More Toon

Toon's a great guy to travel with on the train to work. His knowledge is vast and his interests are eclectic. He can talk about any subject under the sky. Or for that matter any above the sky. Or anything in between. You get the point. He is very knowledgeable about most things; about things he doesn't know he is very ingenious. Either way, he has a lot to say. The one time he can bore you, though, is when the conversation is about cars. He can make you want to jump out of the window when he starts to talk, for instance, about the "continuously variable transmission on the ML 350". Of course, like the true car connoisseur, he is on a 'first name' intimacy with most cars. So if you don't realise that by ML 350, he means the Mercedes Benz ML 350, he has a look of disgust handy. He rattles on about the new innovations, compares them with those on other cars, all the while making you feel, alternately, stupid and irritated. He's like Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, but without the charm. Ah! Mona Lisa Vito, my longest lasting celebrity crush, one that lasted till I saw Tomei again in The Guru. But I'm digressing...

A thing you can't help noticing about Toon is the way he ends every other sentence with a 'la'. I'm not new to these filler noises. Aren't we all familiar with the "What's up YAAR"? If you grew up in Bangalore, you are likely to have used "da" (as in "keep quiet da") or "man" ("come here man") or the very exotic "maam" ("chumma give it maam") depending on whether you went to a school in the cantonment, in malleswaram or in frazer town respectively. Now I add 'la' to my repertoire. It works like this (if you are planning a trip to malaysia you might want to take notes): if you end up saying anything regrettable or offensive, just put a 'la' at the end. Whether you say "you are a son of a bitch" or " you are a son of a bitch la" could mean the difference between you getting a sock in the face or receiving a nice cordial laugh.