Laughter Challenge

No ....... This is not about Raju Srivastav or Shekhar Suman. The challenge is not to make others laugh, but the other way around .....it is to face up to the ordeal of laughter and come out unscathed. Yes, you read it right.Laughter can be an ordeal at times ... here is how.

Despite living in the same complex, we colleagues used to meet up only during social functions or bump into each other while at official errands. It was therefore decided by the Boss (let's call him B)that everybody would have lunch together on working days. From that day on, a daily joint lunch became a norm .....and the trial began. We would all sit across the loooong dining table with B at its head.

A few "lunch sessions" later we realised that B was actually in love with his own voice. He would narrate experiences and tales, putting his mimicing skills to frequent use. The culmination of every sentence would invariably be a thundering laughter (seemingly wicked kind that reminded me of the satans of Harry Porter and the notorious "Krur Singh", a charcter in a hindi teleserial). It often happened that none of us could make head or tail of his "hilarious" sagas, but had to burst into mirth, just to stay in sync ... you know what I mean. The only positive factor being the hope to invountarily imbibe the proclaimed benifits of laughter therapy. The problem was that these mealtime meetings would seldom conclude before our cheeks pained due to the synthetic laughter and until the food was almost digested. Gradually, a time came when "lunchtime" would translate as "horror time" in our dictionaries and some of us started getting nightmares of the "laughter beast".

We worked out methods to deal with the crisis … taking turns to attend lunch … scheduling work to match the lunch timings … etc …..but the fear factor remained. I was enjoying the pleasures of an afternoon siesta yesterday when shaken awake by an appalling dream….. All I could remember hearing was that savage laughter … a very familiar voice asked .. “Pahchan Kaun” …. And I shuddered …