If it is Monday, then it is time to segue back in to Sepia timepassing gently. After all, you’ve had quite the weekend, I’m sure. Exercise your commenting skillz by playing the caption game! Don’t you know that working out without a proper warm-up isn’t wise? π
Many thanks to Paul, who guaranteed we’d be able to play today by sending in this tip (“a great candidate for a caption contest”); if any of you spot similarly interesting, “Brown” photographs, pass them along! This picture accompanied an article, some of which is available after the jump.
So, just what is going on here? I’m sure that a few of you already know (and may have witnessed the spectacle yourselves!), but if you don’t recognize the hotstepping, here’s the relatively-somber caption the L.A. Times gave this image:
A Pakistani guard, left, and an Indian counterpart march during a nightly border-closing ceremony. ItΓ’β¬β’s an elaborate, almost comical, show of martial bravado and chest-puffing that has gone on for nearly 60 years. [LAT]
Not sure how to play? Peep these previous editions of captioning fun: Ondhu, Eradu, Mooru, Naal’ku, Aydhu, Aaru, EyLu…
WAGAH CROSSING, INDIA-PAKISTAN BORDER — If nations rose and fell according to their camp quotient and funny hats, then these rivals would still be locked in a total stalemate.
Who doesn’t love CAMP!
Most every evening for nearly 60 years, a peculiar ritual has unfolded here on what has been one of the world’s hottest borders. As twilight approaches and the gates are about to close between India and Pakistan, the guards on either side face off in an elaborate show of martial bravado and chest-puffing that nonetheless includes that most basic of fraternal gestures: the handshake.
Hundreds of spectators from both countries cheer as their men in uniform strut, goose-step and stamp their feet like impatient bulls. Individual guards on either side break ranks and power-walk toward one another as if to collide head-on, but stop just short of the line dividing their homelands and glower fiercely through their mustaches.
I’m rather anti-facial hair, which makes me a bad Malayalee, but I must say, the final five words of that quote almost make me appreciate a good meesha. π
Patriotic songs boom through loudspeakers as the national flags are lowered at exactly the same speed and the gates finally swing shut.
Would that the craptastic filmi dances one has to sit through at every single “community” event were as well-coordinated. If you want to imitate Bollywood, do it properly and don’t be THAT girl who’s constantly two beats behind. Especially during the turns or the dramatic sinking to the floor. It looks awful. Take a lesson from the glowering moustaches, ladkis.
The tightly choreographed ceremony is part colonial pomp, part macho posturing and part Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks. The rowdy tourist crowds eat it up.
If you ask me, there isn’t enough Monty Python in the world. Jai Hind! Er…and…Pakistan.
“Everything was just perfect,” Rajat Kalia, an electrical engineer who lives in Delhi, said after a recent viewing. “It’s impressive.”
It is also, of course, a manifestation of a very real rivalry that has produced three bloody wars since the twin birth of India and Pakistan in 1947.
For half an hour each evening at sunset, the decades of enmity are sublimated in a mostly good-natured, almost comical competition between the men in black, wearing headgear with fantails of the same color (Pakistan); and the men in khaki, whose hats are adorned with scarlet fantails (India).
They set up bleachers for this. They even have MCs to get the crowd hyped. No word on whether anyone does the wave or if either side is subjected to that stupid “right side/left side/who is louder?” game.
…Kalia, the engineer, found the event a good-humored, patriotic bit of fun, a friendly contest between two rival nations over pomp and circumstance. It wasn’t a competition in which national pride and prestige were really on the line.
“If it’s cricket,” he said, “then it’s a completely different feeling.” [LAT]
::
Silly title courtesy of this annoying joint. Like you didn’t know.
vaaaaaaaat? where is the sense in that?
SkepMod, you seem to have hit two extreme dialects! Generally “standard” Tamil (kodunthamizh) is often held to be the Tamil spoken by educated non-Brahmins in the Madurai area with influence from the Thanjavur dialect. [Harold Schiffman, “Standardization or restandardization: The case for Γ’β¬ΛStandardΓ’β¬β’ Spoken Tamil”. Language in Society 27 (1998), pp. 359Γ’β¬β385]. “Standard” government-speak of course is the literary variant (senthamizh), which nobody speaks unless they want to get strange looks.
you NKOW the school admin that came up with that is a little drty…
Indian to the Pakistani “While we stroke our imaginary dicks, mine is apparently bigger than yours”
Didn’t Puli go to school here? Which would make the hentai-look far more possible? π
In the spirit of 84 (for which many thanks, Girish):
“Ek, doh, teen chaar, Beta bano hoshiyaar; Paanch, cheh, saath, aath, Teray sar par mayri laath!” π
yes. that is what i was secretly hoping and praying for my entire adolescent life.
pingpong – would the thanjavur dialect extend to mayavaram? i had a tamil professor who spoke somewhat odd tamil…
Puli was hoping and praying for a hentai-look?
A hentai I-banker is a little disturbing.
well whoever came up with those rules, we surely aren’t complaining!
d00d. you should’ve been born of my generation. girls in my high school were wearing itty bitty ruffle skirts, and dressing up as britney spears and tom cruise circa Risky Business for halloween, in the 10th grade. we are the ones, after all, who popularized the term ‘whale tail.’ (sigh)
I would say it does – the whole of the northern Kaveri delta area should not be different from Thanjavur: Mayavaram, Chidambaram, Sirkazhi, Poompuhar should all be the same. But I don’t have a reference for this.
now i feel like a decrepit old dinosaur.
Madness?!? This is SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
As opposed to a vibrant young dinosaur? π
when i was in high school, the french maid outfit was all the rage (much to my delight)
“do my modaks look big in these pants?”
I’ll spare the other uncool kids the effort of looking it up, since only one of us should have to (nerds are efficient like that):
whale tail– the whale tail is the shape formed when a g-string rides up high over a womans trousers [UD]
thanks.
Caption: “Scissor brothers?”
Alternate caption: Sure, we’ve had our spats in the past.
Also, here’s where my priorities lie– to me, a “whale tail” will always be what’s on the ass of a ’75 Carrera. That’s the only way I’ve ever used the term.
Thank you anna, UD being blocked at work, I was looking at other googleable sources, though wiki has some graphic detail…..
Bah, even with cars you only look at their kundis.
/runs away
π
Whenever I put up a caption post, I’m hoping someone will reference that. Makes me laugh, every time.
So many of us searching the web for “whale tail”, all because of one comment (#111). We are all old, I say.
Speaking of #111, I still don’t know who dressed like a pantsless Tom Cruise. And how is a pantsless Tom Cruise different from a regular guy without pants?
Man, if I’d have known THIS was what the uniforms were gonna look like, I never would have tried out for Kickline…
Why you are running?
a) I’m a cripple so I couldn’t catch you even if I wanted to
b) ITA with what you typed! The rear of a car is just as important aesthetically as the front.
To quote a great philosopher, I ain’t mad atcha. π
Huh, a mustache statement. People would immediately guess I am a foreigner in mallu land thanks to the lack of a germ trap above my lips.
“Due to budget cuts Indian & Pakistani forces are now reduced to unarmed combat”
You have to be exactly 4 feet tall to be TC. That is the difference.
and a douche.
exacty. its an excuse to not wear pants. haloween has always been a $exually charged holiday.
Didn’t you say you were out of the ace bandages?
I mixed up parallel threads and ended up with Indian & Pakistani soldiers in hentai outfits trying out for Kickline. Now I need bleach for my brain.
Follies ke peechhe kya hai.
Ouch. Nice one! Un”armed” indeed.
hee. now i shall send you on a mad search for the meaning of the term ‘muffintop.’ just to show you what kids today are like.
Puppeteer goes mad.
Pre-empting this one: the Whale Tail article on Wikipedia already has this: the bulge of flesh spilling out the top of low-rise jeans.
Ha. THAT one I know. Go me. π Er, maybe not…that confirms that I spend too much time watching style network.
“They don’t have homes, they don’t have jobs, what do they need the top of the muffin for?” Try to guess before you click, will ya.[link]
114: Thats my Dorky Myspace Caption 129: LMAO..Good One!!
thnx to SM, I now know what whale-tail and muffintop men…. I heart SM!
If I were still on MyAss (vs. FB, which I lurve), I’d totally want to be your friend, just for that.
THIS. IS. SPARTAAAAAA! π
speaking of muffins…
“Breaking News: Dance off used to decide location of Line Of Control between India & Pakistan. “
I jsut want to comment that nala is very energetic
haha.. what? i’m not energetic, i’m ‘working on a paper’
research paper?
hm? what difference does it make? ..it’s obviously not getting done either way, haha
is that what kids are callin it these days?