“Do you know me?”

Much as I dislike people forwarding me jokes, I’m going to make an exception for this one. I got it in an e-mail dated Monday, 16 July, 2007 10:57 AM from a long-lost family friend. He happened to find me after a long separation via ‘Pop Goes the Slop’. The reason for making an exception with it is that it made me think of Seinfeld and Larry Richards. Here it is, warts and all.

Lawyers should never ask a Southern grandma a question if they aren't prepared for the answer.

In a trial, a Southern small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness, a grandmotherly, elderly woman to the stand.

He approached her and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know me?"

She responded, "Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I've known you since you were a young boy, and frankly, you've been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, and you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a big shot when you haven't the brains to realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you."

The lawyer was stunned! Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know the defense attorney?"

She again replied, "Why, yes, I do. I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. He's lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. He can't build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is one of the worst in the entire state. Not to mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. One of them was your wife. Yes, I know him."

The defense attorney almost died.

The judge asked both counselors to approach the bench and, in a very quiet voice, said, "If either of you idiots asks her if she knows me, I'll send you to the electric chair."

I rest my case.

The Crossing.

You don’t come across many of them anymore in Mumbai, I guess. Railway crossings, I mean. When I was a child, I used to be taken in the Mankar family car to Antop Hill, Wadala, for Ganapati darshan. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/08/family-car.html. That was in the late forties and early fifties. We had to wait at two railway crossings to reach the Hill. Mostly, it was for a local train to pass. Sometimes, a lot of shunting used to go on because of goods trains proceeding to or from the BPT warehouses abutting the Mumbai Docks. My cousin, Nalini, married into the Jayakar family lived on the Hill (the rest of the Jayakars still continue to live there) in a sprawling house. The last time I went there as an adult was in the early nineties to attend my cousin’s funeral. By then, the railway crossings were long gone, replaced by a flyover. There was no waiting, no delay. The reason for the nostalgia for the railway crossing is because of a 1990 Australian movie I saw yesterday on the Pix channel. Hugely underrated, unpretentious (it doesn’t even pretend it isn’t a movie) and slow-moving, it somehow managed to grab my attention and interest. It has a very young Russell Crowe as Johnny, the best friend of the arty Sam. Johnny ends up with Meg, the girl whom Sam had deserted. Meg agrees to marry Johnny the very night Sam returns to the village of his birth after an absence of a year and a half. Set in the fifties or sixties (I reckon), it has small-town parades and car races on freeways for spectacle as well as the heartbreak of young love. To save the girl and her betrothed, Sam sacrifices his own life at the crossing. No hamming, no melodrama. Just the irony of random happenstance. Excellent. A serendipitous discovery for me. I thought the use of the long shot as an alienating device was brilliant. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099323/plotsummary. By the way, the movie taglines are: “A time for dreams... A time for choices... A time that would never come again.” And: “Where destiny meets desire.” A bit too over the top for the way the movie happens to be, if you ask me. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099323/taglines. P.S.: One railway crossing in Mumbai that, I know, is still alive and kicking is the one near Andheri Station at Amboli close to which in the Vikas Towers I own a flat.

The Pandora’s Box you walk into.

This is a memory, circa 2003. On the way to a restaurant near home, we happened to step into what l later realised was a compact, made-in-India version of the American dime (nickel-and-dime/five-and-ten) store situated next doors. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth Edition, 2000) defines this originally small-town phenomenon pioneered by FW Woolworth in 1879 [http://www.bartleby.com/61/41/F0154100.html] as “a retail store selling a wide variety of inexpensive articles”. My dime store had all kinds of glittering and seemingly useful stuff selling at Rs.49/-, Rs.99/- and Rs.149/-. We even did a wee bit of shopping there. It also stocked, I noticed, made-in-plastic replicas of what could have passed for ‘Depression Glass Objects’ (1920-1950) and made the originators proud. http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/athome/1920/objects/1depression.htm. Déjà-vu, any one? Then, I found this bit of Dime Store Math at http://www.tlsbooks.com/dsmath.htm: “You are the owner of the biggest dime store in your town. You purchase your merchandise in large quantities, then repack the items in small packages for your customers. Using the information provided in each box, calculate how many packages will be available to your customers.” Also, when you are in a poetic mood, do read five and dime store dreams by Larry Jaffe. It begins with “i grew up with woolworths / and kresges / five & dime stores” explaining the passion thus: “cause everything / was supposed to be / on the cheap” http://www.funkydogpublishing.com/larryjaffe-fiveanddimestore.html. Larry’s heart was never in the American Way (“… bomb scare drills / way before terrorism was born / … we fought the commie scourge / fear of being nuked / fallout shelters the rage / and then we raged / through 60's hoopla / warring factions of peace”) as we realise by his admission right at the tail of his little stinger: “but my heart resided / in that 5 & dime / where peace was affordable”.