Life's Bitter Joke

Humor is of several kinds; I won’t be able to enumerate all of them, but I know for sure there is genuine humor which help widen our face-lines, and there is wry humor which would only arouse uneasy feelings in the listeners/audience, and there is yet another kind of humor which is cruel. There are similarly jokes, which instead of make us laugh, may only prompt us to shed tears, bitter tears. This is what can be termed as life’s bitter jokes, and today I am going to share about one such bitter joke one of my friends narrated to me. It is immaterial who had narrated to me, but the fact is that it happened today to people known to me. And believe me, jokes have no color or creed or nationality, and can apply to all people in all situations.

People do make mistakes, but if we fail to look at the people who make mistakes, and only blow the mistakes out of proportions, we are bound to lose the touch of humanness, and that may be dangerous. This senior lady, who had lost her husband some three decades ago, had brought all her children up single-handedly, courageously, crossing several barriers, hills and valleys. She worked hard to make a living, and even as she nears her seventies, she stitches religious habits for a group of nuns, and that keeps her going. She is assisted by her eldest daughter, mother of six children, and wife of a drunkard, who is the sole bread-winner of the family. The mother and daughter duo had received an order to make a religious habit for a nun, and today was the deadline.

The senior lady had not eaten during the day, struggling to keep the deadline, and rushed to hand it over to the nun, who on seeing the outfit, shouted at the lady at the top of her voice. There had been a lack of communication, but that was not the reason for her to lose her temper and shout at the lady, who had made this outfit with great care and love. Her daughter younger daughter, who stood close-by was stunned to see how her mother was being humiliated, and was deeply hurt by the rude and rough behavior of the nun. The senior lady and her daughter depended on the nuns to make a living, and they valued the orders of the nuns greatly, but they could not believe their eyes when the nuns began to pour out all their anger on the lady.

The mother and her younger daughter were both greatly hurt, but they are helpless; the ruthless and cruel way the nun had treated them was more than they could bear. If the duo was well off, they could just say goodbye to the nuns, but they cannot afford to do that. They have to repair the habit, by replacing it with another set, and the senior lady was ready to travel for three hours to purchase cloth to replace the one they had made with wrong measurements. When I think of this situation, I feel sad, and at one moment there were a couple of tears at the corner of my eyes. How could life be so cruel to the have-nots? Is not there a way out for them to live with the honor and dignity they were created with? Should they continue to live on the mercy of the people who could hire and fire them at will?

The one image which comes to my mind when I think of the bitter jokes of life, is that of clowns of ancient day plays; these were men from the lowest strata of society, who struggled to make both ends meet, and opted to make a living by making people laugh on stage. While they laughed and made others laugh on stage, the reality at back-stage and at home was just the opposite. They laughed while their hearts cried bitterly, and such is the laughter the mother and daughter would have been indulging in today, and when I heard this incident narrated to me, I was helpless as to how I could console the daughter, leave alone her aging mother. It is one thing to listen to others narrating to us as it happened to them, and it is another thing to experience it for ourselves.

Good and bad old habits

During the last two years I had been witnessing what it means by the saying ‘old habits die hard’! Probably it would require one to live with an old person to really understand the truth factor of this saying. Living with an 85 year old person for me has not been as painful and problematic as one would think, because the oldie I am living with is psychologically not that old, though physically he is. He still manages his own life without help from anyone; there is no one to help him with his personal program, and what is more, he washes his own clothes (of course on a washing machine), and goes for his customary evening walk, spends quite an amount of time on internet… he knows how to enjoy life, even at this age.

Of course his skin is made in Belgium, that is why at this age, he walks around as if he is just 60; his memory power is still intact, except he has been mixing up months and years, otherwise he has a sharp memory for names of persons. During his 86th birthday, some of his former students had come to wish him with a cake, and the one question which they kept asking him was, how he could remember the names of all the students of the college, though he was only a vice-principal. It used to be said that he would take the group photo of each class, with their names underneath, and learn the names, and during examinations verify their names once again.

But he has his own set of old habits which I would not easily appreciate. When I think of some of his ideas and notions, what comes to my mind quite spontaneously is this : penny wise and pound foolish. He has his own fixated ideas, which seemingly stand for the poor and the have-nots, while his actual life in the house is just the opposite of what he is worried about. He had refused to have a water heated installed in his bathroom, because he thinks that poor people cannot afford one, but his eating habits are just as Belgian as it used to be some sixty years ago, when he reached this city. He has some of the most expensive stuff for his special items, and which poor could afford them! But he would not tell the person-in-charge of purchasing not to purchase them for him.

During the past two years, I have not seen him taking welfare of the other members of the community seriously; if he had all that he is fond of, eating and drinking, then he does not need to bother about anything else. He would be the last person to challenge any person who does wrong; he loves to continue status quo, and would feel agitated when someone begins to question the way things are. He would tell sometimes, oh, I am not used to these things back at home. I was brought up in a situation, where we were not allowed to enter into the kitchens. But back at home, I had even cooked food when my mother was out in the fields… Then it is difficult for him to consider the situations we have come from… Perhaps till his death he would remain a Belgian, and sad, India had not managed to change much of his old habits.

Even at this age, he is attached to labels and portfolios, and would not easily give things up to be managed by younger persons. He loves to be in-charge of several things, and is delighted when people ask for his opinion. Today as I thank God for this senior person, who is much older than my own father (perhaps the age of my own grandfathers), I also would like to pick up a couple of things which can help me on my journey: ever enthusiastic about people and responsibilities, a care for the body (though he is sometimes over cautious about the body), and at the same time I would like to remind myself not to follow his footsteps in continuing certain amount of bias against the ‘natives’, sense of security for self, irrespective of what happens to others… I am sure he is leaving behind a legacy for the world, and I am grateful to God for him!