It's wit off the cuff

Rib-tickling wit, a friend laments, is hard to come by these days. True, it can be uncannily elusive to its seekers. Yet, it’s to be found in the unlikeliest of places, waiting to be uncovered, often by chance, and enjoyed.

Sometime ago, I was subjected to the indignity of being frisked at the venue of a Union minister’s public meeting. Nettled, I asked the grim-faced security guard what he was searching for. “Hidden arms!” he snapped.

“Well, mine aren’t!” I said, flapping my skinny extensions, and had the supreme satisfaction of seeing his hardened jaw break into a sheepish grin.

A young Indian executive whose annual performance appraisal was being done by my British boss had listed out in elaborate detail his various work-related achievements in his self-assessment form. When he officiously offered to read these out for the Brit’s benefit, the latter politely said no, adding, “Remember, a song that never gets an encore is when you sing your own praises!”

Talking of work, by far the best (and perhaps most balanced) definition of a colleague that I have come across runs thus: a colleague is a person utterly devoid of talent who inexplicably does the same job you do.

Then, I once heard an adman, a true professional, offer this classic piece of advice to an entrepreneur who was planning to launch a small-scale business: “Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you’re doing, but no one else does!”

An inveterate punster once asked me whether I had heard of the geologist whose job was on the rocks.

The other day, I truthfully admitted to a friend that I’ve never flown in a plane. When he expressed utter surprise, I wistfully said, “The only time I’ve ever been airborne was when I was on cloud nine after the publication of my first article.”

A few years back, a neighbour’s headstrong daughter, just out of college, had a tiff with her well-intentioned parents who were trying to counsel her in regard to a suitable career. “I don’t like being dictated to!” she snapped irritably and stormed out of the room. She went on to become a stenographer.

The upshot of the recent acute water shortage everywhere, I’m told, is that ‘dammit’ is no longer considered an expletive. In fact, it’s on the lips of everyone who has anything whatsoever to do with water management. ‘Dammit’ is now their new revered buzzword as they spend all their waking hours desperately searching for any source of water that can be dammed and stored for human use.

And, during the unprecedented water shortage, a friend tells me that he met his Waterloo one day in one of our waterless public loos.