Friday, December 24, 2010

The ONION

The Onion Times
Thursday, December 23,  2010.
City Edition. Vol.3 Peel.7

The Headlines:


Onion prices hit record highs

New Delhi, Dec 22 - Onion prices hit a record high today in the New Delhi wholesale market, touching 347 rupees per gram. This has prompted the Prime Minister to cut short his visit to his hometown and return to Delhi to deal with the latest crisis. This was 8.9% higher than the previous record set last year.......

Russian President arrives on a 3 day visit
New Delhi, Dec 22 - The Russian President arrived here today to a full state welcome as part of a historical visit. He is accompanied by 830 Onion farm owners from Russia. India and Russia are expected to sign a record Onion import deal worth $700 billion during the President's visit thereby providing a big boost to the bilateral trade between the countries....

Page 2:
Drawing competition held
Hyderabad, Dec 22 - A school in Jubilee Hills held a drawing competition for kids below 10 years of age. The competition involved painting of Onions by the kids. It was a real challenge for the kids, as they have not seen an Onion in a long while. It proved to be a test of their ......

Teacher Arrested
Hyderabad, Dec 22 - A teacher of a leading private school was arrested here by the special branch police team. According to the parents of the children of class 2 studying in this school, the class teacher had given an assignment to the children which involved pasting pictures of different vegetables including Onions. This had reminded the children about the Onions that they had forgotten for a while and they had started asking their parents to buy Onions. The parents were enraged by this and went to the school to demonstrate against the callous attitude of the teacher in spoiling young impressionable minds. To placate the agitating parents, police authorities intervened and arrested......

Page 3: 
Man stabs techie friend to death
Hyderabad, Dec 22 - A 32 year man from Tarnaka killed his techie neighbor in an altercation. Witnesses describe the incident as gruesome. According to the witnesses, the man had returned from work and while having his dinner, smelled something fishy about his next door friend's house. He found out that his techie neighbor friend was having fish masala made with some Onions which he had refused to share with the man. In a fit of rage of uncontrolled magnitude, the man stabbed his long time neighbor......

Police raid city Bars
Hyderabad, Dec 22 - The Greater Hyderabad police raided leading bars in the city yesterday, following complaints about illegal serving of onion pakodas as side dish along with drinks ordered by their guests. The ACP spoke to the Onion Times and here is what he had to say.....

Page 4:
Karnataka Minister questioned by CBI

Bangalore, Dec 22 - The CBI regional director and his team questioned the Karnataka minister over alleged allegations of cornering 3 Kgs of Onion produce for his family's consumption. According to informed sources, the Minister had......

Page5:
High Court judge claims harassment by Minister
Chennai, Dec 22 - A High Court Judge created a flutter in the court today by openly saying that a Minister was trying to bribe him with half a kilo of Onions to pass a judgement in favour of his relative. Reacting to this incident, the Judge said the very low quantity of the bribe had prompted him to come out in the open to denounce the minister for his poor view of the value of the Judiciary.....

Page 6:

Discourse by Swami Bhaktananda
Kolkata, Dec 22 - Swami Bhaktananda held the huge crowd mesmerized by his discourses, in the Central College grounds here. He advised people not to tread the path of violence and find peace within them. He was explaining to people how the lust for Onions have ruined the spiritual framework of the country. He encouraged the people to take to Meditation to keep their minds off Onion and Garlic. Regular practice of Meditation will help in.......

Page 11:
India and Russia expected to sign a multitude of deals
New Delhi, Dec 22 - India and Russia are expected to sign a multitude of deals tomorrow involving the import of Onions from Russia. Russia has also genorously offered to provide know-how on newer Onion varieties to India for joint production......

Page 14:
Allium India shares jump

Mumbai, Dec 22 - Allium India shares hit the higher circuit breaker today, as investors scrambled to get their hands on the company's shares. Huge demand for the shares by the FIIs lead to the share hitting the higher circuit breaker. Allium shares continued to defy the downfall of the Sensex, as the company has announced its plans to acquire California based Oni One Technologies Inc, the leader in Onion and Spice R&D space.....

Page 16:
Hackers down Pay-sites

New York, Dec 22 - Hackers belonging to Anonymous group briefly brought down many pay sites today. They did it allegedly as an act of paying back for trying to shut down the whistle blower site, Wikileaks. According to a leading analyst, the perpetrators had used TOR based systems to create anonymous packets and used the Onion routing method to bombard the sites with packets of useless information, leading to ......

Page 20:
Onions rattle Aussies

Sydney, Dec 22 - England ended the day 4 of the 3rd Test against Australia in a strong position to win the match, thanks to the efforts of their lead bowler Graham Onions. Onions rattled the Aussie top order and ended the day with figures of 5 for 36 and helping England get to a strong position in the ongoing Ashes.......

PS: This posting is dedicated to "the ONION" and its fans and patrons.

(C) Vijayaganesh Sampathkumar, 2010. All Rights Reserved.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Oru CBI Diary Kurippu^

(^ - A CBI Diary report - translated from Malayalam).

Have you ever watched a movie and pissed in your pants or whatever else you normally wear? No???

Are you sure??? Still No???? Oh... Come on.. Don't give me that.

Not even in your childhood? Not even in your dream? Oh.. I don't believe it. Anyway, since you are not being forthright with me, that doesn't mean I should not be forthright with you. Read on to know my experience with this...

It was a cold day in December 2010. I usually buy two newspapers, but something made me buy 3 of them on that day. I finished reading all the three before I left for work. On returning from work, I was watching all the usual dinky English TV news channels well into the night, before I retired for the day. All the papers / channels were covering the same stuff the whole day. Of course, its not about the Niira Radia tapes, silly!!! Why would the TV news channels cover about that, huh? Though they think viewers like us are dumb, they are not thaaat dumb. What did you take them for, huh?

I must have been really tired, because I had a long dream soon enough.

It was morning 7 AM and our guy was watching TV. They were showing a Tamil movie. The movie was Naane Raja Naane Mandhiri (I am the King - I am the Minister). Just then, his latest 3G (not bought with 2G money) cell phone rang. It was his PA. His PA was nervous on the other end.

"Saar... Saar... There is a bunch of cars in front of the house and lots of men wearing ties and coats are getting out."

"Wow... Amazing...How can you see whats happening in my home, while sitting there in your home?"

"Saar... Even in your house? I was telling that I could see them in front of my house. We are doomed."

"Cut the phone.. I will call you later."

A bunch of well dressed people entered the house. One of them introduces himself. "My name is Mamooty. I am a CBI Officer. This is a search operation and here is the warrant. Please co-operate".

"I have always co-operated with everyone involved. How else can I do what I did?"

They soon get down to work and were quite busy for a while. Meanwhile, our guy continues to watch the movie, not having anything else to do.

After the search:

"We have found these diaries. They are all written in Tamil. We think its all code words for payments made in the scam. Can you tell us what these entries mean?

"Scam? What are you guys talking about? I am a faithful worker of my party. I pray to my lord everyday. My lord will save me and he is none other than the great leader for whom there is no God."

"This entry is dated in November 2008. This says, Moo Ka 500. What do you mean by this? We think its 500 crores paid to a certain leader in your party."

"Oh... Thats nothing. While I was going for a meeting in Delhi, I saw one guy selling salted Chenna. I bought some for five rupees and ate it. In our village, people call this "Mookku Kadalai". So I wrote it in abbreviated form. In case you don't know, my neighbouring village people call it as "Konda Kadalai".

"What about this then.... December 2008, there is an entry named Kani 300?"

"Oh.. that is when we all had a drinks session within our party".

"So, do you accept that during the drinks party celebration, you passed on 300 crores to your leader's daughter?"

"Wait a minute. I never said anything about any drinks party. We had a party meeting and I got Mango Frooty cool drink and served everyone. It cost me 300 rupees".

" Clever.. eh.. what about these entries then. This one says, Son of S. Gandhi - 300?"

" Thats the amount that I gave him".

"Ah.. Finally. So you accept sharing your kickbacks. Don't you?"

"Kickbacks.. what are you talking about? There is a lady in our village by the name of Suryagandhi. I gave her son three rupees to buy some "Then Mittai" (Honey candy)."

"So.. are you saying you did not make any money in this whole scam? Never mind. We will know our answer in the next 3 months."

(To his deputy) - "Whats the latest score, man?"

"1203 / 251287"

"Its only the beginning of the innings. Wait till the score improves.  We will catch you with your hands inside the candy jar. We are waiting for the site to upload the relevant cable from the ND Embassy. They are sure to have sent a cable about this. Whatever we cannot find, those guys in the embassy would have easily found out long back, with their superior wire taps and fingerprinting technology. Afterall, what are you, when compared to Bunky Moon?"

(To his team) - "Guys.. Lets leave now. Start watching the site and get me the latest score everyday".

By this time, the movie on the TV was about to end. In the movie, there was a train about to leave and it blew a loud whistle. Thats when, our guy started pissing in his Dhoti.

C'mon.. I never did say anything about me pissing in my pants. Did I?


(C) Vijayaganesh Sampathkumar - 2010. All Rights Reserved.