A sting in his letters

In spite of his hectic political schedule,senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh manages to take out time to write letters.

In spite of his hectic political schedule,senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh manages to take out time to write letters. Only,he writes them to political adversaries like CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan or state BJP President Prabhat Jha. He recently wrote to Jha recalling how the latter tailed former CM Arjun Singh for personal favours when he (Jha) was a journalist in the 1980s. Singh had earlier questioned Jhas aukat to criticise Arjun Singh which prompted Jha to write a letter to him. In his rejoinder,Digvijay Singh stuck by his allegation and said that the Urdu term translated as capacity in English. He also went on to rake up Jhas appointment as state chief for which senior BJP leader Sumitra Mahajan had been a major contender,driving a wedge between the two BJP men.

Bhopals psychic ox

Psychic Octopus Paul may have retired from the limelight with the conclusion of the football World Cup but he seems to have unwittingly made way for an ox in Bhopal on the eve of the final match. A publicity-hungry group of people decked up the bovine and took it to New Market,one of the busiest localities in the city to get it to predict the result of the final. After he was shown the flags of Spain and The Netherlands,the two World Cup finalists,the ox went on to pick the Spain flag but not before much coaxing. To buttress its claim to fame in front of tv cameras,the animal was also asked to locate a television journalists wallet kept in someone elses pocket. The ox once again played successfully to the gallery by nodding in the right direction.

Saying his piece

An IAS officer on the verge of retirement has given bureaucrats something to smile about. Posted with the Revenue Board,the senior officer wrote to collectors and divisional commissioners recommending that they wear kurta-pyjama or dhoti-kurta once a week for the sake of tradition and for the welfare of weavers. The 1973 batch officer is not authorised to issue any such directive but given his seniority he is not likely to be questioned,particularly since he is on the verge of retirement. He went a step further and also put forward the strange suggestion of officers using oil instead of water while shaving. While most of his younger colleagues have ridiculed his suggestions,hes clearly had a chance to say his piece before his official stint is over.

The ice-cream cure

A simple helping of ice cream managed to save a marriage in Bhopal. A family court ordered a man to take his angry wife for an outing since that was the ground on which she had moved a divorce petition. The young woman had complained that the couple had been married for three years but that her husband had neglected her. She said that he never took her out,let aside get her ice cream which she craved for. The court ordered that he immediately take her to a good hotel,and later make it a practice three times a month. The apologetic husband took his wife to a swanky eatery and treated her to ice cream. While the outing cost him a pretty penny,it was a small price to pay to save his marriage.