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Showing posts from August, 2020

When my mother was once a smuggler

This is an old joke the generation  that was born after 1970 may not know–An Englishman, a Frenchman, a German and an Indian were asked to study the Elephant and write an essay on it. The Englishman came up with one page write up  titled "Elephant Hunting", the Frenchman came up with four pages titled "The Love Life of Elephants", the German wrote ten pages for his "An Introduction to a Complete Study of Elephants" and the Indian came up with a forty pages long  "The Elephant Act (Regulation and Control). In early 1980s, when R Venkataraman was Finance Minister in the Indira Gandhi cabinet, in one of the receptions by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, this joke was told to him and his response sought. He replied, "Maybe the Indian was studying Rogue elephants" with equal chutzpah. You can have a good laugh except for the fact that the joke was actu