April Fool’s Day Stories

On the occasion of April Fool’s Day, we had asked our readers to share funny anecdotes and events connected to this day. Here are contributions from three of our readers. Watch this space as we update more such stories.

 The Husband & Wife

Wife:

I wrote your name on sand it got washed..

I wrote your name in air, it was blown away.

Then I wrote your name on my heart & I got Heart Attack.

Husband:

God saw me hungry, he created pizza.

He saw me thirsty, he created Pepsi.

He saw me in the dark, he created Light.

He saw me without problems, he created YOU.

Wife:

Twinkle twinkle little star

You should know what you are

And once you know what you are

Mental hospital is not so far

The rain makes all things beautiful.

The grass and flowers too.

If rain makes all things beautiful

Why doesn’t it rain on you?

Wife:

Roses are red; Violets are blue

Monkeys like you should be kept in zoo.

Don’t feel so angry you will find me there too

Not in cage but outside, laughing at you

And the saga continues….

Contributed by Tara Mahurkar, author.

The Air Force Account

Fifteen of us from Bangalore Air Force Station reported for our final phase of Air Safety training at 3 Wing A F Station Palam by the last week of March in 1952. Boys from the South were eager to beat around Delhi the Capital. On Sunday, I with my friend Baby Pothan ventured out for the task. As we were going out, batch mate Pant, a Delhite, shouted, “Do not miss Qutub road.” In response to our query as to whether it was connected with the Qutab Minar, he replied “Yes, catch No 3 bus from Chandi Chowk stand.” As instructed, we boarded the bus and proceeded. When asked for bus ticket to Qutab Road, the conductor issued the ticket with a smile while there were murmuring from other passengers who also turned towards us smiling. One asked if we were new to the place. We proudly replied, “Yes, from the Air Force.” At the sixth stop, the conductor shouted “Your Qutab road, sahib.” He then added with a smile, “Have a good time.” Both of us walked past a cobbler sitting at the junction and asked for direction to Qutab road. “It is right in front of you, keep going,” he reassured us. As we walked further, we found ourselves in the company of scantily clad women waving at us. An ‘Out of Bounds’ board met us half way. Realizing that we mistakenly found our way into a whorehouse, we turned around and ran expecting the Service Police to catch us off guard. On reaching camp, we sat and waited. We pounced on Pant enraged. He laughed and screamed “APRIL FOOLS!”

— Contributed by Raman TVK, former fire officer

The Day I became an April Fool!

I first heard of April Fool’s Day from my cousin who used to live in England owing to my uncle’s government job. It was also the first time I was made a fool. In those days, foreign chocolates were rare and we longed for them no matter how bitter or commonplace they tasted. So when my cousin announced there were tin of chocolates in his mother’s suitcase, the temptation was immense. The bargain was that I had to help him get mangoes from the nroghbour’s garden, always a risk because of the neighbour’s volatile temper and great possessiveness over the mango trees. Still, I went ahead, crept into the neighbour’s garden and stole a bagful of mangoes without being detected, all for the promised tin of foreign chocolate. Imagine my surprise and anger when I was handed over the coveted tin, only to find it full of small rocks and a note saying ‘April Fool.’ We laughed over it in our later years but on that day I really felt like the biggest fool of them all.

— Contributed by Samiran Dasgupta, retired hospital employee

Childhood Memories of April Fool’s Day

My baby brother , perhaps 6 or 7 years old at that time, one day noticed a picture of a skeleton in his Health Science book. The skeleton had blue veins and red arteries all over the body. He got scared looking at it and thought one of us pasted that sheet to scare him. We hid the book from him as he was determined to get the book and tear away that picture ! My mother tried to console him and repeatedly tried to tell him that nobody pasted the picture, it was already there. She told him to go to sleep and look at the books of his classmates the next day and check if the picture was there! My baby brother kept on crying until he fell asleep. When he got up in the morning, he was very eager to go to school, more anxious than normal! He found the picture in the books of all his friends and was satisfied. It is ironic that he became a medical doctor!

This happened almost 50 years ago. My Anna (elder brother) challenged our baby brother who was 6 at that time to drink a huge pot of water (perhaps a litre). If he did, he would receive a reward of 1 rupee from Anna. Poor thing, as much as he tried, baby brother could not drink it all. He started crying and then demanded half the money for drinking half the water in the pot! Big brother would not budge an inch. “Empty the pot or no money,” he said. Baby brother started crying even more loudly, by which time, our mother appeared on the scene. She made Anna pay our baby brother 1 rupee and scolded him to never try such pranks with the little one ever again! Baby brother was very happy with his rupee coin and played with it all day long and lost it by the end of the day.

– Contributed by Mrs Vathsala Madhavan

An ironic graduation!

Here’s something that is not funny in the strictest sense, but it might get a smile. In 1985, the batch that graduated from the Indian Institute of Management received its Post-Graduate Diploma on April 1.

-Contributed by Sam Moorthy