A jholawala is someone who walks around with a jhola, which is a type of cloth bag, and exudes an air of artistic and literary erudition, with a distinct "son or daughter of the soil" vibe. This might include dressing up in a Kurtha Pyjama or at least wearing a kurtha shirt over jeans, along with sandals. The jhola itself may vary in look, feel, colour pattern, and size, ranging from Tibetan themes to the use of khadi.

A jholawala may be a JNU type, or, at best, a mystic; a JNU type is very likely to be a jholawala.

Vish means poison. Amrit means nectar. Vish Amrit is thus a game of poison and nectar, of good and bad, and is best played on a constricted playground such as a chath. One denner runs around catching people. Upon touching someone, the denner must yell "VISH!" which instantly freezes the hapless person, who has to stand still and hold the pose. His or her teammates must liberate them by touching them and yelling "AMRIT!" Of course, they must do this before the denner touches them and freezes them. The denner thus doles out poison, attempting to freeze the entire gaggle of screaming prey. Heroes exist who must resist capture, doling out nectar. The game ends when the denner freezes the lot.

The chath is the roof of a house, which in apartment complexes is typically a large rectangular structure where you can run around or seek cool breezes to escape the stagnant heat of a summer night (especially during load shedding). It may even have a bathroom, featuring an Indian toilet, typically for the domestic help who come by to do jhaadu pocha in the flats of the apartment complex.

On the chath, children play many games, including Vish Amrit and Ice Pice. Clever and athletic denners can keep a large group of screaming children enthralled with the prospect of capture.

Then there's kite flying. This latter one can be of the harmless variety, where engsters gaze at the soaring kite on the end of a string, their uncles and fathers looking on with approval, or the less benign kind, involving a deel and manja and other chaths, engaged in chath-to-chath kite warfare across the neighborhood.

From your chath redoubt you can gaze safely out upon the busy urban landscape, contemplating electric wires (which may snag and dangerously end the aforementioned kite flying), the traffic, wildlife (including monkeys, crows, small worms in the tulsi plant, the occasional parrot, and sometimes a maimed mouse), and then the people themselves, who will appear multitudinous yet miniature, like toys.

Sometimes, it's possible to simply be born at the wrong time. Here, one doesn't mean born during the wrong era, though one can wish fervently that Brian Lara could have played in the era of T20 games and minted a fortune, or have competed more with Sachin Tendulkar for cricket glory. No, one means, say, that you were born on July 20, 1982 (Prince William) or November 1, 1973 (Aishwarya Rai). Timings are everything, whether we're talking about gents timings or ladies timings. You see, both Aishwarya Rai and Prince William are mangliks, born in the condition of Mangal Dosha, which is an astrological combination that occurs if Mars is in the 1st,2nd, 4th, 7th, 8th, or 12th house of the Vedic astrology Ascendant chart. Then, gone case only. This has been proved by Vedic Science.

If you are a manglik, the angry astral effects of Mars will, according to Vedic astrology, make you a terrible spouse. You will sow disharmony in your wake. Your husband or wife might die. You yourself are virtually a walking soocide case. But wait! All is not lost. There is a cure.

If you marry a tree first, such as a Peepal tree, and then have it cut, OR marry a matka and then have it broken, the ill effects of your astrally doomed birthday are negated. Or, if you marry another manglik, the negative vibes you both exert on each other will cancel each other out. One doesn't know how this works egjactly, but one supposes that two fiery Martians experience what one can only read about in books (see kamasutra for a brief overview).

So, to summarize: two mangliks in love? Good. One manglik loving a non-manglik? Sadly, this is a formula for lau failure, unless you first find an aboreal roadside romeo, marry your dau off to it, then kill the tree. It's complicated, but what to say? WALTO.

The Italian Job may refer to:

1. A complex relationship between India and Italy, beginning, shall we say, with the political leader of the Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, an Italian by birth. Many enthu cutlets are already up in arms about what it means to truly be Indian, and Sonia Gandhi herself has decided that she'll never be Prime Minister of India, no matter how well her party does. Still, Sonia's hand in Indian politics is sometimes wryly referred to as The Italian Job. At this stage, we can neither confirm nor deny that she is an avid user of Samosapedia.

Then, there's scandals in India in which the perpetrator is invariably an Italian, and is somehow allowed to go free. During the Bofors scandal, it was a gentleman by the name of Ottavio Quatrocchi, who had previously made millions due to his friendship with the Gandhi-Nehru family (Sonia's children and his children grew up together) in fertiliser contracts. He allegedly received crores of rupees in kick-backs for ensuring that Bofors landed the contract with the gorement. Add to this a shadowy international pursuit that fizzled out somewhere on the Argentina-Brazil border, and all the makings of a myth are in place. Mr. Q still goes free; his once frozen bank accounts got unfrozen, and millions were withdrawn. The Italian Job indeed.

More recently, two Italian marines shot some Indian fishermen, mistaking them for Somali pirates. They may have been full tight at the time, or they may have been running around on deck in sailor uniforms playing dishoom dishoom before bed. Nobody knows. They were arrested by the Indian Navy, but allowed to go free to vote in Italy, it simms, after telling Mother promise that they would return. The Italian ambassador to Delhi, Daniel Mancini, has been accused of doing bakwaas dipomacy, while the EU has accused India of doing dadagiri by restricting his movements. Yet another Italian Job.

Let us also not forget that Italian restaurants in India do extraordinarily well -- see also pappardelhi.

2. The Bollywood filim "Players" released in 2012, starring Abhishek Bachchan, which was an authorized remake of the Hollywood film, The Italian Job. It was a bit of a flop show, despite a very high budget.

The 26th of January is "Republic Day" in India, and generally is a day to commemorate the adoption of the Indian Constitution by the whole country on the same day in 1950. Much soul-searching still goes on about whether the ideals in the constitutional preamble are lived up to, 63 or so years later, but we leave that more complex discussion for other sofa sadhus. It's a public holiday, after all, so let's all chillax.

Republic Day is celebrated with great pomp in Dilli, where an impressive parade takes place around the India Gate area, featuring floats, military men and women, and impressive mustachioed baton-twirlers, some even wearing kilts. As an eng bai, it would thrill the heart of this definer to see elephants, camels, and horses pass by during the parade, along with tanks and jeeps and colourful representatives from all over the country.

Now of course, a not-so-very eng bai might decide that watching the parade on TV makes him feel morose and lonely and pensive, given all that the country has been through recently. So then he decides that watching it while sipping IMFL would really be living well, except he then realizes that Republic Day is a state-mandated Dry Day, so no such luck. So he watches the parade feeling morose and lonely and pensive, and tries hard to remember when the pageantry of it all would sweep him away.

Ramshackle. Dilapidated. On the verge of collapse. Held together with ching gum types. Often its mere existence is a show of jugaad.

In the end, after the lengthy primaries that precede the Presidential elections in the United States, voters only have a choice of two: Republican or Democrat. Many South Asians find that they have at least one cantankerous male relative that invariably votes Republican. We've got a term that describes this character: Republican Uncle. And being intrepid Samosapedians and sociologists, we boldly bring to you a definition of this opinionated Sofa Sadhu, this sometime Drunkle, this vituperative lambaster of the liberal.

The 70s in India were a time of expansion of government power, oftentime in controversial ways: Indira Gandhi's Emergency, for one, alongside the cementing of the so-called License Raj. It was the beginning of the Brain Drain, which continues today: many of the best and the brightest take up in foreign shores, typically in North America. Supplement this with other pieces of legislation that came in about a decade later: the Mandal Commission findings, which became implemented in law as reservations by V.P. Singh in 1989 (allocating slots for Backward Castes in colleges and government jobs), and in Tamil Nadu, the DMK's anti-Brahmin legislation, which also gave berths in colleges to scheduled castes, and you have many of the ingredients that distill the Republican Uncle's political thought.

You see, in his heart, which is grand where his family is concerned, but perhaps less grand where the social contract is concerned, the Republican Uncle simply does not believe in gorement. He cites the frustrating inadequacy of Nehru's Fabian socialism as proof that government simply cannot cure societal ills like poverty; he cites the laziness of those on welfare, claiming them coddled by the State; he cites the horrific injustices of India's experiment in righting the historical injustices of the caste system (the Mandal Commission or the DMK) as why affirmative action can never fly. Is he racist? Yes, sadly he may bring with him the petty biases of the Old Country. Is he unkind? Well, that depends. Are you a doctor, lawyer, engineer, banker, or otherwise, wealthy, well-educated, and well-raised? If so, you will benefit from his smiles and bonhomie. Are you struggling? If so, it must certainly be your fault.

The Republican Uncle is wealthy, and idolizes Ronald Reagan. The true American cowboy, Ronald Reagan epitomized a great wave of prosperity and American might. Gorbachev tore down the wall under Reagan, didn't he? Why, Ronald Reagan even kidded around with Rajiv Gandhi, allowing that youngster to address both houses of Congress! And then there's taxes. The Republican Uncle may be in an elevated tax bracket. To use the rhetoric of the times, Republican Uncle may have made it into the vaunted one percent. Tax him? But for what? The Old Country's taxes were too severe, and government too stymied by the morass of its own size. Why, then, should that be the case with the New Country? Republican Uncle has become a true blue, with white peers who regard him as one of them (except for his accent, which to this day fuels impersonation by his cheeky nephew). He believes that voluntary charitable giving is a better option than mandatory taxes under the aegis of the social contract. And don't get him started on health care, particularly if he himself happens to be a doctor.

Republican Uncle has an analogue in Pakistani communities, Bangaladeshi communities, and many other new immigrant communities in the United States. But let us not judge him harshly. He is an immigrant hero, hardworking, believing he earned every cent, and the right to keep as many of those cents as possible. He is a bold investor, a glass ceiling breaker, a disciplinarian, a golfer, a teller of galling PJs. There he stands, dismayed that his daughter would phone bank for Obama, dismayed that Romney's speech about freeloaders is causing such a furor, optimistic, a believer in the promise of an America where Family Values and Hard Work are the watchwords of the day.

Give him a glass of Black Label, and grin and bear his rambling and ranting. He may have a cute daughter.

It is how you refer to someone from Bengal, or even the Bengali language, using the Bengali language. "A" sounds become soft "O" sounds.

This bongla babu, a famous physicist (1884-1974), lends his name to the type of particles known as bosons, of which one is the Higgs' Boson.

A famous scientist and contemporary of Einstein, he also gets credit for Bose-Einstein statistics, and expressed an interest in Bengali literature, biochemistry, and many other things. He was also a friend of Tagore.