Bare Bones

Midway through the exercises: Five members and two birsds in the sky

It was a pleasant morning – dry, partially overcast and breezy in spells. There was no major festival on. In fact, there was no reason to hold anybody back from coming to the Garden today.
Yet, more than three-fourths of the Club stayed away. Right from Yusuf Rassiwala and Shekhawat down to Bijoy Gupta, Karun Sharma, Santosh Tyagi, Shanti Singh, Bihari Milwani, Dilip and Kajal Babani, almost all the regulars did not show up. Attendance was reduced to bare bones this morning.
“What’s wrong with our people!” exclaimed Khatoon Baig, noticing there were three members only in the exercise circle when she came in. “It’s not as though it is dark in the morning these days. It is daylight pretty early…”
The mystery over absentee members deepened, even as the likes of Nahid Khan, Siba Prasad Maitra and Geeta Latte trickled in steadily, taking the attendance to double digits. Perhaps the most baffled was Karuna Waghmare who was surprisingly, the first to report for the exercises today. “Everyone must be snoring in bed now,” she observed. “Let’s scrap the exercises!”
The exercises were delayed by a few minutes, till Kiran Prakash and Arun Patil showed up. But Karuna was unrelenting about her oversleeping theory. “The easiest way to wake up early is to sleep early,” she mumbled to herself.
“But what to do if you don’t get sleep early?” countered Nahid. “Should you beat yourself silly, forcing yourself to shut eye? How do you make sleep come?”
On this, Karuna had no answer.
Bihari Milwani:
Everyone knew today there would be no party. Hence intelligent people did not turn up.