Nonsense

I like nonsense -- it wakes up the brain cells.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope...and that enables you to laugh at all of life's realities.
- Theodor S. Geisel, a.k.a. "Dr. Seuss"


Nonsense wakes up the brain cells?

Why did no one tell me? I’ve been trying for three decades and my brain cells still act like a sloth on morphine. Americans have cracked it. Turmeric, they exclaim is the key to awaken the brain cells & ward off Alzheimer’s (and much worse).

My granny turned gray trying to sell yellow to me, but like all self-respecting Indians, I need to hear a westerner say it. Next they’ve come up with fish as brain food. And now this doc tells me that its nonsense that does the trick.

Well, I think I’ve got it figured out pretty much. If I eat deep yellow fish curry as I watch Ekta Kapoor’s soaps, I should have my brain cells buzzing like a bunch of bees on caffeine.

Turmeric + fish + nonsense – the circuit completed, eh? Bah!

Fantasy, eh? I’m sure he doesn’t have Tolkein or Lewis Carol in mind when he propagates fantasy. Fantasy is not life enriching; it’s just enriching. Ask any film maker and they’ll tell you exactly how much.

(Just curious here. Has anyone figured if he is called Sews or Soice or Use - with the ‘s’ silent?)Wrong end of the telescope indeed! Distance your life’s realities, and have a hearty laugh. Well, I did.There are problems in each one of our lives. There are problems, and then there’s the mother in law. Bet my posterior this doc was a sworn single. Or else he’d have bitten his tongue before offering such deviously simple sounding solutions in face of domesticity (synonym of adversity).But since I’m not the giver up type, I kept on valiantly, laughing at my realities in a vain hope to distance them. I waited for my awakened brain cells to strike, like a school kid waits for the lunch break bell. When the plumber did not show up, I put him at the wrong end of the telescope. Ha! I nonsensed (my new word for joked), ‘He must’ve gone to take a leak’. Feeling ignored and laughed at, the faulty tap relieved itself all over my kitchen floor and waited for me to step in the piddle, sorry puddle.I tried Seuss at childbirth too. Lying flat on my back, dehydrated and woozy after my c-section, I listened to half a dozen ‘experienced’ family elders in the room. I was assured that disobedience to their ‘suggestions’ would result in nothing short of death for me. I viewed them from the wrong end of a very long telescope. As a result, five years later my impertinence is re-lived in the clan, even if I happen to just let out a sneeze. A curt ‘I-told-you-so’ follows every ailment of mine. I wouldn’t be surprised if my gravestone reads, ‘Here lies the one who did not cover her wretched post-partum head, and died a painful death’There are more instances. For example, my Will Power goes to sleep when I wake up. It does everything in its power to keep me from hitting the park for a walk. When I tried to laugh my predicament away, senior uncles from the laughter club rejoiced their youngest member. At the end of each morning filled with toothless guffaws, I have discovered that Adipose doesn’t agree with Seuss! I have lost all of 150 grams of my 5-kilogram target.Next I tried to fight off unwanted amorous advances of a colleague. Ha, ha, ha! I told my self. I laugh in the face of danger! Using fantasy & nonsense to my advantage, I spun a marvelous story about a violent, jealous and possessive husband back home who resorts of vials of acid at slightest provocation. Sigh.The colleague still hangs around in my cubicle trying to ply me with his mother’s cooking, while my husband is trying to convince the Mahila Mukti Mandal that the anonymous caller probably got it all wrong. He looks at me beseeching and bewildered. I’m yet to find the courage to fess up.At the end of all this, I feel like the world has put me at wrong end of god-knows-what! Starting right now, I’m going back to my dreary but sane life. I hope you guys give me some grace marks to help me win (oh, take pity!) Very unlike a winner (a la Miss World philanthropic style) I will use up the prize money to buy L’Oreal’s De-crease to rid my face of the ungainly unwanted laugh lines!