The Mischievous Monkey in Africa: When Self-Deprecating Humour Came to My Rescue

 **Diary Entry: 2010–2016**

Long time back, about 20 years ago, I was in Africa for some time. We were doing business, our little group of friends.

On one weekend, we went to this nightclub, and I got high on a few bottles of beer, and there I was, prancing around like a monkey on the dance floor.

I am one of the most horrible and most weird dancers in the world. I hardly know how to synchronise movements that are required for dancing.

But I felt liberated that day. There were tensions in business, and I kept on dancing, dancing.

Then, in the wee hours, somebody had been watching me very, very carefully, and I found out that it was a very handsome, almost six-foot-tall African woman, attired in traditional dress, apparently from a good family.

And when the dance floor was closed and I was coming out, she followed me and held my hand very firmly, thinking that since I was high on alcohol, I might be easy to carry away.

And it appeared like I was being kidnapped!

And in a husky, loud voice, she said, "Oh man, I have a problem."

So, very meekly, I asked her, "What is your problem, ma'am?"

She said, "I can't help it but take you to my bed."

I was shocked and surprised. That was such an open invitation!

And she laughed.

There was at least truth and frankness about it. There was no coquetry involved; she straightaway hit the point.

And me being a mischievous monkey, I knew the best way to deal with such frankness was through puns and jokes.

Become serious, you might be in trouble, because that was Africa, and from all angles she appeared to be an influential woman. I had a feeling that she had connections, and if she felt offended, if I denied straightaway, she might put me into trouble.

Anything could have happened.

So I took it very lightly, and I did exactly the thing that I have done a few times in dealing with such tough situations.

I slipped. Started babbling self-deprecating stuff. With the face of a suffering moron. 

She was holding my left hand, so I gave a guffaw of laughter, very naturally, as naturally as she had asked me about sleeping with her.

I slapped my thigh with my right hand and made such a meek and pathetic face.

I said, "Ma'am, you are a beautiful woman, and there shouldn't be any reason to say no to your proposal. It's an honour, in fact, to be invited for intimacy by a woman like you.

"But I have a still bigger problem than yours."

She was surprised.

She asked me, "What's your problem?"

I said, "This thing does not work."

I said it while pointing to my middle, to my private parts.

She was shocked, and then I kept on elaborating on it.

"Ma'am, I have been wandering across nations and continents to seek a remedy for this thing, to make it work, but it has failed me."

And I made such a PTSD-suffering face as if it were true.

"Even here, I am running around to get some traditional herbal medicine from shamans in Africa so that they can force some life into this limp thing of mine."

And I kept on babbling, high on alcohol, and she just started laughing.

She got the pun behind it, and even in the throes of passion, with my humour, I was able to put her into a situation where even as a woman who proposed to a man unqualified, unconditional intimacy, even she wouldn't feel denied and offended.

So she started laughing.

She patted me on my back and said, "You are a very interesting man."

And she was just rolling over with laughter.

She said, "I have never, ever seen a man like you, who is purposefully playing down his virility and manhood just in order that he doesn't want to get into intimacy with a woman."

Then she said loudly, "Liar! I know you are very much operational there!"

She pointed to the intended thing.

"You are very much active there. As a woman, I can feel it, but you don't want to. You don't like me. But that is not an issue. You are a funny man. That is most important."

And she just let go of her grip.

So my takeaway from this episode is that humour, and especially self-deprecating humour, can come to your help in testing situations.

Baba Rajnath -- Illustrated Biography Part 6

 

The Little Maestro: A Billion Hearts Between Ecstasy and Agony

 **30 June 2007**

It is cold, windy and rainy in Belfast, Ireland.

The little maestro's exploits in the last two matches have given us the sweet-sour pill of equal pain and pleasure.

Coming back to form in a pondering, cautious, calibrated and calculated manner in the other match, he amassed 99.

Then the whole of India missed a beat as the cricketing god missed the inches.

One run short of a 42nd hundred.

We calculate his hundreds with more pleasure than thousands, lakhs and crores in a bank balance.

In the second match against South Africa yesterday, he went on a rampage, as if Tendulkar is no less flamboyant than the Tendulkar of the 90s.

Hooked, pulled, drove with impunity, seemed to have cast a billion burdens from his shoulders.

The entire nation went gaga.

Then again we missed a heartbeat last night.

The maestro again missed out on a century, got out on 93.

A strange dose of equal pain and pleasure.

We cherish two things equally, separately—Sachin's hundreds and India's victory.

If India loses a match but Sachin gets a hundred, then it acts as a cushion, a support.

Because when the match begins, we are looking at two goals instead of one, as is the case with the fans in other countries.

Our happiness soars to reach Everest when both go hand in hand.

Sachin failing, yet India winning, puts a blot on the victory like the one on the full moon's milky glow.

Sachin has a big Mother India.

But the mother is too possessive, irrationally demanding, madly loving.

So the maestro has a mammoth responsibility upon him every time he comes to the field.

When he scores a hundred, people forget their miseries and failures.

When he fails, people throw their victories into the dustbin and start bickering.

In the case of Sachin getting out on a zero, people throw their victories into the dustbin and start bickering.

So the last three or four years, bickering had been going on while the maestro struggled against injuries, ageing body, increasing expectations, expert comments, laymen's outpourings, changing cricketing environment.

Everything pitted against him.

But these two near misses of a century against a quality side in tough conditions have hammered all those question marks which had almost squeezed him into a bracket in recent times.

He now seems to sit at a safe, uncontested place.

But the question is: for how long?

His failures prove that the genius is no god or machine.

Obviously, he learns to remain unaffected by these blatant transgressions from crazy fans, media and experts.

But one thing is quite clear.

The man is paying a huge, the man is paying a huge cost for the stardom.

Pleasure and Pain: The Wickerwork of Fate

 **29 June 2006**

There is plenty of pleasure around and plenty of pain as well.

Invariably, we desire, we desire to have all of the former in our kitty and none of the latter.

In fact, there are many who would have others be entitled to all the pains that are there.

But such abhorrence for the latter does not bog it down, and invariably it comes to haunt the pleasure-loving selves of modern man.

Though there is no real pain and pleasure, we sulk and exult relatively, coiled up in the basket of our suffering.

Your eyes closed, your hood below the last coil, below your tail.

In the dark air, in the wickerwork of fate—or your own doing, for those who don't believe in the term; but both are the same, because at one time or the other they stand to justify each other—you lie down, your utility is under snare, your capability is crippled.

Old Days: The Lost Charms of a Slowly Unfolding World

 **28 June 2006**

From the sixties, seventies, and even eighties, technology has taken such leapfrogs that the era mentioned, though famous as far as golden nostalgia brought forth by the past centuries is concerned—easy-paced life, lilting agonies, ecstasies of natural blooms, of superstitions, of abounding yet bridled quest to know, slow-paced inventions, soft passions, dreamings, struggles—appears too far off, distant, with its almost mystic charms, mythic charms, and charming legacies.

Now, with inhuman ingression into our mind, body and soul, the fastly piling-up mountain of modernism finds us worlds apart from these not-so-distant decades.

So, looking from where we are in this first decade of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves separated by an insurmountable wall from that era of our fathers and mothers.

The time when they grew up, studied, romanced, committed moderate follies, when the laborious long cuts in relations and professions had slowly winding seeds of pleasures, pains and lessons.

When distances were not covered as fast as now, when communication did not fly out with the speed of light from every pocket to almost every other, anywhere inside and outside the country.

When the path to success meant a whole sequence of human destiny rather than the instant phase and blinding blaze of modern entrepreneurship and profession.

When failure meant a chance to start again rather than a stigma, as it is now.

When money was inside pockets rather than, like the present, when it glitters everywhere around but the safe closets and pockets.

When lost letters separated lovers, and in the forge of finding, the true gems of the human heart poured forth in the form of beautiful, profound poetry.

When, sitting in the rusty and creaking cart of not-so-high technology, we were forced, or rather necessitated, to witness the glorious game of life with its still glorious, gradually unfolding uncertainties, its pleasant helplessness, its effervescent rejoicings after the long thirst of piled-up desires.

When our gaze did not graze the hair-tops while we rocketed forward like a mad rush into our own explosion.

The Italian-Forged Iron Lady: The Politics of Power Without Responsibility

 **28 June 2006**

The Italian-forged Iron Lady, perhaps very true to the predominant characters of her race from that part of the world, involving a fair share of cleverness, technically precise hard work, and artistic shrewdness in dealings, is up to various unprecedented political games and gimmicks.

A fair heir to the legacy of the Iron Lady.

First, she has managed to contrive a mechanism, thanks to which we have a very soft Prime Minister—many say a mere rubber stamp—and a lady at the real helm of affairs: a grossly unconstitutional and undemocratic instance of all powers without responsibility.

Secondly, she, as the chairperson of the coalition, has managed to run the government without any dissensions, haggles, bickerings.

Very firmly in the saddle, I must say, and safely also.

The communists, the imperious turncoats of Indian politics, now in their newly defined role as defending pawns, protect the queen in the game at a great loss—loss of credibility and a dent to their ideology.

But then they defend it with a bettered shield: "Against the Hindu rightists, we have to do it!"

Like an infirm weakling, the docile puppet on the throne sits like the woman's face of this petticoat government.

Now the lady, on a political rampage, settling every score against her, covering Hindu accent and demeanour, is well on her way to get, as the most undeserving, least-statured, mere imitation of the Prime Minister, a rubber stamp of the august family.

If she comes true to her designs, then it will be the blackest day in our political history: a faithful servant becoming the first Head of the State in an imperious way.

She has managed a few insulting jibes at the technocrat President, undisputedly the people's voice at present, through some of her grossly impudent, loudmouthed accomplices.

What type of democracy is this when the people's choice is thrown into the dustbin with such insulting remarks?

What democracy is this when the candidate with the least capability, credibility, ability and popularity is almost sure to emerge as the winner?

But the numbers are with the Italian-forged Iron Lady, bloated out of size for her real worth.

She now commits the mistake of taking the mandates of her politically contriving art as the people's mandate.

What she does, however, is irreparable damage to the constitutionally lofty, almost wholly impartial stature of the First Citizen.

So the clever lady is just about to accomplish her dear task of securing one more rubber stamp at the top echelons.

The vindictive lady now walks with stealthily arrogant authority, mocking dexterity, and all this at the cost of the blind faith of an impoverished vote bank, the coterie stonewalling her from all sides.

Meanwhile, applaud!

The Showering Maiden: Nature's Preparations for the Arrival of the Monsoon Queen

 **27 June 2006**

The Meteorological Department predicts the arrival of the showery maiden between June 29 and July 1.

The local weather elements, like nice footmen, seem all agog with busy activity for the reception.

Bright forays of sunrays are intermittently breached by the cloudy display of varying hues and characters.

Sweat-drenched breeze plays with the seed-weighted neem boughs.

During the night, a dark mass of clouds spreads over the starry smile, with lightning flashing, giving a false alarm that the fair maiden has arrived before the presently set meteorological date.

During bright noon, a gauzy and lacy screen of silvery cloudy layer tries to screen the heat-tormented world below.

Occasionally, fluffs of clouds pass over the sunny face, traversing, travelling—like a running valet to make some last arrangements for the immediate reception of the graceful queen—readily drawing in their wake on the ground their little paths of shadow and solace.

Whips of wind don't play with the dust, for the earth has a fair bit of sandy defence on its maiden face, thanks to the pre-monsoonal showers.

It rather plays with the fully garnished, with greenery, branches of the acacia trees.

There aren't too many birds around; otherwise, they would have drawn fantastic airy circles in the hot, humid, expectant air.

Such is the pre-monsoonal thoroughfare in the lanes and bylanes of the countryside.

Baba Rajnath -- Illustrated Biography Part 5