(Not so divine) Comedy.....

1. Telephonic humor

When I came to Delhi and I took a new mobile connection from Vodafone, little was I aware that Vodafone recycled the dead mobile numbers previously used by some one else. And in my case, it had belonged to a girl named Richa.

From day one, I had been receiving phone calls for Richa from boyfriends, girl friends, interview consultants and insurance sellers (arranged in descending order of the quantity of phone calls and messages). Guys called her Richu, girls called her Moti (Hindi for fat) while interview agents and insurance sellers used her complete name. Even the timing and the content of the callers were different. Girls mostly called to congratulate her on her marriage and banged the phone on hearing a male voice in return. But the most annoying calls came during night and were mostly by drunken men/guys.After the great disappointment of hearing a male voice on the other end, they  requested me to handover the phone to the once bubbly Richa. It took a lot of  my time away from sleep to convince them that the dialed phone number did not belong to Richa anymore.

The quality of messages I used to receive were mostly those loosely rhymed romeo shayaris about the essence of love through fevicol or zandu balm. I got no second thoughts whether to call these senders because I always knew that all the flirty messages sent to me belonged to Miss Richa (who I assumed must have surrendered the number to put an end to this crap as she was ready to move on in life and wanted no masala in her new role of a simpleton wife). The calls and messages started diminishing with the passage of time and guys started to finally bear the bitter truth that their Richa had changed her number. I had also even started to forget Richa and even rejoiced the sweet truth that my cell number finally started to belong to me.

But yesterday I got a message which had a pretty decent quote and was quite flirtatious as well. I was shocked as well  as sparkled over the message and the first thing I excitingly did in the morning was to call the messenger (it was a guy) and to finally awaken the dead ghosts of Richa.

2. Strategic Humor

This time when I went home, I found that the average age of my hometown had drastically increased because all the young guys and girls had left the town either for education or for jobs. I met this uncle and despite hiding my lack of pleasure in meeting him, I enquired "Rajeev kahaan hai, uncle (Uncle, where is Rajeev)?" Rajeev was a young teenage son of our uncle who was about to start college or would have started college. Uncle replied "Beta maine use Tamil Nadu bhej diya hai engineering karne, wahaan jahaan koi hindi nahi jaanta, usko angrezi mein hi bolna padega. Isi bahaane angrezi bhi seekh jaayega aur engineering bhi (I have sent him to Tamil Nadu for engineering where no one knows Hindi. Automatically  he will have to converse in English, thats how he will learn English apart from Engineering).
I was silent for a moment and then uncle added "beta, tum to strategy manager ho, bolo kaisi lagi humaari strategy?" (Son, you are a strategy manager, tell me how did u find my strategy?)

3. Erotic Humor

If it comes to rating a city where people are most interested in other people's activities, Delhi will by far be the distant winner. I was traveling in a metro and reading one of my books. Suddenly, an aunty sitting next to me asked me that which exam was I studying for and when I replied that I was reading for pleasure (and no exam), she mocked at me asking who reads for pleasure. Then she asked me the cost of the book to which I replied that it was quite an expensive one. Then she managed to notice the price of the book (which was 350 rupees), she enquired how much had I been able to bargain and actually paid for the book. When I said that I got it on flipkart for 300, she retorted that in daryaganj, books were available for just 20 rupees. A second aunty joined in and then both the aunties started discussing at the top of their voice as how reading a book could be a pleasure experience. The second aunty mentioned that these english books were mainly erotica and hence these frustrated Indian youth even end up paying higher for erotica when they could pay lower at Dariyaganj. I did not fight or tried to prove that my book did not carry any erotica but was just a collection of poems which helped me escape from this mundane and real world....

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The two weird fests

1. The Book Fest

Well, few days ago I created this book fest and gave it an effortless name of 'the Milan Kundera book fest'..Only four people (including me) consented to participate, out of which two of them were a couple (probably in love with each other). Thankfully, I owned four Kundera books in my pint-sized library. All of us four took one book each (through a lucky draw). I got my favourite "The book of laughter and forgetting". Two of us sat on the beanbags in the cozy winter sun and the couple sat on my mattress in the sun. All four seemed like islands in my terrace; each had his own universe, immense only to himself, far beyond the grasp or interest of others. We read and read profusely in the sun. Between the gaps, I occasionally drank some droughts of water, the couple looked at each other eyes trying to locate the protagonists in each other while the fourth guy (who had Laughable Loves) just laughed out loud and clapped in tandem. My neighbors whosoever looked at my balcony, looked at we four, and tried to gather what really was happening. When the sun reached the horizon, we stopped reading (similar as in the war of Mahabharat the fest ended at the sunset), no matter how much had we read. We kept the 3 books back in my tiny library except for the Laughable Loves which by mistake kept lying on the bean bag which I had forgotten to take it inside and thus remained in the open terrace. In the night came the hailstorm (yeah it had hailed in Delhi) and laughable loves got all wet and hit and bathed by the hail. Since next day, the book lies drying up in the sun, trying to regain those lost alphabets about love, humor, women and lies......

“Love is by definition an unmerited gift; being loved without meriting it is the very proof of real love. If a woman tells me: I love you because you're intelligent, because you're decent, because you buy me gifts, because you don't chase women, because you do the dishes, then I'm disappointed; such love seems a rather self-interested business. How much finer it is to hear: I'm crazy about you even though you're neither intelligent nor decent, even though you're a liar, an egotist, a bastard.” 
― Milan Kundera

2. The Movie fest

Well I stumbled on this movie fest being held in Chandni Chowk area (according to me: the only alive parts of Delhi) on the ubiquitous Facebook. It was showcasing movies from this director named Fatih Akin. I could not help but give up to the temptation of going to the fest because of the area where it was being held and the director whose movies they were screening. When I reached that rickety building where it was being held, I strarted getting real doubts about the invitation. But then when I reached the top floor, I saw few girls sitting on the rug with a projector infront. The only occasion I faced such a situation (the only guy amongst so many girls) was wen I had accidently climbed up a women's college bus during my engineering internship days in DRDO, Delhi. Hesitatingly I just sat down and enquired one of the girls whether it was really the venue of the movie fest or a prank. She laughed on my face and said that it was a prank by these college students of Delhi University and I was the only fool to be caught so far. I knew she was joking because the aura in the room smelt of restlessness for the start of the first movie (title:The Edge of Heaven). The fest went on fine without any goof-ups and was a wonderful experience.
Well, let me inform you that it was the same girl (who said that the fest was was a prank) went on to be a part of the couple who sat in the serious book fest mattress in my terrace reading Kundera and seeking the protagonist in her partner's eyes...

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” 
― Goethe (the writer often quoted in the movie The Edge of Heaven)

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