Tears n Cheers.

          If you ask me the time of day I get a lump in my throat. I’m that sort of person, happiest when miserable. Glum without reason. I sniffle whilst watching Chitrahaar or standing for Jana Gana Mana.  If I see a policeman guiding traffic with flailing palms and elbows, I have to hold back on-coming sobs. If the traffic obeys him, I howl. I can cry because the sun has risen and then again when it sets. The poder on his round, when he honks on that balloon like gadget, triggers sadness in not just me, but even the dogs (who express that sadness through long-drawn howls) and crows in our neighbourhood. When a fisherwoman reduces the price of a wato without me having to bargain myself hoarse, the water in my eyes isn’t sweat. Same-same when the auto-wala doesn’t cheat me outrageously. (Rare, na?) I cry when my neighbour switches on her air-conditioner because the choin-choin sound it makes gets on my nerves. She cries because we’re so silent. “Neighbours must,” she tells me, “share reversing music (the noise cars make whilst reversing) and mobile ring-tones … otherwise what’s the use?” This phrase, “what’s the use” is one of my favourite tear-jerkers. When someone says it, out comes my tissue-box. 

 “You must eat mangoes during the season, otherwise what’s the use…?”

 “You have a sore throat. Drink haldi-milk, otherwise what’s the use…?”

 “Now BJP is in power, we must have special status, otherwise what’s the use…?” So far no one has explained what the phrase means, but anyone who’s lived in Goa for long has to understand it, otherwise what’s the use…?

If weeping cleanses the soul, mine must be tattered with all the laundering.

These days, mixed tears abound. The bus-conductor who shoves me into a Bombay-local situation triggers off sad hiccups. When he and the other passengers push me out of the rusty and rattling vehicle, I deal with more tears, but of relief. How lucky I am to have survived the ride, I think. I think the same on the Betim-Panaji ferry during office ‘rush’-hour.

          Our television GuessWork Channels gave me plenty of reasons to shed tears last week. ‘News’ was passé. Before our PM swore in front of mikes, cameras, swamis, neighbours, industrialists, film-stars and other not-so-aam persons, streams trickled down my cheeks. Because of boredom. You see, the salty-liquid overflows my eyes when I yawn. Fashionably made-up twenty-somethings with fancy diction panted into my television screen wondering just who would become a cabinet minister, get which portfolio, sit next to whom at breakfast time, whether NawShar would come, etc. This went on for twenty-four monotonous hours, day after day, with repetitive advertisement-breaks. When finally ‘the list’ was announced, there was an I-told-you-so competition amongst the channels that cheered me up somewhat. I love clowns, even when they’re wearing suits and ties.

Other things that cheered me up: the train accident in UP with 3297 survivors. (The convoluted logic of thinking about the living, not the dead comes from my CA. Tax, he says, is 30%; think of the remaining 70% to make yourself happy.)

Then, our mangoes came back from Europe; their lowered prices have banished the tears.

Third, the clogging and overflowing of the naalaas has been delayed by nine days, according to the meteorological department’s prediction of the monsoons’ arrival.

An episode closer to home dried up my lachrymal glands in surprise and annoyance. A young land-survey official was measuring someone’s small residential plot during a site-inspection for land-conversion. The owner was a ‘senior’, a retired person wanting to build a small house with his savings. The land-survey official made the old man pick up the tape, walk here, go there, hold the end properly and taut, bend, stretch, hold hands up, walk through some shrubbery... it was good to see a young government official involving the citizenry in his work without discriminating by age. I’m sure this official wouldn’t discriminate by gender or caste either. He’d be equally callous to pregnant women and snooty builders.

About the accountability and transparency happening in Delhi: I’m waiting for a trickle-down effect so that Goem sarkar will also become people-friendly and efficient. Just the thought gets my tear-glands a-working. The brimming lids will squeeze out some drops … as soon as the Regional Plan is finalized, the transport problem is tackled, the garbage issue is resolved, the mining and tourism industries are on track …. Hope springeth eternal.

Sniff.

(Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in)