Sunday, 22 December 2024
Sunday, 22 December 2024
The ganja boys at the Kerala narcotics office
A Kerala schoolboy group’s adventure to smoke a joint took a tragicomic turn – tragic for them, comic for others – when they ended up at the wrong joint.
The group of higher secondary students from Thrissur had gone for an excursion with their teachers. And they had a nefarious plan – as adolescent boys often do. They planned to smoke up – not the easily available cancer stick but the bidi stuffed with cannabis variety.
Blissfully unaware, the students walked into Munnar’s excise department office of all places and asked an official for a matchbox to light their bidi stuffed with ganja aka cannabis aka marijuana.
What followed was a chase and our ganja boys being caught, of course.
The excise department charged two of the students under the dreaded Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. The rest were counselled and sent back with their teachers.
It was definitely an educational trip for them.
Uttar Pradesh lesson: KYC means know your contract (killer)
The term KYC – know your customer – has become ubiquitous for financial transactions in India. Whether you want to open a bank account or a SIP fund, there’s no escaping the KYC. And the story of Alka from Uttar Pradesh shows that KYC is needed even when hiring a contract killer.
The story started eight months ago in Uttar Pradesh’s Jasrathpur, around 234 km west of the state capital Lucknow.
Alka’s daughter eloped with her lover, Akhilesh. Alka filed a police complaint. The cops arrested Akhilesh. He was let out of jail two months ago. Alka then sent her daughter to her maternal home in Farrukhabad, 55 km away.
So far, so Bollywood. But then the story turned from a Subhash Ghai romance to an Anurag Kashyap thriller.
Alka’s daughter fell in love again. This time with a man named Subhash. Everyone could have lived happily hereafter, but Alka held a grudge. Not against Akhilesh or Subhash, though; she hadn’t yet digested her daughter’s audacity.
Alka hired a contract killer for Rs 50,000 to murder her daughter. The hitman had solid credentials; he had just been released from jail after serving a 10-year sentence.
Alka brought her daughter back from her maternal home on September 27 and handed her over to the contract killer, according to the cops.
The twist in the tale: The contract killer was Subhas, the latest love interest of Alka’s daughter.
The killer and the daughter then together strangled Alka dead.
Like all crime stories, it ended badly for the criminals. They were caught. No one lived happily ever after.
If only Alka had done her KYC.
Cheeta, cheeta, cheeta, aja, aja, aja
Three men in Madhya Pradesh last Sunday gave a big-cat twist to the Hindi idiom Aa bail mujhe maar [come, bull, gore me].
Nitin Samdariya, 35, an assistant sub inspector of police in Shahdol, Akash Kushwaha, 23, and Nandini Singh, 25 had gone for a picnic. What happened next was revealed in a video that has had the Internet doubting Darwin’s law of survival of the fittest. As in, if they can survive, anyone can.
The trio spotted a leopard. They also thought it would be a good idea to call it closer, like you would a pet cat or puppy. What could go wrong, right?
“Aaja, aaja [come, come],” they are heard saying on video.
You can’t really blame them. It was their shot at 15-second stardom; another group was filing the stunt for “content”.
The three heroes continued their taunts till the leopard slowly emerged from behind the bushes. Undeterred, our brave reel stars continued their “aaja, aaja.”
A voice of reason was heard pleading for our heroes to stop, but laughter submerged reason.
Jump cut. And the leopard charged towards the people. Cue for a small stampede.
But even the fastest human on the planet, Usain Bolt, who runs at 43.9 kmph, is slower than a leopard that can run up to 57. 9 kmph.
The three heroes survived, though not at their fittest after the mauling, as the leopard sprinted away when charged at by a crowd.
The storm chasers of Malda
Giving close competition to the leopard lovers from Madhya Pradesh were the calamity chasers from Malda, Bengal.
As cyclone Dana approached with swirling winds and torrential rains, most people were wisely taking shelter, following the precautions advised by officials. But for these intrepid residents from Malda, the cyclone was an event they simply had to witness firsthand.
Packing their bags with all the essentials (phone cameras, snacks, and a lot of curiosity), a group of around 20 travelled over 500 km and reached a coastal area in south Bengal, ready to experience nature's fury up close.
Birdbrains of a feather, flock together. Like, what could go wrong again, right?
Dodging officials and volunteers and slipping through barricades, the calamity chasers managed to find their way to the restricted zones, undeterred by warnings and the visible storm clouds rolling in.
One of them cheerfully explained their mission to a television reporter: “We have come to see what the cyclone is, how it will happen.”
There can be no argument against such pursuit of knowledge, we guess.
Why you shouldn’t have macaroni on Karwa Chauth
Shortly after breaking her Karwa Chauth fast – that married women especially in north India observe to pray for the long life of their husbands – a woman in Uttar Pradesh fed her husband macaroni.
The picture of domestic bliss turned into a horror movie as Shailesh Kumar, the hubby, fell seriously sick. He was rushed to hospital.but died during treatment.
And in a video that he reportedly recorded before dying, Shailesh accused his wife of poisoning him.
It was the macaroni!
Only one question remains unclear in the incident that happened in Kaushambi. If she was going to kill him, why did she observe the fast?
We have all heard of people getting angry when hungry. Was she building up her anger? Maybe we’ll never know.
