Let’s ring in the New Year
with a joke. This one happened while I was doing my
nine-to-five grind with a
govt-run R&D Institute (JNTBGRI) at Palode, T’puram. We had a hexagon
shaped canteen, looking something like a pyramid which was open to all,
including contract labourers. Everybody shared the same food, self-served and one
could go to any place of the spacious area enjoying the beautiful view outside.
The ambience too was good, mainly due to the absence of loud popular music.
One must go to the service-counter first, order one’s choice from the limited menu which will be served hot in a minute or two. The main players would be paraded before your eyes in an attractive way. For example, “puttu” (steam-cooked ground rice, layered with coconut shavings, cylindrical in shape) in a triangle-like formation with just one piece at the vertex.
I moved towards the plantain-leaf, show-casing puttu, but one of the ladies standing nearby interrupted.
Oh Sir, please move away from
“puttu”. It might give way like a land-slip and you would be six feet under.
Hearing this the other one
remarked,
Oh no! When your time is up,
Sir, even a puttu-slide is enough.
I was flabbergasted. Those
illiterate women doing manual labour on daily-wages had understood the
“ungraspable phantom called life” in a much better way than me!
Perhaps education has got
nothing to do with wit & wisdom, who knows!
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL !