“Good News”

Gupta regaling his audience with Razia Khan

Bijoy Gupta came in today with an extra spring in his step. “I have good news for Razia Khan,” he announced excitedly. “Actually, there’s some bad news for her also. She will have to throw a party after I break the good news. But that I will do after the exercises.”
Accustomed to Gupta’s wicked sense of humour, Razia instinctively dismissed him. But Gupta was unrelenting. The moment the exercises got over, he gathered a crowd around him and announced with much drama that Shekhawat would be bequeathing his Rs50 million property at Runawal Towers to Razia.
“He told me yesterday to engage a lawyer to draw up a deed,” Gupta elaborated.

Siba Prasad Maitra (in foreground)

“I had gone to leave him home after he fell ill in the Garden ( ref yesterday’s post). We were in the lobby waiting for the lift when Shekhawat confided in me that he wishes to write off his Runawal flat in Razia Khan’s name. Isn’t that great news?”
The joke was not lost on anybody, including Razia. But she was soon to face the combined ‘fury’ of Fahmida Khan (“Why not me?) and Mumtaz Jahan (“Why this partiality?”), stridently staking their claims. Gupta tried to broker peace (“Shekhawat sees you all as his esteemed sisters”),

Tickle-tickle laughter-laughter... over Internet jokes

deliberately making a fool of himself and sending his audience into fits of rapturous laughter.
If Gupta is a master of boisterous buffoonery, Siba Prasad Maitra is in a separate class of his own. His low-key, tongue-in-cheek humour was on display today as he had come ahead of his usual time and was understandably bored as the exercises were taking too long for him. “Why are we doing the same exercise again and again?” he complained at one point. At another point, he pretended he could not see the person conducting the exercises. Quickly he corrected himself saying he was not wearing his spectacles, only to invite the riposte: “Okay, your eyes may be useless. But you can surely hear him. Or are your ears also useless?”
Volumes can be written on Maitra’s brand of interactive one-liners, but that will have to wait. Meanwhile, here’s the real good news: After that brief scare yesterday (see post), Shekhawat is now hale and hearty, relaxing at home. “There is nothing to worry,” his wife assured, having consulted a doctor last evening. “He has been advised complete bed rest.”
Siba Prasad Maitra:
I wish Shekhawat-ji goes through the blog and sees how Mr Gupta had converted his saalis into sisters -- that too, with a huge promise to Razia. Well done Gupta-ji!