I had heard of people covered in an aura, people surrounded by a sweet fragrance, people radiating positivity and many such... but what about a person exuding peals of laughter? And that too, not mere giggles, jokes and funny passes, but hearty laughter...every time I saw him and all the time...
I met such a guy.... I was lucky to.
It showed something new... taught me something new...
I did not notice the dimples first, but it was the twinkle in his eye that charmed me....over coffee, tea, fruit juice, pastries and all other things we had... He was like a breath of fresh air...
He laughed a lot.
And he made me laugh. I hadn’t laughed like that for months, and that long, that intensely, perhaps for years...
He was quick witted; and when I began matching wits with him, not with intention, but spontaneously, upon provocation by his witty remarks, I discovered that I could be witty too...
‘Love you not for who you are, but for who I am when I am with you...’
He had a great sense of humour; most of what made him laugh were not funny things by themselves, but they appeared so because he saw the funny side to all things... he had the humour to see what others would miss... and he put it in a way that made it all the more funnier...
He did not read but made wonderful conversation. For he had anecdotes to tell.
And that’s because he had a life.
He wasn’t like the rest of them – who went to work, went back home, did not have a life, and in their free time, did online trading or some other money multiplying thing...
He would go out, almost every day, meet his ‘boys’ as he referred to them, share a good time, pull their legs, get jagged himself, make innocent fun of others and come back with a pocket full of anecdotes...
His ‘boys’ were guys from his school, from his boyhood days, whom he had known 12 years ago.
Now the question isn’t, ‘how many of us still keep in touch with our school friends’; the question is ‘how many of our school friends still want to keep in touch with us after 12 years of leaving school’.
Whenever I had ‘evaluated’ men hitherto, it was for the other lofty attributes – reading habit, maturity, interest in travel, poetic heart, intellect, language skills, values, ideology, political-religious views, proximity to culture...
I had never paid any thought to humour. Humour surely, is the biggest turn on...
Meeting him made me see plainly, how important this one quality, humour was and what a difference it made. And then, it wasn’t just one attribute; it was many come together - intelligence, exposure, smartness, spontaneity...
More importantly, he made me see the beauty of 'anecdotes'.
If we don’t have anecdotes to tell, we aren’t really having a life, are we?
Humour and anecdotes - they could make up for all the other qualities... after all, it’s what we want in life, to smile, to laugh, to be happy,...all the time.
And if someone can bring a smile on our face, promise a lifetime of hearty laughter, what more can one ask for?
His humour, his laughter was his best part but there were other surprises too...
He did not write poetry, nor perhaps read poems, but when he told me excitedly about the deal he had made in that nursery – of 20 orchid mother plants for mere 1000 rupees, all of which he had loaded into his luxury car, of his roaming about 4000 square feet of his garden in the night every day, torch in hand, looking for a new bud, of his pleasure in sinking his hands in the soil, I saw the poet in him.
He hadn’t travelled north of Bombay, but his world south of it was packed with punch – it had more places, people, tales, more life and happenings than that of many folks with the world tour in their pocket... that’s the kind of king-size life he was living right here...
He did not read history, literature, philosophy, Booker, Nobel,... nor did he frequently express his ‘opinions’ about various issues, but the few glimpses he gave me of his mind were a delight; he held views that require courage. And more importantly, the right fundamentals.
Basics and Balls. Both of them very rare.
When all that never ending laughter and winking and twinkling suggested a frivolous, non committal carefree youth, he surprised me with the close ties he shares with both sets of grandparents, and how he hoped he would never marry against them...
He was a genuinely nice guy – coming to think of it, I think, you have to be a nice person, clean at heart, genuine and child-like – to be able to laugh so much... its a prerequisite...
Someone who’s creepy or shrewd will not be able to laugh like that... No?
And then, one day, he left...
Like all the clouds that had appeared on my horizon, he brought me
Hope, cool shade, delight and much respite,
But no rain, to be sure,... and passed me by...
It’s been a while
Since he took the plane to a faraway land...
I still think of him and smile,
At that anecdote, I laugh aloud...
Whether I am alone, or in a crowd...
Was he a cloud or a gust of breeze that took my breath away?
