked him whether his wife minds the fact that he lives so far away. 'She's really happy when I go back,' I've heard such longing, love and contentment in few people's voices. I ring the bell.

By Kazim Ibn Sadique

One-liners

A TV can insult your intelligence, but nothing rubs it in like a computer.

The nice thing about Windows - it does not just crash; it actually displays a dialogue box and lets you press OK first.

Error : Press any key except.. no, No, NO NOT THAT ONE!

Any system or program, however complicated, when looked at in exactly the right way will become even more complicated.

To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a computer.

Bad command or filename. Go stand in the corner.

C code. C code run. Run, code, run! PLEASE!

Programmer: An ingenious device that converts caffeine into code.

When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it's probably obsolete.

A computer program will always do what you tell it to, and seldom what you want it to.

Do files get embarrassed when they're unzipped?

Ask not for whom the bell tolls. Let the machine get it.

A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light.

After months of training, when you finally understand all of a programs commands, the new revised edition arrives with a new command structure.

/earth: file system full.

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.

Source: www.onnachance.com

Boishakh Blast

Music fans, have we got a special treat to kick off your new year with! Arnob's new album Dub and Armeen Musa's debut album Aaye Ghum Bhangai have both been released on Pohela Boishakh. Keep reading your favourite magazine for the reviews coming very, very soon

Under The Surface

Life dreams colors
all these words were meaningful
in those moonlit nights
when life was blissful
Life is like a novel,
a novel is always mystery
A mystery's always been mysterious
and death's been so curious
Dreams make one life
where two souls live in
but where there's only one
life makes dreams to live in
People say trance and truth
pour all colours in your canvas
but when a canvas remains incomplete
people blame you,
not trance, nor truth
Adeeba Hoque

Paradox

Last night I fell into you
Ceaselessly, a blue light engulfing
The fake and true fears in my throat until
I could make out neither, but even so
I felt safe with you, safe as a paradox
And silent as a bell without a tongue;

See, with you
It's always One step in
And Two steps south.
Alaka Halder