Monday, July 19, 2010

Homely vs. Ugly

I am a member of my company's Toastmasters club which is a platform for developing speaking, and leadership skills. If you think you can talk and command others well, you can always take to providing finding faults in the name of "constructive feedback" to those who are practicing it.

Anyway, in one of the meetings, a speaker used the phrase "a homely girl" intending to mean "a girl-next-door". The speech evaluator took the stage after the speech and said "The word homely is a commonly misused word among Indians. Homely actually means ugly." Then he almost landed himself in a soup while trying to explain the roots of the word. He said "The word is used to say that the girl is better of staying at home than coming out in public". While the male section of the crowed started laughing heartily, the female section started blinked with an uneasy smile on their face clearly trying to swallow their words of retribution. But one of them was in a mood to spit it all out. "Why is it only for girls?" she exclaimed and now the guys shut up and the girls were smiling glad that one of them went after the guys! The speech evaluator threw his hands up and could only make funny faces in defense not knowing what to say to get out of the Amazon's attack. Then in a flash of a second, one guy from the crowed answered.

"Oh be glad that girls have a euphemism. Guys are just plain ugly"

And now the laugh was louder and evenly participated. The speech evaluator was relieved but still had a foolish smile on his face!

Thursday, July 15, 2010

World of an Indian Cartoonist

I have been following the blog "World of an Indian Cartoonist", the blog of a self-taught cartoonist whose has seen good reception recently. His recent cartoon on the world record setting tennis match between two unknowns in the Wimbledon is specifically very funny. Posting it here with due credits!