Eyes and Ears

Ved Prakash Grover

When someone is as principled and as punctual as Ved Prakash Grover, absence becomes larger than presence. Even arriving late for the exercises can become a big event. He is usually the first from the Club to arrive at the Garden and the last to leave after the yoga session. So today, when he turned up late by about ten minutes, we simply could not believe our eyes.
How could Ved Prakash Grover be late!
His simple and matter-of-fact explanation of having overslept this morning did not cut any ice. “Aankh lag gayi thi,” was the expression he used and Srichand Arora, Nahid Khan, Razia Khan et al were not buying any of it.

Arora strains his ears to catch Santosh Tyagi's jokes

Arora, who was conducting the exercises today, started quibbling over ‘Aankh lag gayi’ and ‘Aankh ladh gayi’, much to Grover’s dismay and acute embarrassment.
Fortunately for him, Razia came to his rescue by bringing up her conjunctivitis condition (ref post of October 9) and how she had to face similar taunts from friends.

Arun Patil

“How do you convince people that you are not responsible for your eye infection?” complained Razia, who is almost healed now. “Then also I had to hear aankh ladh gayi. The whole issue is about the eyes!”
If the eyes were the cause of so much agitation for Grover and Razia, Arora (who incidentally started it all) had to face a different tune for his ears. We all know that he is a little hard of hearing and quite sportingly, he has never shied away from this fact. But today, Arun Patil took a dig at him, hoping that it would go unheard. Arora had pulled up Santosh Tyagi for not rolling her arms properly, insisting that they should touch the ears every time. Instantly, Arun quipped: “When our words don’t reach your ears, how do you expect the arms to touch our ears?” Arora heard him correct, but demanded that Arun say that again. He repeated himself. And Arora being Arora, turned the taunt around on Arun, praising him for his level of intelligence. Of such jokes and jibes are our mornings made.