Tale of 'Machine Man'

Nafisa with the little black fellow

Nafisa Sayyad just confirmed what we had suspected all along. The tiny music box that is supposed to entertain us while we exercise began to ‘misbehave’ so badly today that Nafisa voiced everybody’s feelings in one sentence: “You need to leave such machine log (machine men) alone for a while until they get back to their senses!”
Indeed, the music players we have been employing for our exercises possess a mind of their own. The little black one we have now is a twin brother of Arun Patil’s silver piece, except that ours can be horribly cantankerous – spluttering and playing when in the mood, skipping songs at will, turning silent for no rhyme or reason, restarting and shouting, then whispering… Worse still, he is bloody intelligent.
Some time back, Ram Shankar Shukla tried to appease the damn thing by bringing freshly dug up earth from somewhere in his cupped hands and with much ceremony, created a soft surface in a pit for the music box to play comfortably. It was a comic sight. Amused, Yusuf Rassiwala couldn’t help remarking that next, we should perform a havan at that spot.

More crows than men attend our exercises these days

From that day itself, the little chap began throwing temper tantrums recklessly. The pit had been earlier identified by Ved Prakash Grover, who had put a big brick at that spot for the music box to sit on. Srichand Arora replaced the brick with a lovely square marble piece – thereby lowering the level. With Shukla’s mud bed, the level sunk still deeper. But Nahid Khan tried to pacify the fellow, even giving him a larger-than-life stature by declaring she had done “so many pheras” around (in the course of conducting exercises) that whether she liked it or not, she'd have to live with him. Divorce was not an option.
Today, matters reached a head. Exactly half and hour into the exercises, the thing stopped singing. It was yanked out by the ear (USB stick) and placed outside the pit. It cried for a while and then shut up. The marble piece was placed underneath. It grumbled and growled, but soon sang merrily for a long time. When all seemed well, it was lifted with its marble 'throne' and placed back in the pit. Instantly it fell silent, winking with its blue lights…
Moral of the story: The more you pamper someone, the more he'd likely sit on your head. Ideally, as Nafisa said, ignore the fellow. He will come around, sooner than later.
Jagmohan Papneja:
Superstition: The presence of a large flock of crows together is followed by a change of weather.
Harish Wadhwa:
Why machines, human beings are no different. They too have to be left to themselves once in a while. [By the way the blog narrates today's incident very nicely and it must have been fun for anyone to watch all this happening.] The sound machines croon worse when they don't find an appreciative audience.