Take look at the following conversation:
Boy: So how was the idli today in the hostel?
Girl: It was not that great. How was it for you?
Boy: For me too! **looks pleasantly surprised ** It was not that great. How was the chutney?
Girl: It was watery today.
Boy: WOW. It was watery for me too! What a coincidence!!
If you are wondering what is wrong with this conversation, prepare yourself for the worst: both the boy and the girl live in the college hostel and the food for both is cooked in the same kitchen!! They eat the same thing!!
This is the art of frying kadalai. Sometimes this art is confused with genuine conversations. The discerning factor is that here you fry just because you want to fry. Fry, Fry , Fry and more fry with out knowing why you are frying. It is a skill that a few possess. But even if you don’t, you can acquire this skill with diligence, dedication and practice.
The primary benefits of frying kadalai include long term exercise to the tongue and minor increase in vocabulary (if one of the two involved is preparing for GRE). Secondary benefit includes invoking envy and jealousy in humans around you. Some people also believe that this is an art to be mastered in case you need to get a girlfriend. The only disadvantage is that when the frying goes for a long time, it sometimes triggers fire alarms in buildings.
In one instance, there was this couple in our class who produced so much smoke, that we all were suffocating. In spite of all the coughing and asphyxiation, the couple was least bothered about our health. In spite of repeated pleas to stop frying, they continued fanatically. We had no choice but to evacuate the class. There are no age barriers for this art. Even a 100 year old guy can master the nuances. You can start frying wherever you are: in a beach, in a train, at work, at church.
Kadalai Frying is a major contributor to global warming but sadly, most scientists are least bothered about it. Corporations can also reduce energy consumption by bringing frying under AKFI. Doing so will reduce the need for air conditioning. (Less frying will mean less temperature at work places and thus the AC needs to run at a lower power level.) This is particularly important at the moment since corporates are pushing ahead with OSHAS certification.
PS: “Kadalai” is the Tamil word for groundnuts. Groundnuts are fried in sand in a iron vessel over a flame in India. The origin of how this came about to denote meaningless talk is unknown.
