No More Fun?

A casual remark by Sunita Jajodia (below) triggered a serious discussion on why we show up at the Garden every morning. Harassed by swarms of mosquitoes, a peculiar stink rising from the nearby nullah and Shekhawat’s insistence that she stays on till the end of the exercises, the lady grumbled to herself: “It is no longer fun coming to the Garden.”
Imagining that he was being targeted, Shekhawat rose in defence: “Let me hear you say this one month from now. Monthi-ji has been in hospital, Nafisa is down with diabetes, Razia had a tooth extraction yesterday… I myself am suffering. Everyone has a problem because we are getting old. But we still come here to exercise.”
“Don’t say we are getting old,” interjected Razia. “Abhi toh hum jawan hai!”
“We come here for a very selfish reason – to improve our own health,” declared Sitaram Hivarkar, hoping to cut short the discussion and continue with the exercises. But it was only to give rise to several dissenting voices: “I come to the Garden because I have nowhere else to go”; “I come here by force of habit”; “What else shall I do when my eyes open automatically at 5’O clock?” “Frankly, I come here for gappe-ladaney”; “So-and-so comes here only when there is a party…” On and on it went, till an irritated Bapu Rane snapped in his school-masterly voice: “Make all these talkative people stand on the bankde (bench) as punishment!”
The discussion ended abruptly. But the thing about Rane is that he himself can be quite a chatter-box when he chooses to. Within minutes, he started a new thread of discussion on kadwa tel, its price, whether it is sold in small bottles, etc. with Sunita Jajodia and Ramila Mistry joining in. Somebody has advised Rane that applying unrefined mustard oil on his body is the best antidote to mosquito bites in the Garden. And so life goes on…
Renu Babani:
Yes, looks like things are back to normal considering the chattering and snide remarks. No matter what anyone says or retorts in anger, everyone invariably returns. Nothing stops anyone from returning each morning and resuming the routine as if nothing happened the previous day. Strange, one would say, but that is how we are as Family. We somehow deal with issues and prove our strength of togetherness as a unit. Nobody can really explain this.