TASTE OF TEARS………

                        Without realising it, I suddenly burst out laughing because the absurdity of all my efforts hit me hard.

                        One evening after two rounds of the evening elixir one of my two erudite friends had a brain wave and said solemnly “even a genius like you will not be long listed or short listed for a Nobel unless you have a Doctorate.” The VC of the local University no less erudite but more friendly immediately rose to the occasion. “In recognition of your genius I can grant you dispensation of a guiding professor and option to select your own subject. All that we want is a dissertation.” I thanked the learned guests for their suggestions and their concern that I should not to miss my due, the Nobel for a simple procedural error.

                        They left after the third round but left me in deep concentration to select a way out subject not thought of by anyone in this entire world. Finally in the morning I short listed the following three out of many subjects that I mulled over.

(a) Why do Andhra tribal women smoke with the burning end in their mouth?

(b) Why do dogs always choose a lamp or other post and raise a leg before doing No1?

(c)  What is the taste and chemical composition of tears?

A dissertation needs a thorough examination of adequate number of samples, tabulation of the data, evaluation, interpretation and finally arriving at the most likely conclusion which later would be accepted by the learned Professors and later incorporated in the text books as Garimalla Principle/Theory. The first subject involved considerable leg work and interaction with many tribal women and was also fraught with many dangers some known and many unknown. My hatred for four legged creatures in general and dogs in particular left me with the third option.

“How to collect enough samples of tears?” I asked my wife who also functions as think tank in our house. She immediately took two steps backward but seeing my reassuring looks resumed her position and suggested reading Thomas Hardy Novels or watching Telugu movies. “The Mayor of Casterbridge”, “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and “Desperate Remedies” had a second run without much success.  Telugu movies had more of half clad nubile damsels gyrating and thrusting their pelvic muscles and produced no tears but different responses which frightened my wife. She started getting frequent headaches. I went to the Cinema theatres fully armed with a dozen of sterilised small plastic spoons and a small container to store the sample. The others in the theatre looked at me as if I was from Mars. Undaunted I went through the torture every time for a period of almost 3 hours but returned home with an empty container and salacious thoughts which transformed my wife’s headaches into a migraine of a strain not seen by our family Doctor before.

A friend who is a total Telugu movie buff suggested watching the old movies, sure tearjerkers in which the heroine was put through a grinder and the audience through a wringer. Unfortunately the DVD shop chap had no stock of them as such movies had gone out of circulation. He had plenty of stocks of movies with item numbers but none that strained the lachrymal glands.

I went round the complex and asked all the house developers (Please note the new word for housewife) to narrate me tales of torture by their mother in law. As my ill luck would have it all the ladies in the sixty flats of our complex had angels and not witches as their mother-in-law. I almost carried out a census of our complex to find if any, cases of torture by siblings, ill-treatment by parents or children or at least neighbours. It appeared that God is in heaven and all is too well with our complex to my liking. The situation in the next dozen complexes was no different. It appeared that our whole area was a paradise with no one having anything to cry about or even shed few tears.

Meanwhile my friend with a Doctorate in Chemistry, who promised to carry out the chemical analysis, was getting impatient as she had an overseas assignment coming. At that time my neighbour had a massive heart attack. I thought that my time had finally come to get what I was looking for. Although I was always his well wisher I was in a desperate situation and wished that his large family would provide adequate samples for my research. My friend thanks to regular intake of B/L in my house survived two consecutive attacks, laughed at death and returned home within a fortnight fit as a fiddle and fresh as a daisy. (The hospital had no stocks of B/L). He sported a big ear to ear smile and thanked me and all our neighbours for our good wishes. He particularly thanked me for visiting him at the hospital daily.

As time was running out I thought that I would try self torture during my wife’s absence for her evening walk. I called my friends and called off the evening session that day. Armed with all the paraphernalia to collect the samples in copious quantities I took out my Swiss knife and poked myself at all vulnerable points using all the weapons that the special knife provided. All I got was plenty of blood but not one single drop of tear.

I felt like a Captain who lost his ship and stood before a full length mirror. When I looked at my bloody reflection, without realising it I suddenly burst out laughing because I saw the absurdity of all of my efforts. Then one teardrop slid down my cheek fast.