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Humor...a risky topic to write about. Because like love it is something to be enjoyed and not written about and analyzed.
Anyway, since visitors to this blog are no longer reading my posts but viewing the Guest Columns by the hundred, I thought I would sneak in this one.
Of all types of humor, I find situational humor the most impressive.
Here is Jim Corbett describing his encounter with a tiger when he (Jim) was a mere kid:
"...The peafowl had quite evidently led Magog (Jim's pet dog) on to a sleeping tiger, and birds, dog, and tiger were each expressing their surprise, fear, and resentment in their own particular way. Magog after his first yelp of fear was barking furiously and running, and the tiger was emitting roar upon roar and chasing him and both were coming towards me. In the general confusion a peacock---giving its alarm call---came sailing through the trees and alighted on a branch just above my head, but for the time being I had lost interest in birds and my one and only desire was to go somewhere, far away, where there were no tigers. Magog had four legs to carry him over the ground whereas I had only two, so without any feeling of shame---for deserting a faithful companion---I picked up my feet and ran as I had never run before. Magog soon overtook me and the roaring behind us ceased.
I can picture the tiger now, though I could not do so at the time, sitting down on his haunches on reaching the open glade and laughing, a tiger's laugh at the sight of a big dog and a small boy running for what they thought was dear life, while all that he was doing was to shoo away a dog that had disturbed his slumbers."
One afternoon I was sitting down under the neem tree at the Harry's shop at KGP and sipping tea. By the time I finished it a kid of 7, employed kindly by Tikka the owner, came to me to collect his trademark fragile glass tumbler. While handing over the tumbler, I fumbled and it slipped and fell down on the grass on the ground but luckily didn't break. The kid was alarmed as I picked it up and handed it over to him:
Kid: Tomar bhaggo ta bhalo (Your luck is good)
Me: Keno go? ( Why so?)
Kid: Gilas ta bhange nai (The glass didn't break)
Me: Bhangley ki hoto? (What if it did break?)
Kid: (flummoxed): Maliker loss hobey naa? (Wouldn't it cause loss to the Boss?)
I don't know why but this bit of dialogue tickles me endlessly.
Even when I was sliding down the pit of life-threatening depression in 2006, I didn't fail to see the humor of my situation. Perhaps that was what made it less unbearable.
One noon one of those bad days my sister's husband was traveling from Delhi to Hyderabad on an official trip and wanted to look me up at the command of his wife maybe. Most folks who haven't endured it don't know what clinical depression is...they think it is just a low.
My son and I went and fetched him, and he was talking me up by our dining table when his wife rang him up and possibly asked him how her brother was faring. And he gave his cell phone to me saying to her:
"Here he is...you can have it from the horse's mouth"
He didn't mean it but it tickled me nonetheless...enough to wrench a smile from me....for, my surname 'g' in gps stands for 'Gurram', which means 'horse'.
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