Morning After

You cannot really fault anybody for being sluggish the morning after Diwali. The festival has a way of spoiling the best of us. All your self-discipline and resolve to wake up in time for the Garden rendezvous would go for a toss, the moment a firecracker bursts outside your bedroom window at an unearthly hour of 2.00 a.m. You stay awake for the rest of the night and the morning is ruined.
Those of us who made it to the Club today did so by force of habit. They included Khatoon Baig (left), Ved Prakash Grover (below), Bose, Nahid Khan and Santosh Tyagi. Come hail or high water, they share the record for being there every day before time. Only their absence from the city, or in an extreme situation, physical disability would probably hold them from attending in the morning.
Others like Srichand Arora showed up, partly out of a sense of guilt for over-indulgence the night before. He however, put it on wanting to start the new (Samvat) year on a positive note. “If I bunked today, the whole year could go bad,” he explained. “This way, at least my daily attendance in the Club is ensured.”
Before Arora’s arrival, Yusuf Rassiwala held fort, keeping everybody in good humour with Kishor-bhai and Razia Begum chipping in with jokes on witchcraft and ghosts showing up in villages. Inevitably, the conversations steered towards Shekhawat’s health condition and assurances from his family members that he is much better than what we had seen of him last, yesterday.
Eventually, one thing became clear: However hard you may try to replicate the energy and hilarity of an earlier day, unless you have the right mix of people and more importantly, everybody being in the mood, you are unlikely to succeed. Laughter cannot be pre-planned or staged. Its magic lies in the spontaneity of the moment. Today, not only were yesterday’s principal players missing, Diwali fatigue had set in.
The week-end rest should do us some good.

Renu Babani says:
Diwali Hangover! Well, everyone needs a break and with the festive season, what does one expect? However, I am sure everyone will turn up on Monday morning and things would be back to normal. There will be events to recall and stories to tell. So it will be interesting. Let's have a great weekend and enjoy it as well.
--Renu