Summertime Guests

Summer is when we get a large number of stragglers who join us only to wet their feet in our exercises. None of them is expected to stay for long. It is holiday season now and many of these ‘guests’ have little else to do in the mornings. And so, there have been school kids landing in hordes, teachers and ex-servicemen, elderly people on vacation in Mumbai… and so on.
Yesterday, a young couple joined us for about half-an-hour, got thoroughly bored and excused themselves. Today, two pretty girls (who had been observing us every morning from a distance) were invited to our circle by Srichand Arora. They stayed till the end.

Vasudev Bhateja (left) distributes
luddoos as prasad from a temple 

Santosh Tyagi plays 'consultant'
on gall bladder complications.

Earlier on, an elderly lady, Mallika Kagzi took a fascination towards us and for the past one week, has been attending our exercises daily.
So it is not as though all these newcomers are birds of passage. Kagzi, for instance, has been raising pertinent questions on why we do certain exercises and how they are going to help her. Quite clearly, she is serious. The two girls, who joined today, straightaway introduced themselves as Pooja and Geeta – obviously in a bid to gain our acceptance.
That we already have a Geeta (as in Sardhana) amid us and this had got Arora to scratch his head was not known to them. But what they did notice was that Arora is a jolly good fellow (as he was conducting the exercises) who can keep them giggling non-stop – what with his wisecracks on rolling the head “like a top” and driving away “tension without intention”!
The point is, unknown to us we provide some amusement to our ‘guests’. And unknown to them, their presence provides a happy diversion from our daily humdrum. And who knows, a Khatoon Baig or Teja Singh Bhambra could emerge from them? After all, each one of us was once a ‘guest’ who had strayed in… and has since stayed on.
Harish Wadhwa:
* Loads of congratulations to our Blog Monster! Our BIG LAAF blog has hit the magic figure of 3,00,000 hits and counting fast. Hurray! The monster that he is, also has wonderful writing skills, which makes our blog an interesting must-read each day. Tussi great ho, tohfa kabul karo! -- from all of us in Badmaash Company.
* YUSUF-BHAI: "Eh Vasu, ek luddoo se mujhe mut pataa. Dena hai toh doh-chaar de, meri personality ko dekhte huey... samjhe na!"
Srichand Arora:
Wow! We have crossed 3 lakh viewers. Congratulations to all members of BIG LAAF and our BLOG MONSTER for this achievement. Who had expected that one day we would reach this milestone? Number 3,00,000-plus dekhkar main toh bahut hi khush hoon aur janta hoon hum sub khush hain. Congratulations once again to all.
Blogmaster replies:
Thank you all for such encouraging words. The blog couldn't have survived -- let alone be a hit -- without the active participation and support of all members of the Big Laaf family. A bigger milestone awaits us. In a fortnight, we should cross 1300 blog posts.