Mixed Shots

Woof Egineer

What could one possibly do with an engineering degree in these recessionary times? Well, if IIT Delhi has its way, one could become a dog handler for the stray dogs on campus. The institute put out an advertisement seeking dog handlers and one of the eligibility criteria was “BA/BSc/BCom/BTech or any equivalent undergraduate degree”. The demanding qualifications immediately set social media afire, prompting the authorities to cancel the recruitment process and start afresh. The reason behind the error? “The advertisement got inadvertently copied from another job advertisement,” explained a statement issued by the institute.

Hubby’s Hubbub

After Suresh Hatankar, an assistant sub-inspector of railway police in Mumbai, succumbed to COVID-19, his first and second wife both staked claim to the Rs 66 lakh his heirs were supposed to get from the government. He married his first wife in 1992 and second in 1998. Both weddings were registered and he had a daughter with each. So what did the court finally decide? It split his assets into three parts for his first wife and daughters from both marriages.

Himalayan Hiss

There’s more than a slithering chance that global warming has caught up with the cooler climes of the Himalayas. Maybe not, but what on earth explains the sighting of the cold-blooded king cobra—whose single bite contains about 120 mg of venom and around 15 mg sends humans hissing to the other world—in Uttarakhand’s Mukteshwar? There has been no record of any sighting of the venomous king at 2,400 metres—the altitude of Mukteshwar, a place snowed out in winter. The king prefers warmer places to chill, though it has been sighted at 1,840 metres in Sikkim, 1,170 metres in Mizoram and at 1,830 metres in the Nilgiris in recent years.

Put the Horse before the Heart

Before the pandemic, little children could play out their cowboy fantasies on Marina beach in Chennai. The credit for that goes to 30 families that had migrated from Andhra Pradesh with their horses and offered joyrides to visitors. But with the lockdown, their income dried up completely and they often skipped meals to provide food to their horses. That, however, changed once inspector S. Seetharam got to know about their plight. Since then, the police department has been providing free food to the families and bran to the horses. If only the world had more such neighsayers…

A Lakh for A Leaf

Money plants, they say, bring money. But what about the plants that empty your pockets? A Philodendron minima sold for Rs 4.02 lakh at an auction in New Zealand. What’s so special about it, you ask? Well, it has four variegated leaves—half-green and half-yellow. The anonymous buyers say they got the rare plant for a “tropical paradise” they are building. One can only wonder what plants they have been smoking.

Brevis

Illustrations: Saahil, Text by Alka Gupta and Syed Saad Ahmed