Punjab Beat

No sneezing please
A house of cards ten storeys high?! The steady-handed young Ankit Sharma has built one. Ankit, a Class VII student of the Sector 41 Shivalik Public School, used 195 playing cards and thoughtfully sent Mehitabel of himself and his delicate construction.

Overheard
At one of the cinema halls in Sector 17 during a night show an usher warned a couple guys away from a toilet door: quot;No, no this toilet is meant for ladies.quot;

quot;No problem,quot; retorted one youth, quot;We8217;re meant for them too.quot;

Incidentally, no women were present in the cinema hall.

Brashtachaar
How to tackle corruption? It8217;s a perennial question evoking varied answers but recently former CBI director Joginder Singh put forward an idea to Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. quot;Wherever a new project is initiated put up a huge notice board,quot; Joginder said. quot;It should mention all details about the project acirc;euro;ldquo; total cost, date of commencement, time frame and completion date, name of the officer in charge, name of the person to whom any complaint regarding the project can be directed.quot;

Badal thought about it for a moment and then remarked: quot;Corruption is so prevalent that somebody will walk off with the notice board itselfquot;.

Any more ideas?
Corruption, they say, is a population-related problem 8230; and that8217;s surely true enough if the events of the World Population Day run organised by the Sports Department are taken into account.

It was decided that all participants be provided with refreshments after the run at the Sector 46 stadium. Coupons were distributed before the event began. And later, refreshments were distributed after the race against these of these coupons.

Some smarts alecs however, got more than their due. They had managed to get their coupons photocopied during the run.

Fluorescent frogs
Fluorescent yellow is quite the in colour this summer but who could ever imagine that frogs kept up to date with fashion! Certainly the sight of dozens of big, bright yellow frogs took Reet Singh and her colleagues at the CII headquarters by surprise. Reet rushed for her camera and captured this lemony yellow croaker on film.

Are these special frogs with a special name? Do they come out every year? Mehitabel can8217;t remember seeing anything like em.

Exasperation
This is the story of a letter. On January 1 this year, J. Bhalla neatly and clearly wrote out his relative8217;s full address on a letter, pasted two Re-1 stamps and posted it at his local post office in Panchkula. Instead of the relative8217;s reply, he got his own letter back on January 17, with no word of explanation as to why the missive was not delivered.

Bhalla thought that he would get to the bottom of the matter and approached the Senior Superintendent of Posts, Ambala Division. Weeks passed and nothing was heard until April 2 when the office wrote to Bhalla directing him to submit the original letter.More weeks passed and on June 2, he got another letter from the superintendent8217;s office, which Bhalla describes as full of cuttings and overwriting and a very poor reflection on the writer8217;s ability to communicate.

This letter states, quite stating quite apropos of nothing quot;The article in question was an ordinary onea. No record of the same was kept during the course of its transmission. Its final disposal could not be verified.quot;

Bhalla has been fuming ever since he got it and concludes his tale by indignantly asking quot;what8217;s the postal service coming to!quot; Actually, what with the strike dragging on and on, a lot of people are asking that question.

Disgusting
A reader, quot;reluctant to take a pangaquot; but riled enough to want to do something, sends in a story about revolting bet and it8217;s outcome. Here8217;s her story: quot;A group of sweepers routinely gather behind the Sector 20 dispensary in the afternoon to drink,quot; she says. quot;One afternoon we heard more noise than usual and went out to find that they had cornered a street dog and were going after it with sticks. They went on beating until they had killed the animal.

quot;There was no question of going to the dog8217;s rescue 8212; who wants to get involved with a bunch of drunk ruffians? But next day, we asked one of them what it was all about. He told us that one of them had bet a bottle that the others couldn8217;t kill the dog. He was very proud of winning the bet and thought he8217;d done something really great. Imagine having to put up with this kind of thing going on just next door. quot;I hate drunks and I hate violence perpetrated on any creature even a dog. Isn8217;t there a law against this kind of thing.

quot;There sure is, lady. You should have called the cops when all the ruckus was going on. Among other things, the drunks could have been booked for violating the law against cruelty to animals.

Moved out
While the animals and birds who once inhabited the Mini Zoo next to the Punjab Raj Bhawan were shifted about nine months ago, the Administration is yet to remove the signboard on the road indicating the position of the zoo. A little effort, perhaps, would reduce the visitors8217; dissappointment who enter the place thinking that there would be animals inside.

Nazar-e-inayat
When Surinder Singh, a retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, published a book of Urdu poetry a couple years back the quot;pricequot; quoted on the book was quot;aap ki dua-e-khairquot;. It seems that he received what he asked for since he has just brought out another book, Chand Aur Valvale. The price of this volume is quot;aap ke nazar-e-inayatquot;. This book not only contains his own verse but glimpses of Urdu poetic treasures culled from all the well known poets of the region. The writer, whose takhalas is Be-sabar, has also written several collections of short stories in English.

Dr Laxmi Narain Sharma, of Panjab University released the book at a small function on Saturday. The book is available to all who enjoy Urdu poetry. Contact Justice Surinder Singh at 8, Sector 2 quot;at reasonable timings, pleasequot;.

Bail, bail, bail 8230;
Last Friday was a wet and worrisome day for everyone but particularly for some residents of Mohali8217;s Phases V and III-B2. As rain run-off failed to run off thanks to the clogged drainage system, those living in low-lying areas had to scramble to get furniture and appliances above water-level. The Fire Birgade came to the rescue and laboured five hours to drained away the water.

And just where were the MC officials all this time? One thing is sure: they didn8217;t dare show their faces in Five and Three-Be-Two where folks were ready to mop the floor with em.

Stormy Friday
The photograph that accompanies this edition of Cityscape is ample evidence of storm fury. The jhuggis seen in the background seem to be far enough away from the rushing waters but one can easily imagine some labourer8217;s child venturing too near the stream and being swept away.