Some Kossu, anyone?

Finns are funny people...

Finnish flat tyre
Antero is driving down the road when 'boom' he gets a flat tyre. "Saatana" he says, and after discovering he doesn't have a jack, he decides to walk down the road and try to borrow one from someone.
As he's walking, he's thinking "Damn, they probably won't have one." He walks a little further, and the growing suspicion increases... "I BET they don't have one". He walks further... "DAMN IT, I'm sure they won't have one, and if they did they wouldn't lend it to me anyway."
Finally he reaches a cottage, picks up a rock and hurls it through the window, shouting "KEEP YOUR BLOODY JACK!!"

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Finnish drinking game
There are two versions of this game for Finns; regular and advanced.
Regular: Three Finnish guys go into the sauna, each with half a litre of Kossu (Finland's famous Koskenkorva vodka). They each drink the vodka, and then one guy goes outside. The other two have to guess who went outside....
Advanced: TWO Finnish guys go into the sauna, each with a litre of Kossu. They each drink the vodka, and then one guy goes outside. The other guy has to guess who went outside....

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Taking the Bull to the Butcher

Extract from 'Under the North Star' - Väinö Linna
"Well then, this old man once went to take a bull to the butcher, and he took some turpentine with him. And that bull got tired, so the old man put some turpentine on his balls. Then the bull started running so fast that the old man put turpentine on his own balls. But the bull's balls stopped stinging before the old man's and when the old man got to the butcher's he handed him the rope and said hold on to this I've still got a ways to go..."

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At the airport...
A guy sitting at an airport bar in Atlanta noticed a beautiful woman sitting next to him.
He thought to himself, "Wow, she's gorgeous! And I think she's a flight attendant...but which airline does she work for?"
Hoping to pick her up, he leaned towards her and uttered the Delta slogan, "Love to fly and it shows?"
She gave him a blank, confused stare and he immediately thought to himself, "Hmm, no, she doesn't work for Delta."
A moment later, another slogan popped into his head. He leaned towards her again; "Something special in the air?"
She gave him the same confused look. He mentally kicked himself, and scratched American Airlines off the list. Next he tried the United slogan, "I would really love to fly your friendly skies!"
This time the woman looked at him, irritated, and screamed "What the $%#! do you want?!"
The man slumped back in his chair, and said: "Ahh, Finnair..."

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Finnish soldier
A young female reporter from a British newspaper was sent to Finland to write an article about Finnish soldiers returning from the Winter War. Interviewing one infantry-man, Jussi, she asked
"When you came home, when the war was over, what was the first thing you did?"
"I screwed my wife," Jussi replied bluntly.
The journalist went red, and tried to change the subject.
"After that, I mean. What did you do after that?"
"I screwed her again," he answered.
The journalist turned an even darker shade of red.
"Other than that! Uh - what did you do when you were finished with all that?"
"I took off my skis and had a beer."

The only river...

The man stood there, in the arid land of the Deccan, with thorn bushes scattered in the entire flat valley. His eyes shone as bright as the perpendicular Sun above. His thick grey beard made him look very aged, contrary to what the eyes told.

The hot air made his cloth flutter around him violently.

He started walking towards the settlement that lay beyond the dry riverbed.


A Safari pulled up somewhere in the large dustbowl. Its white now all khaki, the dark windows still rolled up. Two people climbed out.

“Darn hot it is; this is an oven man”

“We start say, about there, near those rocks. That seems like the smack middle of the river”

The two are carrying some instruments. They seem scientific, both the men and their equipments.

“You know, as I think of this, it seems like a big waste of my adult life. This, here, is a place which is baking in the sun as we walk. It is May for God’s sake. Do you see anything around us? This is like Mars, only worse cause we are not astronauts, and that makes it so uncool!

The older of the two hasn’t spoken a word yet. He is analyzing the riverbed.

The river, when it was blessed to be aqueous a long time ago, flowed in all its grandeur, two hundred meters wide here. The valley now was the river then.
The smoothened rocks were a testament to the furious waters that once noised around the river bend. On this May afternoon, everything was quiet, apart from an occasional Kite as it searched for an odd snake or two.

It seemed as if history suffered from the Alzimer’s disease, forgetting about this magnificent river as each year passed. The river started losing its scale, and no one knew why. The rains were there each year, so there was no dearth of water. Still the waters reduced from the bank, year after year. Folks moved away from her, blaming the decay on the powers Above; the fertile riverbank became many sandlots. She was left alone to her fate, and one day, she just vanished.

“Set up that thing over here and start taking readings”. The older one finally broke his silence.

“I want to be exact this time. We’ll need to tread along at least a hundred meters, from here”, he pointed out a spot to the younger one.

“Did you say hundred?”

“Yes I did. That’s just the beginning. The earth here is soft. This is the best spot to catch her. We’ll concentrate all our efforts here, say a stretch of two kilometers along the river.”

They got busy with their task as the Sun began the journey to the other end of the sky.

“She was looking for some solace I guess. At least it seems like that to a mere mortal like me”

They look up to see the man standing there.

“How long were you observing us?”

The man smiles, “Since your were a child”

“That’s a good one.”

“Aren’t you a little lost here? The other pilgrims usually take the bridge to cross the bank, don’t they?”

The man smiles again.
“So any success with your endeavor?”

“How do you even know what are we up to here?”

“Oh I know, so very well. You are trying to see if this is where she is resting. You are trying to hear her playful sounds through the earth. That’s what I know”

“So you know she is here? How old are you?” asked the older scientist, wiping off the sweat on his forehead, a little bewildered.

“Age is what one goes investigating about a man whose words seem too right for his attire”

“That would make a pretty neat status message” the younger one was enjoying this visit now

“Tell us more”

“This is all; around you, what you see, this is the present. She is down there. Let her be in peace”

“If she is indeed flowing below our feet, then she would solve a lot of issues. Do you see a single flowering plant for miles around you? This land needs water in abundance. This was once a farmland…it could well be the same again”

“She went under because she was tired, long tired of carrying all the filth that the World offered, that’s all it had to offer. She went away; now she is in a different world, a world of her own. “

“She will be the only pure thing left when this world erodes away; she will water the parched earth when the harsh seasons have wiped away all the greenery and hope from this planet. Save her for that…she is the future hope of this very predictable and dark present”.

The man started walking away, leaving his words hung in the dry air like dark balloons.

The two kept looking at him till he was gone. They looked at each other and got back to their task.

“The heat must have got him” The younger one opined.

The older one looked again in the direction in which the man had gone.

“I guess it did. It made him see the future”.

looking back

I'm missing college, really a lot! Not because we had great teachers (we didn't) or that the campus was awesome (it wasn't) I'm missing my friends! At the end of two years, we were just getting bonded so well and that's when the departure came about.

And this is despite all the ups and downs in the friendships, all the misunderstandings and petty issues..all that was a part of it...and that was fine.

I'm also missing them because I'm the one who got left behind, like a soldier left behind in the war field...(kidding!) So it feels even more, when I pass through the street where I used to hang out, or when I pass in front of the college...and the other day I was looking at the scribbling day T-shirt, and that was quite nostalgic! People have really written some very interesting things about me there - lady charmer !? (why not? hehehe)...it cracks me up every time :)

I think it is natural that one will feel this way when the friends one had around suddenly went away one fine day! That's the way it happened...two years we literally ran into each other everywhere...now I have to make new (good) friends, which is not easy, since the set of people I meet regularly is quite small.

Anyway, so this is the deal. I'm coping with it. It's not a life critical situation. But I look at someone and it reminds of a friend from the batch, or I think about watching a movie, and I miss those with whom I really enjoyed watching movies and attending the film festival here...things will not be that way ever again...

near wild heaven...but not near enough!

I want to fall in love so well that the rationale clouds in my head won’t make a difference; the conviction out of it should be stronger than the gravity of a black hole…well, that’s what and how it should be…ideally. And as the legacy of love as such suggests, all the greatest lovers had that conviction, somehow.

It’s not that easy…I can’t override the rational mind and apply my emotions right away, cause at each moment, my rational mind is evaluating my emotions, checking them against a zillion things. WHY?

I hate to be so cautious, but I don’t know any other way.

It also happens because I feel I need to be ‘right’ about everything that I decide. The difference is, I should ‘feel’ the rightness rather than arrive at it or ‘calculate’ it. It is what we call intuition or going by the heart….hmmmm…see, I know how I need to be. Very well indeed, but I am not there yet.

Or is it that love happens despite all these things being there, and somehow your state of mind is a combination of rational and irrational (emotional) outlooks towards that one person…?

I think I need to take a breather and not wreck my brains out over all this…but I’m not thinking of all this out of context…there is a context… and there are constraints…constraints sounds so technical! There are considerations let’s say…, which I must look into. If they call it falling in love, then they should have known that some of us would fall with a parachute, because the impact would be too harsh if one falls anywhere else!

I need the sunrays of clear thought piercing the clouds in my head…

I’m staring in the mirror, and there is a stranger staring right back at me and I hope he tells me something about me that I have not yet known!

Good Advices

The phone rings. It seems to be ringing in the dream I am watching, but it keeps ringing and I’m finally taken away from imagery paradise...

“Hello?”

“Dude, sorry to wake you up at this hr”

If he had said ‘Were you sleeping?” I would have sent a bullet through the airwaves

I recognize the caller

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, I need some advice”

“At this hour? You need some sleep “

“Had it been any other hour, I would have asked for much more”

He says it so matter of fact that I’m taken aback for a second. Oh that’s so generous of you, I think in my mind.

"Shoot”

“Ok. Well..Umm..I have this friend who is new to Pune and he and some friends wanted to know if it was safe to go to Station at this hour... and they stay in Kalyaninagar, kinda inside, so and some of them are in town just for a couple of days you know”

“Have you fallen on your head? Did a bat suck the living wisdom out of you??” It’s ..it’s ( check my watch) 2:40 in the night man!!!” “You are asking the worst...this is not even an advice that you are asking!? I’m not a bloody nightwatchman to be bothered about the nocturnal safe places of visit in the city!

(I’m screaming in a low voice, and it bothers the dog; he gives me a look of tired hopelessness)

“What I wanted your opinion on, is something else”

“ I hope you don’t want to know which particular bakery or tea stall they should visit at 3 am, cause most of the tea stalls don’t have sign boards and I would recommend the Viceroy bakery...can I sleep now?”

“It’s about this girl...well she is with them, and I like her! I know it sounds a bit weird, and well right now I’m headed towards where they are staying, in Kalyaninagar, kinda inside I told you...anyway, so I have my bike and she might ride with me...and I just ...I need an opening”

“An opening?”

“I did break ice in the day when we were together”

(Where did two of you go to break ice, the Alps?) I didn’t say it out loud cause between a good joke and sleep, always go for sleep - you can laugh in your dreams...but this bugger friend of mine was not letting me of the hook just yet.

“that’s grand”

(silence on the other end”)

“Take her to..ummm...Khadakwasla. It’s almost full moon tonight...the lake and moonlight, she by your side etc etc...or go and sit at some secluded place like the Z bridge near Decaan “ (What the hell am I saying!?)

“Well, I was thinking more about your place”

“(upright in the bed)what about my place?”

“Like I can bring her there and we will sit in your balcony and talk till the daybreak”

“Are you crazy? Have you completely lost your already evaporating mind? I’ve a dog, dirty laundry and oh, A DAY TOMORROW!!! No way!”

“ Look, simple advice, don’t get your hopes high...go to Station...have some tea and pastries...take her on a ride...you know the city like no other punk, and just roam around...make conversation. Where is she from by the way?”

“Goa”

“Goa? Hmmm exotic...”

“Just go there and things will happen, that’s the best I can tell you...I’m no Don Juan you know it” (not feeling too proud saying that)

“Are you there?”

“Yes...ok.I’ll see..I’ll try not to mess it up...thanks for talking”

“Relax and just be cool man. Don’t think about the mess, cause you don’t have anything to mess. Be spontaneous”

“Spontaneous”

“Yes”

“Ok. I’ll see you in the morning”

“Hehe...No. I don’t think so. My day will be late by atleast a couple of hours, so ...until some solid double digit hours...goodbye. Take it easy”

“Yeah sure”

I’m back in my bed. This was random, quite so, I mean the conversation. It didn’t make any sense and in the end, I’m damn sure it didn’t help him. It did make me wonder about a certain profession, suddenly. I don’t know why about this particular profession that I found a similarity between it and the conversation I just had:

Is this what consultants do?

The chronicles of loneliness

Lying in the twin sized bed, he is wondering, with a single pillow under his single head. The song is talking about someone on a similar bed, with a similar pillow under a similar head.

He is not alone, he is lonely.

He is inside his dark room, tucked away beneath the dark corridors which only his eyes can see. They are inside him, the corridors, in the morose corner of his mind.

He is longing for a perspective, a view above the horizon. He is not interested in the dark side of the moon, but that’s what he is been getting. He is tired of bits and pieces coming his way.

He is riding an ending spiral. The lights in the room are lit, but he can’t see anything. He is blinded by the sight. His heart is like a window pane after a rain shower, smeared by raindrops, which eventually leave behind the smear marks.

It is no one’s fault. The seats were already taken when he wished to sit. He doesn’t mind standing, as long as there is someone standing by him.

In his head there are only echoes and remains. of friends and lovers, as if they really made his day someday.

He writes to be reached, but the lines are down always.

The Breakup

Snap out of it as soon as possible. Not worth bursting your hearts and brains about it.

The car is in full speed when the blue truck in front suddenly breaks, the trailer behind it turning clockwise, threatening to strike the car out. She breaks hard, and decides to take the car off the highway, into the fields, turning hard to the left. She feels a solid jerk as the car hits the ditch. She misses the sweeping truck by inches; it hits the van that was traveling just ahead of her, the metal making a sad and friction noise, accompanied by the ugly screeching of breaks. Then there is silence. And smoke. She is in a corn field, her rear view mirror showing the metal carnage behind.

She is still, her heart pounding like a hydraulic drill. But she is stable, not trembling. She gets out of the car. The sun is low to the left of her, where the road meets the horizon. From the look of it, it seems no lives might be lost here. A lot of damage to the vehicles.

She is thinking about the fight...or ‘discussion as he preferred calling it. A break up is a break up... no denying its aftershocks. She felt as if it all had been a big deception. NOW it made all sense – just too good to have been true anytime during its two years existence. She never thought he was capable of such a deceit. A lot of other men would have loved her more...and true

“Aap OK hai, ma’m?”

A constable is asking her, from a patrolling jeep that happened to be passing by. His partner is helping the guy from the van.

“I’m fine”

He comes closer and examines her, then the car. The Mini seems in a good condition.

Just the god damned icing on the cake. What a way to get him out of my mind. What a nice accident! No loss of life, just an interruption in the everyday mundane life.

The traffic is mounting on the road, the hint of an inevitable traffic jam. One more police jeep arrives; she hears a cry of sirens getting closer – an ambulance perhaps.

The evening is nice. A cool breeze accompanies the golden sunlight. She feels thrilled. At the expense of some broken bones of complete strangers! The thought brings a smile to her face. Her long, auburn hair is looking like golden fiber optic. She hadn’t felt so relieved in days. And now, thinking about the past few minutes, she realizes that she could have been all but trapped inside the mangled remains of her car, her body twisted in weird shape, medics trying fruitlessly to get her back to breathing. Alright, what’s the big deal? It wasn’t an NDE. Being crippled, now that’s the worst thing. You’re still standing on two.

The truck is spilling beans, from a small slit door that has gotten opened. The beans are a kind she hasn’t seen before. She hears someone calling them oil seeds. The reason for the accident is a broken down Corolla. It has got a big dent on the behind, where the truck had thumped it. A woman is standing a few feet away from the car, with a baby in her arms. Her husband is on the phone, asking for a replacement vehicle.

“Abe car ki wat lag gayi hai, mai jinda hu yahi badi baat hai. Car bhej de...koi bhi bhej yaar, ye saala meeting crucial hai”

“Send me yours then! Just send me a car, any car. I’m at...”

There is space enough only for a single car to pass by, where the truck has come to rest on the road. Its trailer is bent and overturned on its side, blocking the entire left side of the road.

She is still on the Expressway, two hours after the accident, when the crane arrives. An hour later, the road is back to its ‘express’ state.

As she gets in the driver seat, she gets this jolt of relief, a moment of pure joy, almost orgasmic in its nature! She is smiling.

She feels free, away from all that was binding, all that maligned her heart, she feels like a phoenix, rising up and away from the ashes of afflicting memories...she is no more capsizing...it’s a new day for her, the night is no more dark.

As she enters the sleeping city, she knows the day would be one of the loveliest ever.