Story of A Strange Car

           

Awesome Story of a Strange Car

         

              

             Way back in 1968, I remember having seen a Walt Disney film, called 'The Love Bug'; it was about an almost human Volkswagen Beetle, named 'Herbie'. This small racing car has a mind of its own and it displays both human qualities like wisdom, love and compassion as well as human weaknesses like greed, hatred, jealousy and uncontrollable anger!  This personification of inanimate objects, called "anthromorphism" is not something new; it is a well established device used from ancient times in our children's stories like Aesop's Fables, Jataka Tales and Panchatantra, which used animal characters such as the wiley fox, the proud lion etc to teach small children basic working principles of living in our day-to-day life. The early cartoon films also had talking, rather thinking animals such as Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry etc., who generally behaved like grown-up adults and sometimes even philosophised like learned men of yore ! 

           Then there was another Hollywood film in the eightees, which was about a black Mercedes car that goes berserk with thoughts of 'revenge' and like a diabolical villain, found in most films those days, it launches itself into a mad spree of murder and mayhem culminating finally in all round chaos and destruction. I don't remember the name of the film, though. But, it forms the source of inspiration for my short fantacy : "Confessions of a Derelict Car" which follows. 

            Actually, some guys probably spend so much more time and money on their cars than on the wife that, I suspect, the machine starts to think it is somebody !

         Whoever said that driving a car is a drab, mundane activity should read all the jokes in  "Humour in Driving"  and he will find that it can still elicit a few laughs. But, for some reasons, the gentlemen seem to prefer blondes -- I mean the lady drivers --- at the butt end of  their 'driving jokes'. When a lady gets behind the wheel, she invariably drives either her car into a jam or her poor unsuspecting man into matrimony as happens in my next short story, "Pallu gets a Driving License" !

          Last but not the least, please don't miss the subtle sense of humour of our friend, Dr. C. Manohar in his latest funny, little 'byte' called "Gammat Rao stands for Election" 

Happy Reading !

  

Vasant Hattanagdi

P.S. : A NEW LOOK for TENSHOPS'  BLOG
          You must have noticed the new look of  Tenshops' Blog , which can now be viewed in seven different ways. The default view is called the "Sidebar"; the other options can be selected by clicking on "Sidebar" in the left-hand corner of the header bar at the top and then clicking on any of the options that appear in a drop-down menu as follows :

• Classic:       A modern twist on a traditional template
• Flipcard:     Photos tiled across the page
• Magazine:  A clean, elegant editorial style layout
• Mosaic:      A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
• Sidebar:     An email Inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
• Snapshot:  An interactive pinboard of your posts
• Timeslide:  A horizontal view of your posts by time period

You can always return to the 'Default' view by clicking on "Home" in the Header Bar.
Dynamic Views make it easier to read your favorite blog. Better yet, you can now read old posts written long ago that you may have missed so far. 

***************************