Fuelling Fun

Ketan Gala, proprietor of a petrol pump, brings smiles on the customers’ faces by writing one-liner jokes on a board at his fuel station

The interminable queues on the fuel station chuckle and smirk as the irksome break instantaneously becomes joyous. The heads turned towards a blackboard that stands on the N M Service station, next to the GPO, is quite an amusing site. The board is inscribed with a set of jokes and axioms that haul the vehicles to fill fuel and smiles alike. Ketan Gala, proprietor of the pump has been on the board with his unique idea since last 10 years.

“People are always restless and tense when they wait at a fuel station. It is a compulsory obstruction as well as time consuming to be waiting in a queue. So I thought of entertaining them in this way. The content on the board cheers them up and enlivens their mood,” he adds.

Gala likes reading one-liners and considers this to be a fine way to share them. “The collection is picked up from various books. The book, Immortal, by R D Sharma has been my most cherished source for proverbs. Now people themselves recount and SMS me the jokes. I used to earlier write only in English however most of the auto rickshaw drivers couldn’t pick up, now we write in Marathi as well. People come from all over the city to read the blackboard. We most of the times write jokes, touchy one-liners or witty phrases. The most popular is - I had a friend and money, I lent my money to my friend, I lost my money and my friend which I write almost every month,” shares Gala.

The writings have gone a long way due to the novel concept and funny content. Sharing the popularity Gala says, “People stop on purpose to read the blackboard. The auto rickshaw drivers find it very interesting. It is also a major appeal to the school students who commute through the auto rickshaws. It has definitely helped me attract regulars and about 60 per cent of them are my loyal customers. We change the content every alternate day. The recognition is very high and at times people ask me to uphold the content until they have gotten their kith or kin to go through it. There is a lot of attention and the exercise is often admired.”

... contd.

Ads By Google

Message*	Maximum characters allowed

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*

TERMS OF USE:
The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).

I agree to the terms of use.