Follow the Leader

PUNCHING BAG: What is LEFT and who is RIGHT?

In any concerted group activity, to follow the leader is a given. You never question your leader – unless of course, you belong to the Big Laaf Club of Bombay. Here, the leader is the person who conducts the exercises for the morning, but eventually becomes fair game to a swirl of jokes and jibes from all directions, until s/he is rendered thoroughly confused and dysfunctional.
That’s how we like it. We enjoy riddling our ‘leaders’ and if Razia Khan were to be in the middle (as it was today), our day is made. Regardless of whether she is in the right or wrong, we do not want to follow her because she is our favorite punching bag. And when she pauses between exercises to pull up someone or perhaps rearrange her clothes, even bounce off an Urdu couplet, the fun really begins. She does not realize that the rhythm of exercising has been broken and with some like Arun Patil constantly gunning for her, all hell breaks loose. We like that also.
Today, she got into an altercation with Arun (who else?) over what turning the head left to right meant. In Arun’s eyes, it was right-to-left because they were facing each other. All those behind her in the circle had no difficulty interpreting her command, but Arun had successfully confused the others facing Razia. Again, when it came to clockwise and anti-clockwise movement of the waist, confusion resurfaced.

Late BAPU RANE

Razia’s clockwise action was anti-clockwise in Arun’s eyes and he accused her of misleading everyone. Something as basic as this turned into a major hullaballoo, till Sitaram Hivarkar intervened. “She is right," he pronounced. "Tomorrow Patil will stand in the middle and conduct the exercises.”
The fun was not over yet. Sulking, Arun continued to exercise and then made a disparaging remark (unprintable) about “gobar (cow dung) falling in the middle…” Razia overheard gobar as “Grover falling” and ran up to Arun to confirm. Arun repeated “gobar”, but she insisted he had said Grover and demanded why he was now bent upon picking on a peaceful person like Ved Prakash Grover. Arun simply gave up.
In between this comedy of errors, Shekhawat unwittingly made a heartwarming statement. It has been his habit to punctuate the exercises with a clarion call, “Rane ready!?!” Bapu Rane is no more, but Shekhawat persists with the practice. Today, when he shouted, “Rane, ready!” some ladies remarked that it may be not proper to awaken a dead man’s soul and we could even be disturbing him. Shekhawat retorted: “So long as this Club exists, Rane ready rahega. Rane will be ‘ready’ every morning for us.”
What a wonderful way to remember a dear, departed friend!
Jagmohan Papneja:
Sometimes joy can be the source of your sabre-rattling. And sometimes sabre-rattling can be the source of your joy. This is what we have been watching for quite some time in our Club and it was apparent very much today especially.