My nephew's birthday invite

It was once of those weekdays, when you're glad to be home from work, settled in your lazyboy and looking forward to some serious channel surfing on the idiot box. Suddenly, my cell phone starts screaming as if someone was strangling the SIM out of it! I don't understand how, despite all the research going on in phones, that noone can come up with a decent ring tone. Even worse, when I call my brother in India, I have to put up with the "enrenrum punnagai! mudivilla punnagai!" (translation - "always smiling! endless smiling!") song from the Tamil movie 'Alai Payuthae' while I wait for him to pick up his cell phone. Apparently, they call this the 'ring back' tone, something that is slowly, and unfortunately, being introduced in the US now.

So returning to my cell phone ring, I pick it up and, its my cousin sister Sugan from California. She says she needs to send an e-vite out for her (4 year old) son Shreyas' birthday party the following week and needs some funny write up on the invite. While I was wondering why she thought I would be capable of doing this, she went on "I know you are silly most of the time and funny once in a while. Make this one of those rare occasions. And consider this an emergency. I want to see something solid by tomorrow!". Since she didn't give me much of a choice, I mumbled something weakly, intended to mean "I'll try my best, but my creative juices cannot flow when you demand", and kept down the phone.

So I sat down with my laptop and started off on the project. At first, I thought it would just be easy to google the term "birthday invite" and "funny" and it will come up with a gazillion entries form which I'll take my pick. My cousin wouldn't know or care, I'll earn her eternal gratitude (which, I can tell you from personal experience, does not last long) and go back to my lazy evening. But somehow, I couldn't find anything on google or the millions of e-Card sites it took me to. So I finally gave up and decided to come up with something myself in the form of a short poem (you know, the kind that rhymes!). After a while, I realized that the prospect of a simple invite gave me a writer's block, and I started appreciating the Blakes and Tennysons of the world. Eventually, I got this not-so-bright idea of maybe making it sound like a cute rap (no 'crap' puns please!) from Shreyas himself. Since I could not possiby embarrass myself more than I already have, I'm reproducing the end product here:

yo.. yo... check it out y'all...

4 years ago, to the day...
a dude landed, by the bay...
he was from a planet far far away...

no kryptonite... no wings...
just a regular habit of breaking things...

That's me alright...
Shreyas is my name...
Ultra-cool is my game...

i'm throwing a b'day party for love and peace...
at the nearby Chuck.E Cheese...

am really excited about this...
don't even think 'bout giving it a miss...

be there with your mommies ...
you'll get some goodies...

we'll party with pizza and games...
bada bing! bada boom! RSVP your names...

Peace,
The Notorious Shreyas
(a budding West Coast rapper!!!)

I was not proud of myself, but this was the best I could do, given my lack of talent with poetry, or words in general. Somehow, this seemed to please my cousin and she put this on her e-vite. She did receive some comments from her guests about "that silly poem" and "written by a grown up? really?" and "retarded". I'm hoping I didn't scar Shreyas for life.