My mother is a Dinosaur

This is an interesting episode which I feel like sharing with friends on my blog. Recently, I called up an old friend, Dolly, who stays in another city, to wish her on her birthday. She narrated an incident about her 6 year old daughter which was very entertaining, to say the least.

Her daughter, Siya, had been enrolled for Odissi classes (Indian classical dance form). It was her first day at the dance class and there were two other girls in her batch. The teacher asked each one of the three girls what their mothers did for a living. The first girl replied that her mother was a designer, the second girl said hers was a furniture dealer. It was Siya’s turn and she replied, “My mother is a DINOSAUR!”

The teacher was taken aback by the answer, and she asked Siya why she thought her mother was a dinosaur. Pat came the rely “Because she screams at me all day!”

Children sure are creative!

The trouble with Life

The trouble with life is there's no background music

Simple thoughts-Desparate situation

This is an incident from my childhood when I was 7 years of age. It was one hot summer afternoon when I returned home crying. The reason was that I was slapped and beaten that day, by my neighbor and friend, Bobby, who was also of the same age, but was much shorter in height.

I expected sympathy from my parents for having been beaten and roughed up. I was in for a rude shock. My father could not take the fact that I was physically overpowered by a smaller boy. To add insult to injury, I was thrown out of the house with instructions from my father that I would be allowed to enter the house provided I go and thrash the boy who had beaten me. I was in a double-dilemma. Problem number one was how to beat Bobby, as he was stronger than me. The other problem was how to secure a passage back home if I was not to beat Bobby.

I found solace when I narrated my woes to our next door neighbor, a fine lady who offered me some fruits, and then took me back home. She spoke to my father, and convinced him not to put a small child through such a tight spot. My father agreed and I could heave a sigh of relief!

A few years later, when I was about 13 or 14, I took my revenge when I had a quarrel with the same boy, Bobby, which resulted in a fight, and I gave him a neat thrashing. Needless to say, I had my father in mind, when all hell broke loose on the poor guy.

Positive thoughts-Dream More

Photograph of Merry-go-round at a fair in Bombay, India

A Murder or a Suicide?

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS President Dr Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death.

Here is the Case:
On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head.
Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.


"Ordinarily," Dr Mills continued, "A person, who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide." That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.
In the room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun.
The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr. Opus. When one intends to kill subject "A" but kills subject "B" in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject "B".
When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant and both said that they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her.
Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, if the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident.
It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother.Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn't actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed hat the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself, so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.