Everyone was rolling in laughter as Sarita shared jokes on
everyday life. Her friends believed she could be a great stand-up comedian. In
her presence, they naturally got caught in a flurry of satire, comedy and
slapsticks, that brought out squeals of laughter. Today the girls were talking
about sleepless nights. Thanks to their children's final exams, the stress was
taking a toll on them. And Sarita was prodding them with her comic responses.
This was the ladies get together that the neighbourhood women
indulged in every month. 15 girls in all, got together, to just laugh their way
out of their worries, after their children had gone to school. It was largely enhanced
by Sarita's jocularity. Everyone looked forward to it.
Sarita had been silent for some time. People had distributed into
small groups and were sharing stories and jokes, the room was filled with murmur
of overlapping conversations. Sarita called everyone's attention by chinking
her sherbet glass with a spoon in a
very toastmaster attitude. She said, “Girls I am proud to share with you this
piece of fantastic news. And this time I am serious.” Her friends became
serious too. They did not get to see Sarita serious very often, so they fell
silent, some in surprise and some in anticipation. She announced, “Girls, I
slept 8 hours non-stop last night, as I have done every day of my life since I
was a baby."
Everyone waited for more, but there was nothing more coming.
Sarita sat down and started sipping her sherbet.
The hostess embarrassed and confused, cheered for Sarita. More like dousing
fire than lighting the flame. And then to everyone's surprise, Sarita stood up
again and said, "How many of you believed me? No kidding! Did you
really!"
Now the joke was on them, and they began to laugh! First mildly
and then louder and louder.
“But this is no joke,” someone said. And now people began squealing
with laughter, eyes watering. “We don't sleep we are actually the
zombie association,” someone quipped.
Sarita had more coming. She waited for the laughter to die down, and
then she continued, “You know what I saw when I entered my house the other day?
My spirit was sleeping on my bed and that is when I realised for the first time,
how I manage to do so much every day.” She could hear murmurs of spirit on bed? What spirit?
“And if you want to know what my spirit was doing away from me,”
Sarita answered, “do you really need one to go around doing grocery, washing
clothes, picking up laundry, driving children to and fro in crazy traffic? I
thought I could do with a little less baggage and I let it go home.” Now people
caught the joke…
“I was okay with my spirit sleeping without me,” Sarita caught
them in the midst of bursting into a laugh, “till it kicked me off from my bed
and said don't you have work to do?” Now some women were already laughing aloud,
“So I decided to kill my spirit.” Said Sarita solemnly, “But that fellow is a
real survivor.” It asked, “You too? Aren’t there enough number of people
killing your spirit already?” Sarita said wistfully, “It saw me confused and it
fell back to sleep.” The laughter now was a din.
“And did you know what my maid told me today?” Now Sarita brought
the emotional and highly charged subject of maids into her comedy. People
silenced. Sarita Continued, she said, “I want a raise!” I asked, “Why?” She
said, “You hardly sleep and you make the house dirty when you are up. Compensate
me for that extra work.” I asked, “How?” “She showed me my ice-cream bowl,
snack wrappers and liberal smattering of crumbs on the floor, my midnight snacks.
She also pointed to the broken vase, which fell in my effort to walk around in
the dark, so as not to wake someone up. I reasoned, that if I can do without
spirit, I can do without light too!” Squeals were drowning Sarita’s voice, so
she took a break to have some snack, while others urged her to go on.
“The other day I heard Narendra Modi, our honourable Prime
Minister, in a speech,” she continued, “he said, he doesn’t sleep too long.” I
looked at my snoring husband and said Lier!
Anyway he is the prime minister. He better get less sleep, else who is going to
permit surgical strikes if he sleeps. But who am I! No Prime Minister, no celebrity
or no tycoon. Why am I up?” Sarita ended with a wide eyed, innocent, questioning
gesture. The laughter now getting even more boisterous.
“You know what my husband said the other day?” Sarita was at her
next quip. One on her husband was unavoidable. He said, “Buy yourself a lullaby
track maybe that will make you sleep. I
don't understand why you keep getting up in the night?” I said to him, “No
wonder you can’t hear the alarm at 7 in the morning. Have you ever heard the
kids? They cry in the night sometimes.” He asked, “really?” so nonchalantly as
if it was an epiphany. I took the chance to ask him, does he have a volume shut
button in his ear? And he looked at me incredulously, as if I am from Venus and
He is from Mars. People were now gasping for breath with laughter, their jaws
aching, but there was no stopping Sarita.
“And that is the whole problem, Venus and Mars.” Sarita said
alluding to a book which claims that ‘Women are from Venus and Men are from
Mars’. “The bloody sun is so hot at Venus, why did they have to get us from Venus?”
She paused, “Someone, I think that crack, Elon
Musk, is taking all men back to Mars! At this point her audience howled in
laughter. “What should we women do?” Sarita kept a straight face as she
continued. “We have no one taking us to Venus. The last one who tried was, well
nobody! Nobody ever tried going to Venus and that is how it will be.”
“I think there is an international conspiracy by men, we women are
not aware of.” Sarita spoke in a whispering tone. “Did you notice how hot the
Earth is becoming? Those men kept saying it’s
a man’s world and made it hot like Venus! Men can't take it anymore, so
they will just leave the planet, so we can save it from further destruction.”
The haw-Haw was uncontrollable.
“Have you seen how many men are storing their semen in the freezer?”
Sarita said conspiratorially. She had to stop, for laughter to die down. “We will have no problem when they are gone! I
don't know what those guys will do! Maybe take the robot Sophia with them.”
Another uproarious laughter took over.
“Anyway. Who cares what they will do. Think of what we will do
with the time.” Sarita said in a meaningful tone. “We will finally get to know
what this 8 hour sleep is, which they keep talking about.” The women were now,
not just squealing with laughter, they were crying with laughter! It was lunch
time and the group had had a great time. But they all wondered will they ever
get that sleep?
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